The Buddha Disease

Talks given from 1/1/77 to 31/1/77

Darshan Diary

CHAPTER 1

If you meet the Buddha on the Way...

1 January 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Buddha means one who is enlightened, and prem means love – love for the enlightened one, or love for enlightenment.

Buddha is not a person – mm? it is a state of ultimate being. There have been many buddhas, and everybody is potentially a buddha. The word itself means tremendously awakened, absolutely alert... one whose consciousness has completely disappeared, who is just pure consciousness. You can look through and through and there is no darkness in it... not even lingering somewhere in the comers.

He has no basement to his being. Nothing is repressed; he holds back nothing. His trust with existence is one hundred percent. Doubts have disappeared... darkness has disappeared. He has come home. That is the meaning of buddha.

But by giving you this name, I would like you to beware of a certain danger. I’m not saying to you to become like gautam buddha – the most famous buddha. Nobody can become like anybody else –

and there is no need to.

Each individual has to become himself. That’s how you will become a buddha – not by following and imitating a buddha. If you imitate a buddha or a christ, you will be an imitation. So this may look paradoxical but it is a very basic point to be understood. If one really wants to be a buddha he has not to follow any buddha, not to imitate anybody – he has not to become a carbon copy.

If you really want to follow a buddha you have to resist the temptation of becoming a carbon copy, because when you become a buddha, when the flower opens in you – then only do you follow him.

And that will not be an imitation of anything. There has never been anything like that and there will never be anything like that again. Each individual is unique. That’s how god pays respect to each individual. He creates only unique individuals. He never makes carbon copies – he never repeats.

Each individual is original.

This imitation is very much a temptation. Mm? when you love Jesus you want to imitate. When you love Buddha you want to imitate. When you love me you want to imitate. But if you imitate, you miss.

Loving me or loving a buddha is to go into your own self. The master has to throw the disciple into his own being. So zen people have the right name for this temptation to imitate; they call it the buddha disease. They love Buddha tremendously, but they call this the buddha disease. Mm? he is so beautiful that one is naturally tempted to imitate, but then it becomes a disease.

The zen masters are known to have said that if you meet the Buddha on the way, kill him immediately!

They worship the Buddha every day morning, evening – and they pray. And they say if while meditating the Buddha image arises in you, take a sword and cut it immediately. Then and there be finished with it... otherwise this fellow is dangerous.

They say,’If you repeat the name of Buddha, wash your mouth, rinse your mouth immediately, because this name, too, is dangerous.’ They love Buddha and they say such things! It looks contradictory, but it is not.

Never be imitative if you want one day to become an offering to god. Always try to listen to your own heart.

My whole effort here is not to make anything out of you but to simply help you to become whatsoever you can become – whatsoever! I have no fixed idea... I have no ideal. I have to simply help you to grow.

Mm? just like a gardener: he helps the rosebush to be a rosebush, and he helps the lotus to be a lotus. He does not try to make the lotus become a rosebush. Neither does he try to make the rosebush a lotus. He protects. He waters... he gives the manure. He gives his love and warmth. He surrounds the rosebush with all the care that he can, just to help it to become itself.

Anand means bliss, shanti means silence. And in the final analysis bliss becomes silence, or silence becomes bliss. They are two aspects of the same energy, two aspects of the same coin. If you are really silent, you will be blissful. If you are blissful, you will be silent.

That’s the difference between real silence and a false silence. One can be in a false silence – one can force oneself to be silent – but then one will not be blissful; one will be somehow controlling.

Then the silence will be out of discipline, practice, enforcement. That silence will be regimented

– just as in the army you can order people to be silent, and they will be... unmoving like buddha statues. But they are not silent! Deep down they are boiling... they are sitting on volcanoes. They are simply following an order.

You can do the same thing to yourself. You can become the commander and the commanded. You can force yourself, you can torture yourself, and if you do it long enough you will come to attain a certain quality of silence. But it will be dead and it will not have any bliss in it. In fact it will be very, very miserable. It will be empty, negative. It will be more sad than joyful. It will be a sort of death shadow.

The real silence always carries a bubbling joy. The real silence is a dancing silence. The real silence is true bliss, and the real silence cannot be forced. You cannot regiment yourself for it – you have to understand life. The more you understand, the more silent you become.

The real silence comes through understanding; the false silence comes through practice. The false silence is very cheap and easy; the real silence is difficult. Hence people choose the false because it is very easily available. Any stupid person can have it – just a little torturing of the body and the mind.

I am completely against any falsity. It is better to be tense but to be true. It is better to be angry but to be true, rather than to be silent and false, because from the true the way goes towards truth, but from the false there is no go.

The false is a dead-end. It doesn’t connect anywhere – it brings you to a cul-de-sac. You cannot go back because you have put so much in it, invested so much in it. And you cannot go ahead because there is no way to go – just a precipice.

The false can never lead to the real because the false one day or other comes to end suddenly, and the road is no more ahead. You cannot go back, because thirty years, forty years practising... mm?

that going back means you have accepted your defeat.

So I see many people – so called saints, religious people – sitting there at the end of the road, not courageous enough to come back and to say to the world that they failed, that the path was wrong, that their efforts were in vain and that, please, no one should go again on that path.

No. Rather than doing this, rather than repenting, rather than declaring to the world that they have failed, they go on teaching the same path to other people. They go on calling others too, saying that they have arrived – come!

From the false there is no way to the real. From the real, there is a way to the real. So real anger is better – at least it is real. Real anxiety is better – at least it is real. I am not in favour of anxiety or anger, but I am all in favour of the real. At least something is in it that is true. And if you understand your real anger, anger will disappear by understanding and the truth will remain. This is what is known in the east as sorting out the chaff from the wheat.

Wherever there is chaff, don’t be in a hurry to burn it. There is a possibility that the wheat may be hiding somewhere. First take the wheat out.

In anger, anger is the chaff and compassion is the wheat. In sex, sex is the chaff, love is the wheat, and so on and so forth.

[A sannyasin says: My parents are very beautiful people and they are concerned about my being with you. They need to feel that I’m growing in christ.... And I’m not totally resolved with this.]

That need not be a problem – you are growing in christ. Being with me is being with christ. Just let them understand this. Give them all the christ books.

Don’t feel guilty and don’t feel in any way that you owe some explanation to them. Just express the situation – that you are growing in christ... because christ is not a person at all. It has nothing to do with jesus and it has nothing to do with rajneesh. It is a state of ultimate flowering. In the east we call it buddha, in the west you call it christ, but it doesn’t matter.

Of course you are not growing in christianity – that is true – and that has to be made clear, because by’christ’ they may mean’christianity’. Then tell them that it is not growing.

I am against christianity, against hinduism, but I am all for christ. In fact you cannot find any christian who is more for christ than I am. But the idea of christ has to be experienced. Just explain to them lovingly, humbly. There is no need to argue – because these things are not for argument.

If they love you – and I see that they love you and that they are loving people – they will understand.

If they can understand love, they can understand everything. Love is vast.

And their concern is natural – nothing wrong in it. Mm? they may be worried about what you have chosen and where you are going; maybe you will go astray, maybe it will become difficult. Their concern is natural, and you should be grateful that they are concerned. They still care for you... their love is intact.

So feel grateful, and tell them that you feel grateful that they are concerned, but make it clear. And there is no argument in it – just make it clear... a simple statement that this is the thing, and this is your way to reach christ.

If they love you they will understand, and if they love christ there is every possibility that they will come to me too.

Nobody can reach christ through the church. It has never been so; it is not in the nature of things.

Nobody can reach Buddha through the priesthood.

Once I am gone you will not be able to make any contact with me through somebody else – an organisation, priests, apostles... they won’t help. The only way will be either to be directly with me

– which needs rare awareness – or go to a living master who may not even have heard about me, and to be with him. Either you have the awareness to contact me directly or you come in contact with somebody who has that awareness. He may not have heard about me – that is not the point –

but through his presence you will be immediately connected with me. He will function as a bridge.

Masters who are no more on the earth can be connected only through living masters – there is no other way. And as far as masters are concerned, there is no Christian, no Hindu and no Buddhist.

A master is a door to the infinite, and the infinite has no adjective to it.

So if you simply are there, happy, flowing, meditative, praying.... Let them watch, let them just see by the side. Passing the room they will see you are meditating; in the garden you are sitting with closed eyes. Let them have a taste of something that is beginning to happen to you – that will be the connection. And that’s what I call persuasion existential persuasion, not intellectual conviction.

Simply go happily... and I will be working on you.

Once I start working on somebody he is bound to come – don’t be afraid! I just go on sitting in this house – never leave the room – and people come from such faraway countries, trekking their way, and they find me. I will look after them – you just give them a taste, that’s all!

[The sannyasin, who is a therapist, says: Osho, I’m doing several workshops in your ashrams in the west and I would like you to tell me what to do. I want to do something totally... a new baby. Two weekends are coming up very soon.]

Don’t plan it. Just remember me and start, mm? And be in a non-serious mood. Don’t try to manipulate – just float – and things will start happening. Whenever you are stuck or anything, just take the locket in your hand. Sitting amidst the group tell them to give you silence for one second.

Just for one second remember me, and the flow will be there again.

Work as if you are just a vehicle. Don’t work from your mind – allow me. And all that you know will be used – but not in a planned way... very zig-zag. It will not be like a superhighway – just a footpath in the forest. Many things will happen unexpectedly and you will be surprised as much as your group.

So you simply start – don’t plan it at all. There is no need to have any plan. You have done many workshops, so you know. Just be there and start. Just sit in the middle and start. Let this be a totally spontaneous thing, and do it in the spirit of a picnic.

... Mm! Don’t be serious – mm? just play. And it will bring out the highest possibility that is hidden in you. When you plan something, you already have planned it – and you don’t allow your spontaneity to flow through. So don’t make the formal structure too heavy, because these flowers of being are very very delicate. If the structure is too heavy they cannot come up. They come better when the structure is not there, or at least is very very light, flexible, fluid.

Start with geetam (a sannyas centre in california) – all will be sannyasins there. Start, and leave it to me, and see what happens. Go in a crazy way – unplanned. Let things take their own shape and let each moment lead you to another moment... and much is going to happen.

CHAPTER 2

I declare you a god, a goddess

2 January 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[To a new initiate Osho gives the name Ma Prem Kalpa]

Prem means love and kalpa means imagination – love imagination. And you have to work on it.

Imagination is going to be your path. You have the capacity to visualise, to imagine – you have a poet’s heart – and images will come very easily to you. So, imagine yourself as more and more loving.

There are two ways to change a man: one is the way of the will and another is the way of imagination.

With the will you have to force things on yourself; it is the path of struggle, conflict. With imagination you need not force; you simply persuade. And imagination works so simply and so easily that there is never any anxiety and conflict around it.

So just imagine yourself as loving more and more. Walk, but feel you are surrounded by love energy.

And soon you will find that it is there. Your imagination will create the path for it, and then it will start flowing.

Be friendly, compassionate. Even with things, be compassionate. Create more and more love energy through imagination, and soon you will become a broadcasting station of love. Many songs are going to be born....

Veet means beyond, and vishada means anxiety. And that is your goal: drop anxiety. Anxiety is the only barrier. When we are in deep anxiety we are never herenow. anxiety means of the future or of the past. Anxiety is never in the present... anxiety cannot be of the present. It is impossible to create anxiety right now. In this very moment it is impossible Either you look back – somebody insulted you, something went wrong, and you did something you never wanted to do, and now you are crying and weeping over spilt milk.... It is foolish because nothing can be done about it. The past is past, and you cannot undo it. So don’t waste a single moment for it – enough!

The future is not yet6, and nothing can be done about it because it exists not. Something is possible only when something is. Planning, trying to become this and that – achieving, ambition, desire...

they are projections in the future. They create anxiety: Will it be possible to succeed or not? Will you be able to succeed? There are a thousand and one hazards. One trembles, fear arises... anxiety is felt.

All anxiety is either of the past or of the future – and both are not. So a man who lives in anxiety lives in non-existence. His life is a shadow life. It is a ghost life. He does not really live. His being is not authentic, because there is only one thing that is authentic and that is this moment. So start living in the moment more and more.

Old tendencies, old habits, will force you to go into the future and into the past. The moment you remember, relax – relax in the now. Laugh at the ridiculousness of the old habits. I’m not saying to fight with them. If you fight you will create anxiety. I am saying to simply laugh. Whenever you catch hold of yourself red-handed – again in the future and again in the past – there is nothing to be done.

Slip out of it – just as a snake slips out of the old skin. No need to fight. Fight never solves anything.

It can create more complexities.

So I am not saying to fight – I am saying to simply understand. Tomorrow will take its course on its own. When it comes you will be there to face it. And it never comes as tomorrow; it always comes as today. So learn to be herenow.

And that is the meaning of veet vishada – beyond anxiety. Live like trees, rocks, animals. Live like god!

Only man alone on the earth lives in anxiety. Below man is nature. It lives in the moment – unaware, unconscious, but it lives in the moment. It is not conscious enough to think about the past or to think about the future.

Then there are buddhas, christs, krishnas – gods who have become so conscious that because of their consciousness they cannot move to the past and to the future. They are anchored in the present... their consciousness is centred in the present.

And man is just between these two. He is neither as unconscious as the animals and the trees, nor is he as conscious as a buddha. So he goes on, split: one part moving towards the past one part moving towards the future – pulled, tom apart. Hence there is anguish, anxiety, pain suffering.

One just has to understand and become more and more aware.

Ananda means bliss, and devika means goddess – goddess of bliss.

... And the goal is not very far away – it is very close by. Just remembrance is needed – nothing else. We have only to remember that we belong to god. Just remembrance – it is not a question of doing anything else. We have forgotten. We have become oblivious to the obvious. And it always happens – that which is obvious, we tend to forget.

When a person is healthy he tends to forget health. When he becomes ill, then he remembers. When you don’t have a headache you don’t remember at all that you have a head. When the headache is there, then the memory is too.

The human mind remembers only something which is missed. God is never missed – that is the problem. He is always there – whether we remember him or not. He is always there... he is always showering. Whether we welcome him or not, it doesn’t matter – he goes on showering on saints, on sinners, on good, on bad. On religious, irreligious, theists, atheists, he goes on showering.

His love is unconditional. There is no condition that we should do something and then he will be loving towards us. His love is unconditional, because he is love and nothing else. Hence we tend to forget. He is so available – like the air... all around.

Just like the fish in the ocean.... The fish never remembers the ocean – cannot remember. Unless she is thrown out of the ocean on the bank, on the beach, then suddenly she remembers – she has missed the home. Then there is anguish, trembling, an urge to go back to the ocean.

But a fish can be taken out of the ocean – we cannot be taken out of god. So the problem becomes very difficult. If there were any possibility to take human consciousness o t of god, then everybody would have become religious immediately, because then we would have suffered tremendously, we would have missed. But there is no possibility – all is god. Wherever we are, we are in him. We are born in him, live in him, die in him. We breathe in him... we breathe him!

He is so close that it is difficult to remember. Because it is so simple, that’s why it has become so difficult.

God is not far away – god is very close by.

And that is the meaning of the name. Henceforward, I declare you a god, a goddess. Now you have to just make it a constant remembrance. Be more and more alert about it.

I don’t say become god, because you are god.... I say start behaving like a god, that’s all.

CHAPTER 3

This feeling of belonging – that you are together with these trees and the stars and the moon and the sun – is what I call trust

3 January 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Veet means beyond, sandhaya means doubt – beyond doubt. And that’s how one approaches truth.

Doubt never leads towards truth – only trust. Trust is the key. It is difficult. To doubt is very easy.

Every child is born with doubt. Doubt seems to be very natural. One has to learn trust; one has to grow in trust. Trust is not a given property – one has to find it.

All the ingredients are there but they have to be mixed in the right proportion – then trust arises. And with trust the whole life changes, is transformed.

So there are only two types of people in the world: the doubting people and the trusting people. The doubting people can believe, but they cannot trust. Belief is a substitute trust – remember it. Belief is not real trust – it is a pseudo-coin. When you don’t have trust, you crate a pseudo-coin – belief.

Somebody believes in christianity, somebody in hinduism, somebody in the geeta, somebody in the koran.

People believe because it is really difficult to live only with doubt – but to live with absolute doubt is impossible. So there is a need for trust. Don’t substitute it by belief.

I don’t teach belief. Belief is an intellectual game. One forces oneself somehow, convinces oneself, argues with oneself, represses the doubt and sits on top of it and declares one’s belief. That belief is useless, because hidden behind it is doubt – very much alive... can explode any moment.

So believers are always afraid. They know their doubt... they know it is there. They avoid it. They don’t want to face it. If somebody argues against them, they become angry. They are ready to kill or be killed, but they don’t want to argue. Their argument is their sword. Mm? they think if you can kill a person, you have proved that you are right.

These are doubtful people – they just believe on the surface. They are afraid of anybody who can create their doubt again. They are afraid of anyone who can bring it up to the surface.

A man who trusts has no fear. And trust is not a repression. It is the ultimate in love. It has nothing to do with doctrine. It is not believing in god or not-believing in god... believing in the theory of reincarnation or not believing; that is not the point at all.

Trust is a different approach towards life. You simply trust because you are born out of life. You are living in it; you will dissolve in it one day. How can you mistrust it? You are an extension of life itself.

How can the wave mistrust the ocean? If the wave mistrusts, it will go insane. And even while the wave mistrusts the ocean, the ocean is supporting it... all the while. That ultimate support is god.

Whether you trust or not, he goes on infusing life into you.

So when I say trust, I mean a totally different approach to life: remembering, feeling, becoming more sensitive, becoming more aware that you are part of it – you are not separate. No man is an island.

We are all joined together, so how can we mistrust, and whom?

Jesus says,’Love your enemy.’ I say there is no enemy – there cannot be. And that is the meaning of jesus’ saying too. By’Love your enemy’ he means that he too is your friend – you have mistaken him for an enemy.

This whole life is yours. It belongs to you... you belong to it. This feeling of belonging is trust... that you are not alone, that you are together with these trees and the stars and the moon and the sun...

that everything that exists is part of you and you part of it – this is what I call trust.

And this trust is religious. You don’t become a christian, you don’t become a mohammedan – you simply become religious. Then all churches are yours and all temples and all mosques. In fact then the whole existence is your temple.

This is what I mean when I give you the name’veet sandhaya’. Mm? veet means beyond, sandhaya means doubt – not against doubt, but beyond doubt. Against doubt is belief. Beyond doubt is trust.

It is not a repression of doubt. It is a tremendous understanding that doubt is futile. It is looking into doubt so deeply that in that very look, doubt disappears. Not that you replace it by a belief.... Just looking deeply into the doubt you find that it was futile, it was unbased; there was no foundation to it. Suddenly it is gone, and that which is left is trust.

When doubt is no more, then that which is left is trust. It is beyond doubt – it is not against doubt.

There is no fight between trust and doubt – that’s what I want to emphasise.

Trust is something far superior. Belief exists on the same plane as doubt. Trust exists on a different plane altogether. Belief fights doubt. Trust is a transcendence.

[To another initiate Osho gives the name Veetnisha.]

Veetnisha. It means, the night is over... and I can see it in your inner sky – mm? the morning is very close by. Just the first rays of the sun... the birds should be singing soon, and there will be great rejoicing.

Sannyas is a beginning of a new world. It is an abrupt change... radical, of the roots.

Up to now it was as if it were a night – the dark night of desires, ambitions, expectations, frustrations, anguish. It was a night of nightmares. Let this moment become a discontinuity with the past.

That is the meaning of sannyas – that you disown the past, that you say that from now onwards, you will not think in terms of your past – it no more belongs to you... that now you are beginning a new beginning... that you will function on a new nucleus... that you will not carry the past any more.

Sannyas is a declaration that you have decided to drop the past – hence the change of name and the change of dress. It is simply symbolic, to make it more penetrating, real, memorable.

So from this moment think of yourself as a new born child. The night is over and you are born to the morning.

It is not going to be easy, because the hold of the past is deep. The morning is very fragile and the new rays of the sun cannot be very strong, but they will be proving stronger and stronger every moment. Nourish them, nurture them,. And don’t identify with the past. If any old habit comes past, simply watch it. Remain aloof as if it belongs to somebody else... as if the postman has delivered a letter wrongly. It is not addressed to you, so you return it to the post office.

The mind will go on believing just because of the old habit, because the mind will take time to know that the address is changed. Mm? it takes a little time. The mind moves very slowly; then the unconscious moves even more slowly. The body is very lethargic. Mm? they have different time-systems.

You are taking sannyas from your conscious mind. For the conscious mind it has happened. For the unconscious mind it will take a little longer time, and for your body still a little more time. Mm? they don’t function in the same time-system. But it has started,and you can declare tO the world that the night is over.

This ochre colour is just the colour of the first morning sun rays... the redness that comes to the east. It is the colour of the east.

Veet means beyond, nirvana means enlightenment. This is a paradox, but of tremendous import

– that enlightenment becomes possible only when you forget about it.

When the desire for

enlightenment disappears, only then does it become possible You desire money or you desire meditation – it makes no difference – the desire is the same... the nature of the desire is the same.

The object can change, but just by changing the object the nature of the desire never changes. So one can want worldly power, somebody can want spiritual power, but both persons are worldly. One desires respectability, prestige; another desires moksha, nirvana, god – but they are both the same.

Their psychology is not different – they desire.

And desire means dreaming. Desire means motivation.

Desire means you are not herenow – and nirvana is always herenow. Desire means you are somewhere else – and god is always herenow, so obviously you never meet: you remain in your desire and god remains just around you.

He remains close-by, but you are never close to yourself – you are projected into great desires.

And nirvana is the greatest desire a man can have – the last, the ultimate desire... to become enlightened, to come to know who he is, to know the truth. That is the ultimate desire – and a hindrance.

So if one really wants to be enlightened, one has to forget all about it, otherwise enlightenment itself becomes a new obsession. The zen people call it’the buddha disease’. One can become obsessed: one has to become a buddha or a christ.

These are not things that one can become. They don’t relate to the process of becoming. Becoming means desire. Buddha is when there is no desire and you are. Christ is when there is no desire and only being exists.

To be in the being is to be free. To be in the becoming is to be in the bondage.

To give you this feeling – that god is not to be desired – this name will be helpful. In fact nothing needs to be desired. Enjoy whatsoever comes by the way... and you will enjoy much more.

Small things of life can become of tremendous beauty. When you are not bothered about tomorrow, very small things.... This silent night... this noise of the insects.... No music is comparable to it. Even the greatest musician will feel jealous. And it is so freely available – but nobody is ready to listen.

People are rushing towards the future – and the future never comes. It cannot come – by its very nature. All that is, is already here.

’Veet nirvana’ will mean to remain beyond the desire of enlightenment. People are rushing into the world, then one day they get fed up. Success proves to be a tremendous failure. Money simply proves, to be a rubbish heap, and all affairs of the world lose meaning one day. If a person is a little bit intelligent, he comes one day or other to know that it is all meaningless then he starts moving inwards. But now he projects a new desire. The desire now hovers around a new object. Again the desire has deceived him.

The moment one is fed up with the world, one should not be fed up with the world – one should be fed up with desiring. Because desiring is the real world – nothing else is there. When one is fed up, one should not be fed up with money but fed up with desiring. Not fed up with wife and children and the house – poor things, they have not done anything wrong to you. Not fed up with the society –

that has not done anything to you... just fed up with desiring.

Looking into the nature of desiring one comes to understand that it simply brings misery. It promises bliss – brings misery. It allures and promises but never delivers bliss. Misery and anguish always come in from the back door. It is the greatest deception there is.

Knowing this, realising this, one stops desiring. Then what will you do? When you stop desiring, naturally the question arises,’What are you going to do now?’ The energy is released. The whole energy was put into desiring – a thousand and one desires were there, and you were engaged. Now suddenly if desiring is futile, what will you do with your energy?

You delight! Now you enjoy pure energy as such. You dance, you sing, you eat, you sleep, you sit, you walk, you sing, you love... you delight! A person who moves into desires never delights.

And a person who stops moving into desire is so immensely delighted. Each moment is such a benediction... and that’s what nirvana is.

CHAPTER 4

In life, surrender is the key

4 January 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva means divine, and dhurva means fresh grass, just sprouting... very green, delicate – divine grass. And there is a particular meaning in it.

A man can exist in two ways: either like a very strong tree – resistant, fighting, stubborn – or like small grass – non-resistant, non-fighting, ready to yield. and that should be your way. don’t resist, don’t fight. Just yield like grass. The wind comes – yield... not even a single effort to fight with the wind. the wind will be gone and the grass will stand again.

Once the big trees have fallen, they cannot stand again. They are representatives of ego. The grass is symbolic of non-ego.

And in life, surrender is the key. Whatsoever happens, surrender to it.

Jesus has a very tremendous saying: ’Resist not evil.’ Even evil should not be resisted. Even if death is happening, allow it to happen... go with it. Jesus carried his cross to the hill. Even if death is coming and you have to carry your cross, carry it. Don’t escape from any reality, don’t hide and don’t fight, and suddenly you will see that great things have started happening.

Otherwise ninety-nine percent of our energy is wasted in fighting – and it leads nowhere! Because through fight there is only defeat. Through fight, victory is impossible, because we are fighting the vast – and we are very tiny... a drop fighting the ocean, a leaf fighting the whole tree. It is absurd, it is ridiculous. The whole idea of will is ridiculous.

See grass bending with the wind – feel the same way. Let that be your meditation. See strong trees fighting the wind and know that this is not your way. And read lao tzu, tao, mm? because this is his whole teaching – to be just like grass. He teaches the watercourse way. Water is very soft, rocks are very hard – resistant, fighting – but eventually rocks are turned into sand and the water goes on flowing the same way.

If you see a waterfall, you cannot believe that the water is ever going to win – but it wins! The weaker wins.

That’s what jesus says: ’Blessed are the meek, because theirs is the kingdom of god!’ So be meek, humble, like the grass – bending, not fighting.

Your name will remind you. It is one of the most beautiful names. And in india, it is very symbolic.

Hindus go to their temples with dhurva to offer to god. They take fresh, new leaves of grass, and they offer those grass leaves to god – not even flowers, just grass leaves. Because they say that a flower is a great thing. A buddha can offer a flower – he is a flower. How can they offer? They are not flowers yet. At the most they are grass leaves – just sprouting – and indicating that they will not resist god. If he comes they will bend with him. If he comes, they will dance with him. If he doesn’t come, they will wait for him....

CHAPTER 5

Take life in the spirit of a picnic

5 January 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva means divine, abhiyana means adventure divine adventure. And remember it always – that life is never a static thing. And the moment you make it static, it has already slipped out of your hand.

Life is only in the process. It is in adventure, pilgrimage. The goal is always arriving, but it never arrives. And it is never going to arrive – that is not the nature of life. If the goal arrives, all meaning is lost. Then there is nothing left.

So god is the goal who always appears to be arriving, promising, but who never arrives. You are always coming closer to it. But the play continues – the adventure remains.

So take life as an adventure.

Never think in static terms – always think in dynamic terms...

movement, process.

Our language is very faulty – it turns everything into a static thing. It makes nouns out of verbs. For example, love. Now, love can never be a noun. It is always loving – it is never love. Life becomes a noun. Life is never a noun – it is a verb. It is always living.

And all languages do that mischief – they change the nature of the verb and reduce it to a noun. And when you talk about love it seems as if you are talking about some thing. And love is not a thing.

When you talk about god, it appears as if you are talking about some thing – and god is not a thing.

God is the total process of existence. Rather than calling it existence, it is better to call it existing.

That which is existing and goes on existing – that is god.

So god is the impossible goal – yes, a goal it is, but impossible... and that’s the beauty of it.

One has to seek it, knowing well that one is never going to arrive. But in that very search is joy, in that very adventure is bliss. So I will call you ’abhiyana’, mm?

And you have come now to the right place. You have knocked on many doors – but that is natural.

Before one knocks on the right door one has to knock on many doors, because there is no other way to know the right. One has to grope in the dark... one has to go on knocking. One can never be certain.

And everything helps. Even wrong doors help – they help you to reach to the right door. They are also needed – they have a certain purpose to fulfill. So whomsoever has helped you to come to me

– good people, not-so-good people, religious, irreligious, real, phoney – to whomsoever has helped you, feel grateful towards them all, unconditionally grateful, because without them you would not have been here.

Life is such a big mystery, and so many people are playing their roles in it that we never know how we are helped.... But you have come!

[The new sannyasin said that previously he had done jikra. ’Jikra’ means remembrance, and is a sufi meditation. See’the great nothing’, october 8th, where bhagwan described this meditation in detail.]

And how were you feeling doing jikra?

[The sannyasin replies: My heart breaks!]

Good! The heart is meant to be broken. Its purpose is that – that it should melt into tears and disappear. The heart is to evaporate, and when the heart has evaporated, exactly in the same place where the heart was, you come to know the real heart.

This heart has to break. Once it has fallen apart, suddenly you come to know a deeper heart. Just like an onion, you peel it and the new layer is there.

So this heart is the outermost heart – mm? once it has broken, a fresher heart, a deeper heart, will become available. And with that heart, jikra will go even more deep. You have to continue jikra. It is one of the most beautiful methods.

[Osho recommended groups for him and then said.... ]

.... In between, join sufi dancing and t’ai chi. And I call it simply t’ai chi – not t’ai chi chuan. And there is a difference between the two.

T’ai chi chuan is a war method, a defense method. When you use t’ai chi in fighting, then it is called chuan. But the moment you are getting ready to fight, you have missed the whole thing. Then you cannot be really relaxed. The very idea of defence, of fight, is ugly, non-meditative. So we simply use t’ai chi. It is not to defend, it is not to attack. It has nothing to do with the war methodology. It is just a process of going inwards – and a tremendously significant process. So join t’ai chi, and forget chuan – completely forget chuan. Mm? because that is how the whole thing was destroyed.

These things are not to be used in the ordinary way. But it happened in japan and china.... Both the countries tried to transform even meditation into war methods. Man is so mad that even if you give him meditation, he will change it into a war method. Meditation is meant to give you peace, silence

– but even that, in the hands of the politicians, will be turned into a war method, into violence.

That’s how in Japan meditation disappeared completely, because it went into wrong hands... just as it is happening in the modern world. Physicists invented the atomic energy. It could have been a blessing but it fell into the hands of the warmongers. And Einstein was very sorry....

Just two days before he was dying, somebody asked him,’Would you like to become a scientist again if you are given another chance, another life?’

He said,’Never! One mistake is enough! I would like rather to be a plumber – at least I will not harm anybody.’

Einstein himself, not knowing at all what would happen, wrote the letter that introduced roosevelt to atomic energy. He was thinking that the atomic energy would be used for peaceful purposes, creative purposes, but it was used for destruction. The same has happened with meditation.

T’ai chi is a beautiful meditative process. It fell into the hands of the politicians; they used it –

because tai chi can make you so still, so silent, so disciplined, that you can be very dangerous. And you can be in tremendous control of your energies. The same happened with zen methods – they were reduced into certain technologies which can be used in war: archery, wrestling. And then all sorts of things were reduced.

So forget that chuan – t’ai chi is enough!

Deva means divine, and darpan means mirror – a divine mirror. That’s how I see every being – a mirror for the divine. And unless we reflect the divine, we can never be satisfied. Once we become a perfect mirror to the divine and god can have a look into his face through your face, immediately there is tremendous contentment... one is fulfilled.

So each being has to become a mirror – and that’s what meditation is all about. When the mind has no thoughts it becomes a mirror. When it has thoughts, there are ripples and the lake is so much disturbed that the moon cannot be reflected in it. When there are no winds and no ripples and the lake is completely silent and asleep, then it is a mirror.

So human consciousness can be in two states: one is that of turmoil – that state we call the mind; another, when there is no turmoil – that state we call meditation. In meditation one becomes a mirror

– and nothing else is needed.

Deva means divine, gatha means story; divine story. The meaning is almost the same as gospel.

And every human being is a story yet not unfolded. It is as if everyone is just a seed waiting for the right season to sprout. This divine story has to be completed, and one can complete it only if one very consciously takes one’s life in one’s own hands.

Ordinarily people exist accidentally...

just like driftwood, not knowing where they are going.

Ordinarily people don’t have any idea about what they are doing with their life. It is a mess – they go in all the directions simultaneously. And the ultimate result is not a beautiful story completed, but madness. Will it be easy to pronounce? – ’gatha’.

Deva means divine, abhinaya means acting, drama, play – divine acting. The whole life is nothing but a play, and one should not take it seriously. The moment you take it seriously you get into trouble.

The very attitude of seriousness is the root cause of all anxiety. Take it non-seriously, take it easy...

take it as a fun! That is one of the most essential teachings of the east – that life is nothing but a drama.

In the west psychodrama is a very new invention, but the east has always looked at life as a psychodrama. Play it well, but don’t be bothered too much about whether you succeed or fail, because in the final analysis it makes no difference. The winners and the losers are all equal, because it is just a game – it is not real. The only real thing is the witness, and all else is just acting.

If you can keep this in your awareness, it will transform your whole life. And this I give you as a key

– it will unlock many doors. When I give a certain name, I mean that the name should become a reminder to you. So whenever you remember your name – abhinaya – remember that all is acting, and whatsoever you are doing, relax immediately.

Then and there, relax – it is acting. Even if you were going to fight, relax; you were going to be angry, relax – it is just acting. I’m not saying not to be angry. If anger is there, relax and be angry, but be playful – don’t take it seriously.

There are people who will be angry seriously, and there are people who will not be angry because they are very serious – they cannot be angry. Both are the same! They both take life very seriously.

So this has to be remembered. It will give you many new spaces within your being. Look on all around as a vast stage – so many people, so many actors, so many stories going on, so many things happening. God is playing in a thousand and one ways – millions are his forms of play, but all is play. And once this insight goes deep into you – that all is play – your anxiety disappears.

But man is very neurotic. Have you seen people playing cards? Even in playing cards they become so serious that they are ready to kill each other! Just playing cards – the kings and the queens are just false; or playing chess – everything is false... but people can get very serious about the false too. Then the false also looks like the real.

Try just the opposite – if you are non-serious, even the real becomes false. Hence in the east we say that the world is illusory, maya. The meaning is not to take it seriously. The word’maya’ basically means magic show. You don’t take the magician seriously – you know that he is playing tricks. If he has produced a pigeon, he must be hiding it somewhere – you don’t take it seriously.

In the east we say that the whole world is a magic play – god is the magician. Nothing is serious here.

And this is my message for you on your sannyas birth, mm? – to take life very very non-seriously...

in the spirit of a picnic.

[The new sannyasin says: I’ve done the vipassana here, in India... it was very difficult for me to get into.]

Yes, it is difficult. You got into a serious thing in the beginning (laughter). Mm? these vipassana people are serious people.... You got into wrong company from the very beginning!

Do some other groups first, mm? Then I will give you vipassana again. But one should first prepare.

Vipassana directly is not good – it becomes a heavy trip. It is a hard thing.

.... Whenever there is no group, continue all that is available here, but keep alert not to be serious.

And when I have seen that you have learned how not to be serious, I will send you into vipassana.

Right?

Prem means love, shakti means energy – love energy. And that is the stuff the whole universe is made of – love energy. From the lowest to the highest, it is one energy... manifesting in many ways

– gross and subtle – but it is one energy. On the lowest it appears as electricity, on the highest it appears as prayer, but it is one energy.

So do a few things. One: more and more feel that you are less solid and fluid. Feel more and more that you are energy rather than a solid body. Relax the solidity... Let it melt. Mm? just as you can melt ice – it becomes water; then you can heat water and it becomes vapour. Ice was solid like stone; when it is vapour, you cannot even see it – it has become invisible.

These are the three forms of all energy: solid, liquid, vapour. Ordinarily people exist at the first – the solid... frozen. We are all frozen love energies. A few of us who are very fortunate can melt a little and become liquid. Even fewer are capable of becoming vapour – invisible.

So I call you love energy so that you can start working on these lines. Think of yourself more as energy, less as body. When you think of yourself as body, you are more solid, defined. When you think of yourself as an energy, you are more like a cloud – nebulous, no definition, no boundary.

Move like a cloud. And when you are sitting silently, close your eyes, and feel more and more like vapour – evaporating, moving into the invisible... becoming invisible.

And soon, within a few days, you will have a few glimpses. The possibility is there – that’s why I am saying that you will have a few glimpses that suddenly you are not. Suddenly you will be shocked –

you have evaporated. You will have to open your eyes to see whether your body still exists or not.

You will have to touch your body to feel whether it is really real or not. And when that happens you have to come and tell me.

So whenever you have time do the meditations, do groups. In the remaining time, walking on the road feel like a cloud – nebulous. Then with closed eyes feel that you are moving into the invisible, disappearing... Losing all form, all visibility.

Any day it will happen, and when it happens come and tell me. Then I will give you a certain technique. So remind me whenever it happens.

CHAPTER 6

Everything is within the reach of an empty hand

6 January 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Dharma is a very special sanskrit word. It means exactly what in chinese they mean by tao, or what in greek they mean by logos – the ultimate law. Not any law in particular.... The law of gravitation is a particular law. And then there are many laws – chemical, biological, physical, but they are all particular laws.

Dharma is the ultimate law, the law of all laws. So you cannot pinpoint where it is, although it is everywhere. All special laws are just particular manifestations of this universal law. Mm? gravitation is just a limited expression of it.

So one that holds all laws in itself is called dharma. Dharmadeva means god of the ultimate law.

And you have to start being sensitive towards this tao, dharma, the ultimate law. It is a question of sensitivity.

Through intellect you can discover particular laws. Only through sensitivity can you discover the universal law. The universal is not available to the intellect. That’s the difference between science and religion.

In India, religion is also called dharma, mm? because it is a discovery of the ultimate law, the universal law. Science will go on discovering but it will never come across the ultimate law it cannot.

Its very methodology prohibits it. The very approach is for the particular.

So science becomes more and more specialised, and each branch becomes more and more narrow.

First there was only science; then there was physics and chemistry. Now chemistry has many branches – the organic chemistry and the inorganic chemistry. And so on, so forth; it goes on becoming more and more specific, particular.

Of course any scientific approach knows more, but every day it knows about less and less. It knows more and more, but about less and less – so it can never come to the universal, because there is no way to come to the universal. It will come to the very particular – so it can never come to god, because god is the universal law.

So the very methodology of science prohibits it knowing about god, knowing god. And then of course science goes on saying that there is no god. Now this is very irrational. You don’t allow the universal

– your very approach is for the particular – and then you say that there is no universal because it never comes in your net... and you have chosen a net. A certain net catches a certain type of fish.

The net of science catches the fish of the particular.

The universal is such a big fish that no net will be capable of getting hold of it. One will have to go without any nets. That’s what meditation is. That’s what I call sensitivity, understanding.

So start feeling for the universal. Just sitting silently, listen to the universal. This silence of the night... these insects making a noise. Just listen.... Listening to this particular noise, if you bring in the intellect, science comes in. Then you start thinking about what type of insect this is and how it makes such a type of noise... what type of throat it must have, and for what reasons – you have moved into the particular.

Listening to this noise, not brooding about it, not thinking about it – just listening... just listening, becoming more and more sensitive; not thinking, just listening – suddenly you will see that something of tremendous import is arising out of this simple noise. A universal music can be heard through this noise because all noises contain it... but it is a very still, small voice. When you become very very silent it asserts itself in your consciousness.

So remember more and more to be non-intellectual and sensitive, and then you will know that there is a universal law. And to know the universal law is to know all – nothing else is needed.

Then by knowing it, one becomes it. By knowing it, one by and by dissolves into it. By knowing it, one is overpowered by it.

And when your life is run by the universal law and you are no more a doer, then you have a true life

– the life of benediction, bliss. It is not something that you can practice. You can only listen to the universal law and allow yourself to fall into its trap. It is more a sort of let-go.

[The new sannyasin said he had done a vipassana group which he had felt helpful but difficult.

Osho talked about the need to release any repressions before moving into passive meditation like vipassana. He suggested two groups to him and then added that karate would be helpful for him too.]

... It will bring up all that is inside. The word ’karate’ is beautiful – it means empty hand. If one goes deeply into the process of karate, one becomes empty. And when things are thrown out – the inner violence, the conflict, the mind – and when one feels more and more empty... when the hand is empty, then one is capable; then nothing is beyond one’s reach. When the hand is empty, then everything is within your reach – even god! Everything is within reach of an empty hand.

So join karate and join sufi dancing, mm? and continue morning and evening meditations. You are here for five months so you can go slowly. And remember, you have to end with vipassana. Then it will bring tremendous insight.

It is a great method. Buddha himself developed it. That’s his contribution to the world – but it works only in a particular moment. Mm? so let us first bring that moment, and then things fit....

[Osho gives a seeker sannyas.]

This will be your name... and don’t let it be just a change of name – let it really become a radical change. It can become one – it depends on how one takes it, because everything is a question of attitude.

A few people miss sannyas even if they become sannyasins. They take sannyas almost in sleep, not alert... doing something as if not meaning it... doing something because this is the thing to be done... doing something because everybody is doing it. They simply become imitative – then they miss.

Sannyas is a great adventure, and every step has to be taken in tremendous awareness. You have the possibility for great awareness, hence I say this.

Let this moment become of great decisive value. Let it be momentous – as if from this moment you are broken away from the past... a clean break, with no hesitation... in a single stroke of a sword.

Remember, I say’in a single stroke’ – with no hesitation. Then suddenly the whole Fast disappears and the energy that is involved in the past becomes available. It is great energy – and for the first time you feel available to the present and to the future.

The past is a dead weight, and if we are too much involved in the past we cannot live in the present and we cannot move into the future. So one has to completely get out of the past.

Hence I give you a name: veet asmita.

Veet means beyond, asmita means ego; beyond the ego. And the ego is the past. Whatsoever you know about yourself, whatsoever you think yourself to be, whatsoever your identity is, is nothing but your past. Your family, your religions, your friends, your love-affairs, your studies, university degrees, this and that – that is all part of your ego.

In a single word,’ego’, the whole past is present. Hence it is so difficult to drop the ego because it means your whole history, your whole biography. So people go on thinking and they go on asking about how to drop the ego – but they are not ready. When they understand that it means to drop the whole history, all that you have been up to now, all that you have been thinking yourself up to now, all that you have dreamed, done, imagined, fantasised, whatsoever – bodily, mentally, spiritually –

your successes, failures, frustrations.... They are all bundled up into a single word,’ego’.

Dropping the ego, one becomes free of the past. They mean the same – the past or the ego. And sannyas is an effort to get out of the past, to get out of the ego – just like a snake slips out of its own skin. It does not even look back – it simply slips out.

So slip out of your past – the past is dead. There is no meaning in it, because there can never be any meaning in the dead. Meaning is always in the alive, in the flowing. Get out of the past... and this needs only a certain courage.

It is not a question of making much effort – a certain courage, a certain understanding... and I can see it is there. It can flare up. Just a little support and it can flare up. And in that flare-up the whole past has disappeared. Suddenly you start from ABC – fresh, young, virgin, uncorrupted.

And then remember always that it is not that you have to do it once – you have to do it every day, every moment from now. Otherwise again the past will accumulate. It is natural that the past accumulates, because past is every moment accumulating. Every moment you are making the past, creating the past out of the present, out of the future. The present will turn into past... all present moments will turn into past. If you go on collecting them, again it will be piled up. Again a new ego will arise.

So this moment you have to take two things very decisively: one, slip out of the past; second, never accumulate it again. And that is the meaning of sannyas – not to live in the past, not to accumulate past... always to live herenow. My’now’ contains timelessness, and my’here’ has the hint of everywhere.’Here’ does not mean just here – ’here’ means all that is present right now. The faraway stars – they are part of this here. The whole existence that is, is contained in the herenow.

A sannyasin is a person who has taken a decision not to live in the past, not to live through the past, not to live through the future, not to go roundabout, but to be immediate... in the present.

And from that immediacy, all bliss. From that immediacy, all delight. From that immediacy, all beauty and benediction....

CHAPTER 7

Meditation is the art of creating inner beauty

7 January 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Jaya means inner victory, conquering oneself, and ananda means bliss – bliss that comes out of conquering oneself. And that is the only bliss there is. You can conquer the whole world and you will remain miserable; of course your misery will become a thousand-fold – the misery of an alexander is bound to be tremendous... but you never become happy. That is not the way of happiness at all.

You can have all the things and still you will be at a loss. One can pile up money, power, prestige.

And the more you have, the more you become aware of the futility of it all and the more you feel an inner emptiness.

Only the rich man comes to know what inner poverty is, because he can compare; he can compare notes. He has a background and he can see his own inner poverty against it. He is rich as far as the outside is concerned, but the inside is simply starving.

Hence the paradox: the richer a man becomes, the poorer he feels. The more knowledgeable a man becomes the more ignorant he feels. The more you have, the more you become aware of how much you are missing.

The only bliss possible is that which comes through the inward journey – and that is called jaya.

One has to come to one’s own self, to one’s own treasures. They are infinite... immeasurable. Once known, you are never a beggar again. You may not have anything of the world – still you remain an emperor. Your emperorhood has an inner luminousness.

You are emperor – not because you have a kingdom, but because you are an emperor. Your emperorhood doesn’t depend on a kingdom. It is independent of all kingdoms. Then one is truly a king, because nobody can rob one, nobody can take anything away from one... not even death. One has something which is eternal, which cannot be robbed, cannot be taken away. And only when you have something which cannot be taken away from you does fear disappear – never before it. And in those moments you start feeling the deathless.

So let this be a key – that you have to look more and more inwards. Temptations are there, desires are there – natural. And I’m not saying to become an escapist. I’m not saying to escape from the world. I’m simply saying to be in the world but to give more and more energy and time to the inner search. Do whatsoever is needed on the outside, but don’t become too much occupied with it.

Things are needed: food is needed, a shelter is needed – absolutely okay, so one should work for them. They are necessities, they are needed to be happy, but they are not enough. They are basic requirements.

A hungry person cannot sing. Food is needed, but food in itself cannot become a song. Just because you have eaten and your belly is full, there is no guarantee that a song is going to be born. You may fall asleep at the most – and you will have nightmares.

Outer things are needed, but they are not enough. Fulfill them, but don’t expect too much out of them. They are needs, and the inner life is something more than needs – it is a luxury. The inner life is always aristocratic. Yes, it is aristocracy.

So outside just fulfill your needs – and they are the minimum; they are not much. And once they are fulfilled, don’t waste your time. In fact they are to be fulfilled so that you can have time to go in. One should work in the world so that one can work in one’s inner world. One should earn a little money so that outer things no more trouble one, no more distract one. One can close one’s eyes and go into meditation. If money serves meditation, money is good and one should use it. But if money becomes your meditation, you are going to be neurotic.

[To the mother of a sannyasin, who is taking sannyas:]

So you finally decided! This decision will have tremendous impact... a radical change will happen through it. Because this is no ordinary decision. The greater the decision, the greater the conflict before it, the more meaningful it is. The more one wavers and thinks of the pros and cons and then decides, the more deeply that decision goes. In fact all that wavering is part of a great sincere heart.

An insincere person can take sannyas very easily. He is insincere. He is not worried about it. He knows that if he wants to drop it, he can drop it. But a sincere person thinks, broods, contemplates –

and that’s good, because when a sincere person decides, that means it is a life-changing decision...

it means something.

You thought about it and you wavered. It was good, and I was watching. The wavering was good.

It is better to waver before rather than afterwards. Once one has come to a clear-cut decision, that closes the past and opens a new door. And sannyas is an opening.

You have lived in one way and you have lived successfully. Sannyas does not mean that the way you have lived was not successful. Sannyas simply means that there are successes which don’t prove to be successes. One may be perfectly successful, and yet... and yet....

There are two types of persons who enter into sannyas. One type enters because he has failed.

Another type enters because he has succeeded and has found that there is nothing in it. Only the second type becomes the real sannyasin. The first type never becomes a real sannyasin because he has not really tasted the grapes. It is a rationalisation – that they are sour – because he could never reach them. So deep down in the unconscious the hankering remains: maybe, had you reached...

maybe there was something!

The old sannyas in the east belonged to the first type of people. They became escapists... they became afraid of the world. The fear of the world is not the fear of the world. The fear of the world is really fear of your own inner, unfulfilled desires. You are afraid that if you are in the world you are going to get tempted. You know that the seeds are there and that whenever the right wind is blowing they will start flowering, and you will not be able to control them. That fear takes people out of the world.

My sannyas is for the second type of people. It is a totally new concept... it has nothing to do with the old sannyas. The old sannyas was for the escapists, failures... mediocres.

My sannyas is for a totally new kind of people: those who have succeeded and who have found that success is just insubstantial. Looks beautiful from far away – when you come to it, it is just empty.

The deeper you go into it, the deeper you enter into emptiness. And when a person changes out of this experience, the change is going to be really vital.

And that’s why I say not to leave the world, not to run from the world, because there is no fear! You have known the world, you have recognised its truth, and you have found that it is not going to fulfill.

Not that you have not tried, not that you have not been successful. You tried, you succeeded, and yet.... Not that you failed, but the world failed – and that’s a totally different perspective.

I was watching your mind wavering; it was good. In fact [your son] was in a hurry, mm? but I am never in a hurry. There are a few flowers – seasonal – which come very fast, but they disappear soon too. There are big trees which take time – long... many years – and then they flower. You belong to the second type. A very strong will is there... a very alert mind and much capacity to create.

Now through sannyas this whole capacity will start moving into a new direction – the direction of selfcreation.

Up to now you have been doing something outside yourself. Now you will be doing something inside yourself. Continue whatsoever you are doing outside.

The inner is not against the outer – the inner is beyond the outer. It can play with the outer – there is no harm in it. In fact it is good. Just like day-night, mm? One goes on playing with the outer and then one goes on moving into the inner – it is a good change.

And this name I give to you: ma prem chitra.

Prem means love, and chitra means painting; a love painting. You have been painting things up to now – now I will start to paint you. Up to now you have been making beautiful things outside – now let that same energy move in. Now let an inner painting be born.

It happens almost always.... You can find a good painter – his paintings are good, but if you look into him there is nothing. You can find a good poet – his poetry is beautiful, but if you put the poetry aside and look directly into the poet, there is nothing. In fact one is surprised at how in such a ordinary person such beautiful poetry could become possible.

In india there is a saying, that if you love the poetry of the poet never go to see him, otherwise you will be frustrated because you will find an ordinary man... sometimes more ordinary than the ordinary.

Because a poet has only a few poetic moments. In those moments he is not of this world. In those moments he flies high... he is turned on. He is a totally different personality. When those moments are gone he is turned off. And naturally, to keep balance, he falls lower than the other, ordinary people. He has been flying high – he has to fall down and rest.

In his poetry he may talk about god and in his behaviour there may be just a devil and nothing else.

In his poetry he may talk about beautiful, unknown dimensions, and in his ordinary life he may be just vulgar, obscene. And the same happens with musicians, painters.

So each artist one day has to understand this – that he has painted enough in the outside, now start painting inside! It is not enough to paint good pictures, because finally you will not be able to take any painting to god to show him. He will see you – not your paintings. He will see picasso – not his painting.

So paint yourself... create some inner beauty – that’s all that meditation is about. It is just the art of creating the inner beauty. And if, just with ordinary colours and on canvas, such beautiful things can be done, what to say about the inner canvas of consciousness? And what to say about the inner colours of love, compassion, prayer, reverence, wonder?

Such immense possibility is there. Once we start looking for it, we start finding it – it is there, it is waiting for us.

So this name I give you: prem chitra. It means a love painting, and with this name you start painting in the inner world....

[A sannyasin who is leaving says: It’s not easy to leave here!... But it’s not hard either.]

Mm, that too is good. That too is good. That’s the really hard part of it. If it is hard to leave, it will become very easy to leave. You can always fight with something which is hard. The difficulty arises when you have to fight something very soft. It is easy to fight with a rock – it is very difficult to fight with water. The water wins finally... the watercourse way. My way is the way of tao.

It is very easy to go – hence it becomes difficult. If it is difficult, you can fight with it; there is no problem. Tao says that the most difficult thing is that which is so soft that you cannot fight with it. In fighting you lose energy. And all the arts that developed out of tao are the arts of how to be soft. So you are right – it is not hard either.

But whenever you go, just allow me to function through you. And it will become more and more possible. Once you allow it, mm? you will start enjoying it. It has a tremendous beauty of its own.

You have been a doer all your life – and that doer takes a toll. It creates a subtle tense state... very tense. If you have been a doer all along, you don’t even become alert about it – but it creates a subtle tension and that becomes a film around you. You are unaware, but it goes on obstructing many things.

Since you have taken the jump, let it be total. Allow me to function through you, and a great song will be born.

Your old habits will try to make it... to do something about it – to manage, to manipulate, to plan, to decorate, to change a little here and there – but by and by you will become aware that the song as it comes is complete, and there is no need to do anything... no touches are needed. Then spontaneity is born. One can do many things and without ever getting tired. One can do millions of things without ever feeling spent, because in fact one has never been doing them.

And I am just an excuse. When I say,’Allow me,’ I am just an excuse. If you allow me, you allow god.

If you allow me, in fact you allow yourself. These are just tricks. Rightly understood, if you allow me, you have allowed your own innermost core to have its say. When you manage, the circumference manages and the innermost core is not allowed freedom. It comes, but much distorted.

Much is going to happen. Just be a hollow bamboo and let me sing a song.

CHAPTER 8

Meditation is learning to wait

8 January 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva means divine, and sarjan means creativity; divine creativity. And my attitude towards god is that he is not a creator but just pure creativity... just the energy, not a person. Personality is a human imposition on god – good for us because it is difficult for us to comprehend god as just pure energy.

When we think about god as a person, it becomes easier for us to pray. So good – but it is just a device to help human beings; it is not the truth.

God is not a person. Mm? this whole creativity, this total creativity that goes on and on – in the rivers, in the oceans, in the trees, in the stars – words coming to existence and disappearing... this total phenomenon is god.

Once you start thinking in terms of creativity rather than a creator, your whole perspective changes.

Then you are neither a theist nor an atheist, because the whole problem between the theist and the atheist is the person. Even the atheist is not denying that there is energy. He is not denying that flowers flower, that the sun moves. He is not denying the movement – he denies the mover.

Once god is conceived of as creativity all dualism between the theist and the atheist simply drops.

Then the theist and the atheist can meet together, be together.

When the person disappears, prayer disappears. When god is creativity, you can meditate, but you cannot pray. Prayer is possible between two persons – an I-thou relationship – but when god is just a creativity, the only possibility to relate is to be meditative. In meditation you will also become creative. And to be creative is to be in step with god.

So whenever you create something, you are doing something religious – never otherwise. In the ritual there is no religion. In the formal there is no religion. In the real creativity, religion descends.

You paint a picture or you compose a poem or you play on the guitar or you dance, or whatsoever.

You cook food for your beloved, and you pour all your creativity into it – that is the real prayer.

Whenever you beautify the world – by whatsoever act it is done – you are in prayer. To be beautiful and to have more beauty enter into this ugly world, is the whole meaning of being religious.

Prabhu means god, and visarjan means dissolved into – dissolved into god. And in giving you this name, I am giving you your technique too. Whenever you are sitting silently, not doing anything, just feel that you are dissolving, melting... disappearing into the total. Lose your boundaries... Lose the consciousness of your boundaries. Don’t think that you end with your skin. Expand yourself.

Sometimes sitting in the room, feel lost – just as a drop falls into the ocean and disappears. The more you think in terms of being dissolved, the more and more aware, peaceful, centred, you will become. And it will come easily – it will not be a difficult thing.

Lying down in the bed, just before going to sleep, feel yourself dissolving. And fall asleep while you are dissolving, mm? Then the flavour will hover around you the whole night. You will have a deeper sleep; a deeper tranquility will arise out of it. And in the morning you will feel you have been somewhere in a totally silent space.

So whenever you can find any opportunity, transform it into your meditation. Mm? sitting in the sun, feel you are dissolving in the sun-rays. Holding the hand of a friend, feel you are dissolving into the friend. Making love, feel you are dissolving into love.

As many times in the day as possible, remember to dissolve. By and by your boundaries will become blurred. By and by you will start feeling not limited to the body, not caged, imprisoned in the body –

overflowing. And when you are overflowing, god overflows in you.

Do a few groups here. Start doing sufi dancing and in the night the music group. Mm? because that will give you more and more possibility to dissolve. Music, dance, singing, will be helpful. So whenever there is an opportunity to dance and sing, use it.

Anand means bliss, nutan means absolutely new – absolutely new bliss. And bliss is something absolutely new. It is eternal, yet absolutely new. It is always fresh – it never becomes old. That’s its intrinsic quality.

With the mind everything becomes old, dirty, rotten. With the mind everything becomes a memory.

Bliss is something beyond the mind. It is not part of time. And when you stop time, you enter bliss

– never before it. There comes a moment of silence when time simply stops... nothing moves...

the clock does not function. When thoughts stop, time stops, because the functioning of thoughts is time, the root of time.

When you don’t have any thought there is no movement in your being – everything is standing still.

In that moment of standing still, bliss arises. And it is always fresh. Again and again it will come but it is never a repetition. It is never the same, because bliss cannot be accumulated and you cannot compare it with the past. It comes and goes like lightning. It comes without informing you... it goes without informing you. You cannot be the manipulator of it. It comes when it comes; there is no way to bring it.

The moment you try to bring it, you are in the mind again – the mind is the manipulator. When you are not trying to bring it, suddenly it comes. It comes all of a sudden... just surrounds you. It is a magic moment which cannot be produced by order... it is a gift. But when it comes it bathes you into a totally new being. And when it is gone it does not leave a trace, so you can never compare –

when it comes again, you cannot compare with the past.

It never creates a past – that’s the beauty of it. It remains unrecorded. So when it comes again, again it is new... again you are thrilled. One can never be bored with it. How can you be bored with something which never becomes old?

Happiness one day or other starts becoming boring. In the beginning it looks fantastic, but by and by you start repeating the same again and again. You are in love with a man; then after a few days it is repetitious. Then you start getting fed up, stale, dirt accumulates. You start feeling cheated... you start feeling in a bondage. By and by you see that the glamour, that magic, is gone – only a rut, and a repetition.

All happiness sooner or later creates unhappiness. So bliss is not happiness. Happiness is of the mind – bliss is of the beyond. It simply comes and takes possession of you, shakes you to the very roots... makes you dance a very mad dance, and then it is gone. Suddenly you are there, and not even a trace is left.

You cannot desire it again. If you desire it, it will never come. One has to wait for it. It comes when it comes. And one has to learn patience and waiting.

That’s all meditation is about: to learn to wait, to learn to be open, to learn to be patient, to learn to be trusting so that when it comes, your doors are open. When it doesn’t come – nothing to worry; one can wait. And it always comes when you are really waiting and not demanding. The moment demand comes, the doors are closed.

So remember this quality of bliss. It will be coming... it is very close by. It is just within your reach –

you just have to learn to be patient....

[A sannyas couple who have been together two years ask about their relationship, because the man wishes to live alone.]

If he wants to be alone, then let him be alone, mm? That’s part of love. And there is no way to force anything. Things will become more ugly by forcing. If he wants to be alone, then simply that is the thing to be allowed. So don’t fight for it. Happily....

You will be sad because you want to be with him and he wants to be alone. You are helpless –

recognise the helplessness and don’t fight it. Just let him be alone. And if you can allow him, with deep love, he may start thinking.... Because I don’t see that he can be alone for long. I cannot see that – he is not that type. He will need a woman.

And if you fight.... That will be natural to you to fight because you want to be with him – so I can understand the problem. For him it is not a problem – he simply wants to get out of it. For you it is a problem because you don’t want to get out of it. The problem is one-sided.

If you fight – which would be natural – and you cry and you weep, and you try to manipulate him in subtle ways, that will be putting him off forever. That will make the gap bigger, and it will become unbridgeable.

.... Because I understand him. If he wants to be alone, then that has to be done – leave him alone.

And if you are sad, that is your problem. If you want to cry and weep, you can cry and weep alone, but don’t say anything to him and don’t even exhibit it to him. That is none of his business. If some day somebody wants to be alone, then he has to be alone. A natural desire has come to him – let him be. And if from fourteen years he has not been alone, it is very natural – the desire will come.

I feel that if you can allow him in deep love and gratitude and you can be thankful for whatsoever he has done.... And we are not here to fulfill each other’s desires. We are not here to fulfill each other’s expectations. He was with you because he was happy. Now he feels he wants to be alone and try it. Let it be – that’s his happiness.

So bless him. Say good-bye to him with happiness, with love, so that you don’t make the gap bigger.

And he will need you! If you can lovingly leave him, he will be coming back – and that will be a deeper experience for you both.

My feeling is that people like [your boyfriend] cannot live alone and cannot live with women.

There is an old sanskrit legend to the effect that, after making man, the creator took the rotundity of the moon, the curves of the creeper, the lightness of leaves, the weeping of the clouds, the cruelty of the tiger, the soft glow of fire, the coldness of the snows, and the chattering of the jays, and made woman, and presented her to man.

After three days the man came and said to the almighty,’This woman you have given me chatters constantly, never leaves me alone, requires much attention, takes all my time, cries about nothing and is always idle. I want you to take her back.’

So the Almighty took her back. But pretty soon the man came again and said,’She used to dance and sing, and she looked at me out of the corner of her eye, and she loved to play; she clung to me when she was afraid, her laughter was like music, and she was beautiful to look upon. Give her back to me again.’

So the Almighty gave her to him again. But three days later he brought her back again and asked the almighty to keep her.’No,’ said the Lord,’you will not live with her, and you cannot live without her.

You have got to get along the best you can.’

So just let him go... with love! He cannot live without. If he has not lived without since he was fourteen, let him try! He cannot live, mm? and he will get into much trouble. He needs a woman to protect him, otherwise he will be pulled by many women.

But right now if you force yourself on him he will think of you as a gaoler. And that’s what his feeling is: deep down he feels that you go on imprisoning him – you don’t allow him the freedom that he needs. You make him feel guilty, this and that – ’Why were you laughing with that woman, why were you moving?’... and his work is such that he has to laugh and talk and move with women and all sorts of people. He has to mix, otherwise he cannot work – his work is such. But that is one part of the story.

When you are not there he will be simply amidst women, and they will all start pulling him from every side. Then he will remember [you] – that [you were] a protection... of course a gaoler, but a protection too.

So this comes to every couple one day or other – and he is an honest man, so he simply said it to you. There are dishonest people who will not say it – they will carry on.

So I know you will feel very sad – feel it! But don’t enforce anything on him. Let him go.

[The man says he is going back to the West and the girlfriend will stay in Poona.]

That’s good. So make it in that way... make arrangements in that way. You go, mm? but remain true

– if any moment you feel you need [her], just give her a telegram; she will wait.

And don’t be worried about it! This is natural... it comes. And it is good sometimes to be alone and to see how things happen. Life is really a great complexity. And the problem is such that it cannot be avoided. Because she loves you, she will feel miserable. When you first came she was saying that she was trying to make a home for [you], mm? and now her whole life will be shattered. She will be in very much difficulty to conceive of herself as alone. But maybe that too will bring her a maturity –

may be good for her too.

If she had not loved you there would have been no problem, but she loves you, and because of the love she clings around you too much. That very clinging gives you the feeling that you are being suffocated, that you have to follow her desire, do this and that, and you would like to be alone.

Once you are alone you will have a different attitude to the whole thing.

So for the two, three days you are still here, think about it – and she is allowing you, with no conflict.

I will take responsibility for her – she can be here; you just go, mm? If you change your mind or something arises you can come back and tell me. But don’t go in sadness. Go happily to experiment in something you want to experiment... and she will also be experimenting.

And every person has one day to settle with one’s loneliness, aloneness. Because that is so fundamental... we cannot avoid it for long. We have to come to a settlement – that we are alone.

Love can play many games, but one day or other all games are finished and everybody is thrown to one’s loneliness – the sooner the better! Because when the whole time has passed and then you are thrown alone, it becomes too difficult. She is young, you are young – it is good to see what it is to be alone. And maybe out of that aloneness you may come together again, and that will be a different kind of togetherness. That will not constrict each other... that will not be possessive.

So take it as a healthy experiment. But if in these three days you feel that something has changed in your mind, just say. Come and tell me, mm?

And don’t feel guilty, because what can you do? If suddenly you feel like being alone, then you have to do it – don’t feel guilty. Otherwise if you feel guilty you will be angry. That’s what I am pointing out to her – that she should not make you feel guilty.

What can you do? You are helpless. If the idea has arisen, it has arisen. Now something has to be done about it. If she is sad, it is her business to be sad; that is her problem. She was happy with you, she will be unhappy without you, so it is natural – but don’t feel guilty.

And there is a possibility of meeting again... because I have been watching you both. There are troubles with every couple. You cannot find a woman with whom there will be no troubles. No, it is impossible. Otherwise she will be a goddess – and then you will not be attracted to her. She won’t have any spice in her... she will be tasteless.

This is the problem: you are attracted to a woman who has some salt, some spice, but that spice then creates trouble. You are attracted to a woman who has some spirit, but then that spirit fights; that spirit wants to overwhelm you completely, to possess you totally. That spirit is jealous. But in the first place you become attracted to the spirit.

You can find a spiritless woman, a corpse, who will allow you absolute freedom and will never be jealous and will never be possessive, but then you will not be attracted to her – you will feel she has no spirit. You will feel that she does not love you – otherwise why is she not jealous?

These are the troubles. If a woman is jealous we feel,’This is bad – my freedom is crushed.’ If she is not jealous then we feel,’She is not jealous – what is the matter? Certainly she is not in love with me – otherwise how can it be that she is not jealous?’ And so is the case from the other side.

If the man is not possessive, dominating, the woman feels he does not love. If he is dominating, possessive, she feels her freedom is crushed. So this game is somehow of a double-bind. No couple can be really happy. Happy, unhappy – that will be the situation. Hate-love – that will be the relationship. Fighting, making love – that will be the situation.

It is impossible to think that you can find a woman with whom there will be no problem, or a man with whom there will be no problem. Problems come immediately the moment you relate... relate with anybody!

I was a professor in the university and just at the gate of the university a beggar used to sit. I used to give him four annas every day. Once it happened that for one month I was ill and I didn’t go to the university.

When I went back to the university, I gave him four annas. He said, ’What! What about the thirty days? You owe me seven and a half rupees more!’

I liked the man! ’True,’ I said,’That’s true!’ – and I had to give him seven and a half rupees more.

A relationship... I have not given anything to him – just four annas every day. Now it is taken for granted.’Where have you been,’ he says,’for one month?’ But I liked it – the beggar has some spice in him, to be so demanding. I loved it!

Relate with anybody and immediately there is some problem or other – bound to come. But if no problem comes, then too you will feel very empty.

I hope you will miss [your girlfriend] there... but you leave her. And for three days, let this be in the mind... mm? if something changes, good. If nothing changes, good. And I will take care of her, so don’t worry about her. Mm? she will be in better hands! You can go happily.

CHAPTER 9

Only dare-devils reach that which is called god

9 January 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Indradanu means rainbow – but better than rainbow. Indra is the god of rains. In the east everything is thought to be divine and everything is thought to be full of the divine. The god of rains is indra, and danu means the bow. So it is god indra’s bow. The rainbow is the god indra.

Indra means the god of rains, indira means the goddess of rains.... And anand means bliss...

goddess of the rain of bliss.

And bliss is a rain shower. When it really happens it is almost like rain showering. When it happens one is soaked with it, bathed in it. And all that is needed for it to happen is just vulnerability; nothing else is required. One should not protect against it, that’s all.

There is no need to seek god. If we don’t protect ourselves against him, he is ready to seek us any moment. The problem is not how to seek god – the problem is how not to protect ourselves against him.

In trust one starts becoming vulnerable. In trust one becomes insecure and does not cling to securities.

It is better to die with god than to live alone.

It is better to be lost with the unknown than to remain with the known. Because the known has nothing in it – it is already known. That which is known is already finished. It is going to be just a repetition, a boring circle. With the unknown is life – the known is dead – but with the unknown is insecurity. With the unknown comes trembling because one is not aware of where one is going and what is going to happen... because things become unpredictable, and one is no more capable of controlling and manipulating. Hence we protect and always keep to the safer side. That’s how we go on missing.

God is dangerous, and people who keep themselves to the safer side always miss. Only daredevils reach that which is called god.

So become more vulnerable, mm? Drop more and more armours from around you. There is nothing to fear, because all that is, is going to disappear. The body will be gone... the mind will be gone. All the relationships will be gone. The money will be gone, the life will be gone. All is going to go, so what is the point of becoming afraid? It is okay; if it is going to go, it is going to go. One relaxes...

one is not disturbed. And one does not make any arrangements to protect.

In that unprotected state of mind, god penetrates. In that helpless state, god becomes your help.

When you are losing all ground, he becomes your very ground.

Blessed are those who are helpless. Blessed are those who don’t have any ground to stand on, because for them only god can become the ground. Cursed are those who have safety, protection, security, insurance, because they will not know what god is, and without knowing god, life remains unknown.

[The new sannyasin said she had done primal therapy, arica, and est – and that she liked est best.]

Est you liked? That’s very good. Do a few groups here too, mm? And remember only one thing: Est helps you to open but it has no transcendental message in it. It brings you out of the prison, but then you are left. It does not help you to befriend the sky. It does not help you to befriend the stars and the moon and the sun.

It helps you to break the chains, but it doesn’t give you freedom – which is a totally different thing. To break the chains is a must to get it – so it is a very necessary step – but just to break the chains is not enough. You may break the chains, but if you have not been able to make contact with freedom, sooner or later you will create new chains. And the next time you create chains they will be far better than the first – more strong, more cunning, more subtle.

It is not only a question of breaking the chains – because we have become accustomed to chains, we have lost the taste for freedom. In fact, we don’t think chains are chains – we think they are ornaments, decorations. We think of them as if they are something aesthetic, and without them we feel naked.

It has happened many times.... It happened in the french revolution.... The revolutionaries released the prisoners of the gaol, but they were surprised. By the evening, half of the prisoners returned and they said,’We don’t want to go!’ The revolutionaries said,’This is nonsense! What are you saying?

You don’t feel grateful?’

They said,’Grateful? We are very angry!’ Somebody had lived in the prison for thirty years, forty years... there were even people who had lived there for fifty years. It was the biggest prison in france – the bastille – and it was meant only for life prisoners.

They said,’We cannot live outside. It is impossible! We cannot tolerate the noise and the mad people all around. Where are our chains? because we cannot sleep without them.’

For fifty years a person had slept with heavy chains on his hands, on his feet, in a dark cell – for fifty years! He had become accustomed to it. Those chains were no more separate – they had become part of his body-image. They were not separate, against him – they were part of his body. The weight, the noise that these chains made – it was part of his life... that’s how he has started feeling himself. Now suddenly you have taken him out!... The darkness of the cell and the security – and you have thrown him outside in the world!

Now, a man of seventy who has entered into the game when he was twenty.... He doesn’t know anybody outside. All friends are gone, his family is gone; he is completely a stranger. Now he has to think again: how to earn, how to arrange for bread and butter, and where to stay at night. For fifty years he had dropped all those worries. It is a fixed routine: every day he is given something to eat, every day he is given somewhere to sleep. Everything is going perfectly in a routine way – he is settled. Now you unsettle him, and you think he will feel grateful?

That was a great revelation to the revolutionaries. Nobody would have ever thought that prisoners would come back and demand their chains and their cells and would not like to go out! This is how it happens in life too.

Est is very good. One of the most important things that is growing in the west is est, but it is still negative. It is just the beginning. It has still no spiritual part in it. It is a revolutionary step, but the prisoners will come back, because that imprisoned state has such a deep investment. Unless you start loving the sky and the open world, you are bound to fall back to the old pattern sooner or later.

So here my emphasis is less on breaking the negative, more on growing the positive. The negative has to be broken, but not in too much of a hurry. Let the positive grow and let the negative be broken.

The positive should always be ahead; then you will not fall back.

I am not in a hurry to take all the rotten coloured stones that you are carrying in your hands. I know they are stones but you think they are diamonds, so my knowing is not the question. You think they are diamonds, so for you they are diamonds. I am not in a hurry to take them away.

Rather, on the contrary, I would like to give you some diamonds so the comparison arises in your own consciousness between what a diamond is and what an ordinary stone is. Then there is no need for me to tell you,’Drop these stones.’ You will start dropping them. In fact even if I say,’Don’t drop them,’ you will laugh at me – you will think it is ridiculous. But first let the diamonds be there; then by and by you will unburden yourself of all the stones.

The positive must penetrate first. Let it be just a window from where you can make a contact with the sky, but let the contact be there first – then come out of the prison. Let the sun penetrate from the window – only for a single moment. Let the fragrance of the flowers enter from the window and surround you – let the positive happen first, and then the negative is not a big problem. Otherwise the negative becomes too much of a problem. It takes much energy to shatter it, and once shattered, you are simply ready to enter into it again in a new way. Maybe you may choose another prison – a better one, more modern, more contemporary – but you will choose.

So do a few groups here too, but more emphasis has to be on the positive. and, as I feel you, the best meditation for you will be just sitting and listening to me and absorbing me as much as you can.

Let my energy be absorbed.

That will be the first window which will make available to you something of the beyond. And you can do it very easily – it is not even going to be an effort. You can simply fall in tune with me very easily....

Deva means god and sakshin means witness – a witness to god. We all have to become witnesses to god. and to become a witness to god one has first to become a witness.

Ordinarily we live a very unconscious life. we move, we do things, but we are not alert... as if we are moving in sleep. A slumber surrounds our being. Sometimes you say things you never wanted to say. You only recognise it when you have said them. Sometimes you do things – you repent. In fact you are puzzled about how you could do such a thing. It feels as if in spite of yourself you have done it.

To become a witness we have to drop all slumber. Mm? One has to become more aware of what one is saying, what one is doing. So let this name be your work too. Work more consciously, eat more consciously, talk more consciously. Even a slight movement of the hands can be done consciously. You can move the hand very consciously knowing what you are doing, or you can just do it mechanically. So bring more and more witnessing to your activities.

One day when all your activities have become aware, suddenly there is a great revolution in your being – you become a witness to god. That is the meaning of becoming a saint. A saint is one who has become a witness to god. A saint is one whose presence in the world proves that god exists....

[A sannyasin who is leaving says: I want to come back. I want to finish what I have to do in Germany,, and I’m afraid I’m going to change my mind when I go back.]

Don’t be afraid. This idea is not coming from your mind, so don’t be afraid. The mind cannot change it. It may try, but it cannot be changed. Nothing to be worried about.

I have penetrated you beyond your mind, so there is no problem. When it is only in the mind, there is a problem. If you are convinced through the mind, then it is not reliable; it may change. Anything can change the mind – the mind is very accidental. Any small thing can change the mind. It is just ready to change. The mind is a whore. It has no devotion, no commitment, no involvement.

But I have touched something deeper in you. You may not even be aware of it, because to become aware of it is very difficult. But I know my people. When I have touched them somewhere deeper than the mind, I can see it clearly. Then nothing is going to change. And confusion is natural with me....

When Gurdjieff was dying, he opened his eyes, and these were his last words.... He looked around at his disciples. They were there crying. The master was leaving – and he was a rare man, a very rare man. It takes centuries for humanity to produce a man like Gurdjieff... a rare flower. So naturally there were tears and people were sobbing.

He laughed and he said,’So, I am leaving you in a fine mess!’ Those were his last words – and then he closed his eyes and died!

Confusion is natural. If you come to me you are going to pass through a chaos, because all that you have thought before becomes meaningless. All that you have becomes futile. Your whole past is simply nullified... simply washed away. All that belonged to you no more belongs to you.

The past is the certainty. When the past is gone, certainty is gone. The past is the certainty because the past is certain – now nothing can be changed about the past. You say,’Why is the past certain?’

It has happened. Good, bad, happy, unhappy – it has happened. Now there is no way to change it. So when you have the past as your belonging, you are certain – the future is uncertain. With the future is confusion.

I make you available to the future and I try in every way to cut you away from the past – hence the confusion. But to be confused is better, because with the future there is growth. To be certain is smug. Only pig-headed people are certain. Stupid, idiotic people are certain. They have no future –

they have no confusion either.

Those enigmatic words of gurdjieff are of tremendous significance. He says,’So, I am leaving you in a fine mess!’ And the disciples have not been yet able to find out the meaning... what he really meant. And with no commentary, he died – the sentence was not even complete. Just an atomic statement – nothing before, nothing after. Suddenly he said it and died.... But I know what he means.

He has destroyed their past – that’s why he laughed. He was happy that they were in confusion now.

With confusion is the possibility of growth. With confusion is the possibility of search. With confusion you start exploring. When you are certain there is no need to go anywhere – you are certain. With certainty is death. Life moves through chaos, in chaos. Yes, only out of chaos are stars born. So don’t be afraid of confusion! Confusion is the quality of intelligence.

Only intelligent people can be confused – can afford to be confused. Unintelligent people cannot afford to be confused, so they never come to me. They cannot come – it is too risky. They know that I will confuse them, and once they are confused they cannot figure out who they are and what they are doing, and what is going to happen.

I confuse you so that you start searching for who you are. You start looking again and again at yourself – at who you are. I take away your old identity – which is your certainty – and throw you into the darkness. Now you have to find out your own way....

[Osho recounted the zen story about the disciple who had to leave his master’s home late at night and pass through a dark forest before he would reach his village.

Seeing that he looked apprehensive, the master asked the disciple what was bothering him. The disciple said the night seemed so dark and he had no light, whereupon the master lit a candle and gave it to the disciple.

Somewhat more confidently, the disciple made for the door. Just as he was about to leave, the master suddenly leant forward and blew out the candle, advising the bewildered disciple that only one’s own light can be of any help on the way; a borrowed light is useless.]

Go in the darkness. Find your way. Danger is there – but through danger, something integrates.

Through danger, one becomes aware. Through search, one comes home.

So don’t be afraid. You go in confusion – I blow out the candle, and I send you into the darkness.

Only one thing I know – that I have penetrated deeper than the mind, so I will remain there like a seed, working. And things that have started are not going to stop – they will grow. And whenever you can come, come back, mm? Good!

CHAPTER 10

Man is made of the stuff called love

10 January 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Prem means love and swarupam means your innermost core – love is your innermost core. It is everybody’s innermost core – that1s why there is so much desire to be loved and to love. And unless that desire to love and to be loved is fulfilled, one remains very desperate. One cannot find any contentment without it. One flowers only when love starts flowing – that is your innermost core.

Man is made of the stuff called love. And it is not only true about man – it is true about existence too.

The whole existence is nothing but love energy – in a thousand and one forms, but the energy is one. Its expressions are millions... and love can be expressed in millions of ways – even sometimes in such ways where you cannot imagine how love can be.

When you hate a person, it is a sort of love. You become attached. If your enemy dies you will feel something is missing. He had become part of your being. Without him the world will not be the same. You may have thought many times that if he died it would be good, but when he dies you feel the world is not the same. You miss him – you miss that enmity. You had become attached to the person. Even in anger there is love. In fact it is very difficult to be angry if you don’t love the person

– for what, and why should one bother?

You can murder a person, but if you go deep inside it you will find love – love gone berserk, but it is still love. In violence, it is love. Not moving as it should move, true – something has gone astray –

but still one has to remember: all manifestations are of one energy. Wrong and right, good and bad, sin and virtue – all are forms of love.

And once you realise that everything is the form of love, it is foolish to wait. If one is going to love, why not love – why hate? Why suffer unnecessarily? Why create anguish around yourself? If it is going to be love then let it be love – direct, immediate. Why go in roundabout ways, contrary ways?

Why go through the opposite polarity? Why take such a long route when the short-cut is available?

Mm? that’s what I want you to remember.

[Osho suggested some groups that the new sannyasin should do, reminding him to put his total energy into the groups and meditations.]

I call ’real’ those people who are ready to go headlong into existential trips – love, beauty, truth, god.

One has to be crazy enough – only then do you boil and evaporate. Anything at the extreme point starts trembling and gets ready to take off.

Mm? it is almost like a plane taking off. It has to run fast on the runway to gather speed, and when all the engines are running fast and there is more and more speed, then comes a climax, and from that climax it takes off. That’s true about life too.

You only take off into the infinite when all your engines are running in total speed... when you are functioning at the optimum. Then suddenly, the evaporation!

So use your whole energy – first in the camp, and then book for those groups.

Satya means truth, and jigyasa means enquiry – enquiry into truth. And you have to remember that if one is really in search of truth, one should not settle too soon for cheap consolations. If one is really in search of truth, one should not start believing in things. One should remain open – trusting, yet open. I’m not saying that the enquirer has to be distrusting – no.

There are two barriers in the search – one is disbelief, another is belief; they both hinder the path.

The person who believes feels he already knows – enquiry stops. The person who disbelieves also thinks he already knows – the enquiry stops.

A real enquiry is without any beliefs and without any disbeliefs – it is simply an opening. One is ready to go wherever truth leads. One has no preconceptions about it.

That is the greatest renunciation – and truth demands that renunciation – that one should drop all dogmas and all creeds, all ideologies, and should become absolutely naked. Naked one goes to truth, empty one goes to truth... with not even a slight idea of how truth should be. If you have a slight notion of how truth should be, your notion will become a projection.

And this is the problem: if you have some idea of truth, truth will start looking to you according to your idea. And that is your dream, illusion, hallucination. So only eyes which are without any idea are capable to know truth, eyes which are completely unclouded... just empty eyes which have nothing to project. Only empty eyes have the clarity to seek it.

I am giving you that name because I see the possibility – you can become that courageous. And let this sannyas be an adventure into the unknown – not an effort to settle, but an effort to go for the longest journey. Don’t allow it to become a security. Rather on the contrary, drop all securities and move into the uncharted.

The uncharted is the truth... the unmapped is the truth. It is ineffable... we cannot grasp it. Grasped, it becomes a lie. We can only dissolve into it and be lost into it.

That is the meaning of the word,’jigyasa’. It is of tremendous significance.

It does not mean curiosity. A curious person is not really an enquirer. He has a certain itch but it is just an itch, and he can settle for anything. He will go so far and then he will settle. The journey is not going to be to the very end. Curiosity is not jigyasa – it is not enquiry.

Enquiry is when you are ready to stake your whole life for it – not just being curious, but you are ready to it, no prejudices about it, no philosophies about it.gamble... and sannyas is a gamble!

CHAPTER 11

Love is the essential religion

11 January 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva means divine, shantam means silent – divine silence. And let this be your basic key – silence.

Whenever you can find time, wherever, fall into silence. And there is no need to find a separate place for it. Walking on the road you can remember and fall into silence, and you will enjoy the walk more, because when you are silent you are more alive, more pulsating. When you are silent the mind is not making noise. You are more aware – aware of the birds singing, aware of the wind blowing, aware of the sunrays falling on you, aware of people, and aware of the whole that surrounds you.

Ordinarily we live in a kind of fog – we are surrounded by our own noise. And that noise is so much that it doesn’t allow anything else to enter. The bird goes on singing, but the mind is too loud. Mm?

these insects – they are there.

[There are sounds from the garden surrounding the auditorium.]

... a beautiful music, but the mind is too loud and does not allow entry.

The world is really beautiful. And to feel beauty intensely is to be liberated. Intense beauty is liberation. And the only way to feel intensely is to be silent. The more noise, the less is the intensity of your feeling – the more silent, the more intense. One becomes very very sensitive.

Eating, eat silently. And you will be surprised – food is divine when you eat silently. Then just the ordinary gesture of eating becomes like prayer... it should be prayer.

Just breathing becomes such a beautiful experience. Just breathing in, breathing out, is enough of a joy – more is not needed. So doing or sometimes not doing anything – just sitting – fall into silence. And the way to fall into silence is very simple: just relax the body, relax the breathing, and start feeling that you are silent... you are silent. No need to repeat it, mm? just the feeling that you are silent.

Soon you will be able to – it will not be difficult for you, that’s why I am giving you the name. It will be easy for you. And once you have learned the art of how to fall into silence, you have known what meditation is....

Prabhu means god, and bhajan means singing – singing the name of god, chanting the name of god that is the meaning.

[Tonight the sufi-dancing meditation was happening in Radha Hall as darshan was in progress. The music and chanting could be heard in the auditorium.]

This is prabhu bhajan. And make it a point to chant it. Sitting, chant; walking, chant – sometimes loudly, sometimes silently. Chanting help you tremendously.

CHAPTER 12

My whole work is to help you to die

12 January 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Anand means bliss, neelamber means blue sky – blue sky of bliss. And there is a particular meaning of blue sky in the eastern symbology. Sometimes you may see a small white cloud floating in the sky and then receding back far away, far away, disappearing, and suddenly it is gone.

Only the blue sky is left... empty, totally empty, utterly empty, and not even a trace of the cloud is left. Exactly the same happens – the inner space is like the blue sky and the ego is just like a cloud, floating. It can disappear without leaving any trace behind. The cloud is accidental – the sky is essential.

The very existence of the cloud is just arbitrary – it may be, it may not be. There is no inevitability in its being. In fact that it is, is a miracle. It should not be.

The blue sky has always been there – it is eternal. It cannot be... it is essential. But this is the irony of the game: that the accidental overwhelms the essential. The accidental overpowers the essential and the accidental sometimes becomes so important that one loses all contact with the essential.

It happens when the sky is clouded – you completely forget that the sky exists... only clouds and clouds and clouds. And you know well that just a few days before they were not there, and just a few days after you will not be able to find them again, and that which is, is still there – but you cannot see it.

By giving you the name ’neelamber’, I am giving you this method: to remember the essential and by and by forget the non-essential, the accidental. You are accidental – you are the cloud. don’t get lost in it. Just hidden behind you is the real, the eternal. And this cloud has to disappear... recede as far away as possible. Then by and by lose your boundaries and disappear. And when the blue sky erupts, explodes, then for the first time you have known what it is to be, otherwise one is just in a dream.

Prem means love and digamber means naked. It is a metaphorical word. Literally, it means one whose only clothing is the sky... one who has no other clothing than the sky. It means the nakedness.

There is a jaina sect called digamber. Their prophet, Mahavira, used to live in the nude. I call you naked love.... And love can only be naked – there is no other way for love to be. Clothed, it is no more love – it has become a lie. Masked, it is something else – it is not love.

Love can only be naked. In your absolute nakedness love flows, never otherwise, because that absolute nakedness is your primal innocence. And the whole existence is naked, except man. Man is hiding himself. It is not only clothes he is hiding behind – he is hiding behind a thousand and one things. He is very shy and ashamed – and the whole shyness comes out of the ego.

In the biblical story, when Adam has eaten the fruit of knowledge, he immediately goes and hides behind trees and bushes. God comes searching for him, and he calls him forth:’Where are you?

Where are you hiding, Adam?’- And Adam says,’I am ashamed’.... Knowledge has entered.

Just a few hours before, he was naked and unashamed – that was innocence. Now he is hiding.

And the moment he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge he became aware that he was naked – that was his first awareness. Eve became aware that she was naked, and they started making their first primitive clothes of leaves, fig-leaves. That was the beginning....

But this hiding comes through knowledge. Knowledge makes you egoistic. You start feeling that you know. The moment you think you know, you will feel ashamed – sin has entered. Knowledge is sin, and in love one has to drop all knowledge.

Love cannot tolerate knowledge. Love cannot exist with knowledge. One has to drop knowledge, one has to drop the ego. One has to drop all hidings, masks – one has to come in the open, and just be as one is. That is the meaning of being naked – just to be as one is... authentic, whatsoever the cost. You will never be a loser.

In the beginning it may be difficult, because the whole world is full of people who are phoney.

Everybody is living with a mask, and if you start living without a mask you will be exposed, you will become vulnerable. In the beginning it will be difficult – you may be hurt many times, but it is worth it.

This is my interpretation of the biblical parable – that if adam had not escaped to hide somewhere, he would still be living in paradise. There was no need to fall out of paradise, or be expelled. When you start hiding you have accepted the fact that something is wrong.

It was not god who declared that something was wrong. In fact it was adam who, by hiding, declared that something was wrong. The moment you hide you have accepted somewhere deep down that something is wrong. Now you are trying to make it... to pretend, polish, make a facade. That’s why man has become incapable of love.

Only a naked being can be full of love. So I give you this name’prem digamber’ – it means naked love.

And start being courageous and by and by, slowly slowly, drop all masks. I’m meaning it in a metaphorical way – I’m not saying to move naked... that is not needed. Because I have seen people in India – there are people who move naked, and they are not naked at all. Even their nakedness is phoney.

Man is so cunning that even that nakedness is like subtle clothes – behind that nakedness he is hiding. On the surface he is naked, and deep down very complex and very cunning. So be simple....

Don’t hide anything – there is no point. If you are good, good. If you are bad, bad.

There is no need to do anything which is not really happening – there is no point. Once you have learned this simple thing – to be just exactly what is happening and remain with it – nothing else is needed. God will come seeking and searching for you. When you are not hiding he will become available. So become a naked love!

Prem means love, and diganta means transcendence of space – love, the transcendence of space.

There are two paths to the divine: one is awareness, the other is love. Through awareness you come to a point where time is transcended. Through awareness you fall into the now. There is no more past and no more future. Now is all, and now is not part of time at all. Now is beyond time – it is part of eternity. It is not part of the flow of time, because now has no duration. You cannot divide it. It is so subtle that it has no duration. It is so sudden that it has no duration. So when you become perfectly aware, time disappears.

On the other path – love – when you are deeply in love, utterly in love, space disappears. Then you are in the here – and here is not part of space. Just as now is not part of time, here is not part of space. Now has no duration, here has no extension. Space means extension and time means duration. Now has no duration and here has no extension.

And if time disappears, space automatically disappears – or the vice versa. If space disappears, time disappears, because space and time are not separate.

In the western consciousness for thousands of years it has been a settled thing that time and space are not separate. In the west the concept – that time and space are not separate – is very modern and entered with albert einstein. He coined one word, ’spaciotime’. They are not two. We can say that now and here are not two. Nowhere or herenow is one word – should be one word, because reality is one.

These are two ways to transcend: either you enter from here or you enter from now.

The male mind enters through awareness, through the disappearance of time, because time is a male thrust. The arrow of time is phallic – it is male sexuality. And space is feminine – it is the womb.

A woman has space, a man has no space. Man lives in time, and woman lives in space. That’s why man is always restless and woman has a subtle centering. Man is always on the go – he has to go.

Maybe he is not aware of where he is going, maybe there is nowhere to go, but he has to go and he has to find more and more speedy ways to reach there.

If you insist on knowing where he is going he may not be able to answer it, but he will say, ’That is not the point. I will reach there, and I am going to reach in a speedy way – I’m not going to use bullock-carts. I will use a jet plane. I don’t know where I am going, but I am going....

A woman is more settled.... In India, the woman is called the home, the space, because she has the womb... she is spacious. So the feminine mind enters into meditation through love – love is deeply related with space – and the male mind enters through time, awareness, because the male ego is deeply rooted in time. Both reach to the same ultimate point.

[A sannyasin recently returned says: I’m melting!

That’s right. Don’t hold! Melt completely, mm? It is difficult – one tends to hold back, because melting seems almost like death, but let death be, and you will attain to a greater life through it.

Because nothing ever dies.

We die on one plane and on another plane we are born. On one level we die – on another level a new life becomes available. One door is closed, another opens immediately... and a door to a higher magnitude. So don’t be afraid.

My whole work is this – to help you to die so that you can be reborn. And I can see that you are melting, mm? so help the process!

CHAPTER 13

Meditation is the door to timelessness

13 January 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Prem means love and bindu means a drop; a drop of love. And a drop of love is big enough – it can become an ocean. It contains the ocean in it – it is not a mere drop. No drop is a mere drop – not at least the drop of love, because the very energy of love is expanding, opening, flowering. And when the drop flowers it becomes the ocean. So this is one of the most beautiful names. It reminds one that one is very small, and yet it reminds one that one is not just confined to this smallness.

All that the great ocean contains is contained in the small drop. If you have tasted one drop, you have tasted the whole ocean. If you can analyse one single drop and know all about it, you have known all about the oceans – past, present, future... not only of this earth, but of other earths and other planets too.

So the drop is small and yet not small. The finitude contains the infinite. It is a microcosm, a miniature world. It reminds one that one is small, and yet it reminds one that one is not the small.

And that’s how one progresses in life.

Feel humble so that you can feel divine. Now this looks paradoxical, because when you feel divine people think, ’Have you gone mad? You are very egoistic thinking yourself divine!’ But whenever you feel humble you will feel divine. Whenever you feel yourself a drop you will suddenly become the ocean. It is not paradoxical – just the appearance is so.

Deva means divine, and akal means two things: one is timelessness and another is deathlessness.

One word has both the meanings because in the eastern mind – particularly in the indian consciousness – time and death are synonymous.

Whatsoever happens in time is going to die. In time, the eternal is not possible. Time is the field for the impermanent, the flux, the changing. Whatsoever is born in time will have to die. Nothing can be permanent in the flux of time. You cannot step in the same river twice. Everything is fleeting and nothing is staying.

Time is basically the field of death. So akal means both things – time and death. and akal means no time, no death. Once your consciousness transcends time, it has transcended death too. Once you can have a glimpse of something within your being which is not temporal, which is not born in time, which has nothing to do with time, which stands outside time, then you know that you cannot die. and that certainty is a radical change, because that certainty changes your whole pattern of life, your whole attitude, your total approach.

Ordinarily, whatsoever you are doing, you are surrounded by the fear of death. You may not look at it, but that doesn’t make much difference. You may avoid it... you may look at some other things. You may remain occupied in something else so that you need not look at death, but it is there; whether you look or not makes no difference. Your look is irrelevant – it is there. It is constantly eating at your roots.

Each moment death is happening. Each moment you have died a little more, a little more, a little more... drop by drop. One day suddenly you find that you are exhausted – nothing is left. Time has flown out of your hand.

Death is not something that happens aker seventy, eighty, ninety years – death starts the moment you are born. Even a one-day-old child has died. He has died already... at least one day. One day is less. The arrow of time has started moving towards death.

So whether you look or not, death is surrounding you – you are like an island, surrounded by death from everywhere. And it affects you. If you love, you cannot love totally, because death is there –

how can you love totally? How can you love when death is there? It looks impossible to love when death is there. How can you see the beautiful when death is there?

How can you look into a rose flower and be charmed by its beauty – how? Because death is there –

already the petals of the rose are falling. Death is happening in you, in the rose – everywhere – and how can you be happy when death is there? It is impossible to be happy, to be loving, to celebrate, to sing, to dance – death is there!

Once you have entered a moment of no time, death disappears. That moment we call akal.

You may have heard the famous slogan of the sikhs:’Sat shree akal.’ That means ’Only the deathless is true – everything else is false.’ That is their mantra. Only the timeless is true – everything else is false; And unless you have attained to the timeless, you have been just collecting pebbles and seashells on the seashore. You have been playing with toys... you have been childish.

Meditation is the door to timelessness. When thinking stops, when there is no thought moving on the screen of your mind, suddenly the timelessness – akal – -is there. Because with the disappearance of thoughts, time disappears. Time cannot exist without thoughts; it needs thoughts to be there.

Once the screen is empty and your mind projector is not Working, not functioning – even for a single moment – you have dropped into the interval. In the pause between the two notes, silence...

absolute silence, and then you have the first taste of your being.

So keep alert about it, mm? Whenever you are sitting silently, just wait for the moment, the pause between two notes. Relax silently, wait for it. One day it comes. It can come any day... it can come right this moment. It knows no barrier. Just a readiness, a receptivity, an openness is enough, and a heart who can accept, receive. So be feminine, and any time it is going to happen.

Sometimes it can happen in dancing, in meditating. Sometimes it can simply happen when you are sitting. It can happen any moment because no time is against it – all time is the same. Each moment is sacred, and it can happen in any moment, so just be alert. I’m not saying to make much effort for it, because if you make effort you will become tense. I’m saying to simply be alert. Be alert in a feminine way – passive, watching, waiting, but not doing anything in particular for it.

And the day you realise – any moment which you feel was beyond time, when time had stopped –

then come immediately to tell me. Mm? it is going to happen any day!

[A visitor said that for one year she had been haunted day and night by frightening fantasies – ever since the end of a love affair.]

That’s what I wanted to know – how it started. Mm! love is almost like acid – it can sometimes do these things. It can start a trip. Good, bad; both trips can start.

And you have not been in love with anybody for this one year?

[She answers: No.]

That’s what is needed! It will stop only when you go into a deeper love than you were ever in before, because whatsoever has been done by love, can be undone only by love.

... I will help... I will help! Mm? nothing to worry about. But I am just suggesting this so that you remain open for a love affair, because that is going to settle everything.

It is a chemical phenomenon that has happened – it is not psychological. While making love your body was in a certain chemical situation, and it has remained stuck there; it needs unwinding. And it is a chemical thing – it is not psychological, so you cannot do much about it – but your body chemistry can be changed.

How long can you stay here?

She answers: six weeks.]

Okay. So for six weeks just listen to me. Whatsoever happens, let it continue. Start doing meditations, dance as much as you can. Your energy has to be poured out. You are hoarding it. For one year you have lived like a miser. You go on holding your energy in, and then the same energy is creating the havoc. You have to release the energy – dance and sing, and go crazy. If you put craziness outside, the inner craziness will disappear. You follow me?

... It will happen – I will do it! First become a sannyasin!

[She replies: I cannot believe you, but... I can wait.]

You become a sannyasin – there is no need to wait! Belief will come only by experience – there is no other way. How can you believe by waiting? You have waited for one year – you have waited your whole life. By waiting, belief never comes. Belief is not a question of waiting. It comes through experience.

If you become a sannyasin and if you allow me to work in your innermost core, something will happen and that will create belief. Otherwise how is belief going to come?

And if you are not a sannyasin it is impossible for me to work on you, because you won’t allow me in! I will come and knock at your heart, and you will say,’I cannot believe you’.... It will be futile.

I can help only orange people because they have taken the first step. They at least have shown their initiative – that they are ready to go with me; then I can take them. I cannot drag you. You have to cooperate with me – only then is something possible. I cannot force you. These things are not such that they can be forced on anybody. Only you can cooperate, and if you cooperate out of your own will, something can happen. If you want to wait you can wait, but you wait at your own risk.

My suggestion is that there is no need to wait! Become a sannyasin, be in orange, and start doing meditations, and then I will suggest one or two groups; you go into groups. Just put this problem aside, and within six weeks it will disappear. You are carrying it too much, giving it too much importance, making too much fuss about it; it is nothing worthwhile. I have many more crazy people, on a longer and deeper trip than you – far out! Your problem is nothing!

So would you like to wait and think about it?

... So you wait, mm? You wait. But if nothing happens, don’t tell me that nothing happened – that is up to you. Things will start happening only when you have become a sannyasin, not before. So you think about it, mm? Good!

Prem means love, and ketan means an abode; an abode of love. Ketan is not an ordinary house –

it means home. A house is a physical thing; a home is a spiritual thing. A house protects you from the outside – its function is negative – from rains, from wind, from the sun. It is just negative, it does not nourish you; it has no positive function. A hotel can do, a caravanserai can do... any house will do. It is just a protection. Its function is negative – it is a shelter. In itself it is not nourishment.

A home is more... more than a house. It is a plus. It protects you, that’s okay – that’s not the basic function. It nourishes you... it feeds you. It is a love space.

By and by homes have disappeared from the world – there are only houses and houses and houses.

That’s why the world has become so miserable. A house is like a life insurance – it protects you, that’s all. It is not life – it doesn’t feed you, doesn’t nourish you.

Ketan means a home, a love space. It is not physical really – something inner... a different kind of quality. And you can feel it. If you go into a house where people love, where love flows, where love sings many songs, you can immediately feel a different quality to the atmosphere, a different vibe.

It pulsates on a different wavelength. You can immediately become aware that this is a home – the warmth, the welcome. Even if there is nobody and you are sitting alone in a home where people love each other, where love flows, you will feel the pulsation, you will feel accepted... as if the home is rejoicing in your presence. It is not rejecting you.

In a house everything is neutral. There is no welcome, there is no warmth – it is cold. It may have a central-heating – that is not the point; it is still cold. The coldness is psychological. It does not pull you – it pushes you away.

So that is the meaning of the word’ketan’. And I would like you to become a home. Your very being should become a love home, because only in a being who has become the home does god become a guest. God comes only when you have become a host. Only then... the guest.

People go on asking,’Where is god?’ Their questions are foolish because they have not yet become hosts. It is pointless to ask. God is not a theory, not a dogma. It is something from the beyond that, when you are ready, when the abode is prepared, suddenly in that high energy, god descends,and there is a contrast.

CHAPTER 14

Go to God through laughter, through dancing

14 January 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Prem means love, and achinta means no anxiety. And remember that only love brings a state of no anxiety – and only love. Everything else creates a new anxiety.

You can go on changing your anxieties – somebody is seeking money, somebody is seeking power, then somebody starts seeking god – but all things will bring anxiety. Every desire brings anxiety as a shadow to it. No desire can exist without anxiety, and anxiety is hell, anxiety is destructive, because anxiety creates a split in you – you are tom apart. You are not one piece, not together, not integrated. Only love makes you integrated.

Jesus says,’God is love,’ and I say,’Love is god.’ It is not enough to say that god is love, because god may be many more things. Love may be just one attribute. I say that love is god. Love is all and all.

Nothing else is needed.

That’s why there’s so much longing for love. One wants to love and one wants to be loved, because only in love are you in tune with existence. And when you are in tune, there is no anxiety. When you are out of tune, there is anxiety. Anxiety is symptomatic that somewhere you are not moving with the whole you are moving alone. You are moving separate from the whole – maybe diametrically opposite to the whole.

When you are separate you are in difficulty, because the whole cannot go with you – only you can go with the whole. And love gives you the first lesson in how to relax, how to trust, how to accept.

Love gives you the first lesson in dropping the ego. When you love a person, you forget yourself.

That very forgetfulness is the base of all religion.

Once you are in love you know who you are. Once you are in love you are in a deep contentment...

a delight arises. And your lover becomes a window. Love never ends with the lover. The lover is just the beginning of love; then it goes on spreading. When you are in love you start loving all things.

You cannot do otherwise. When you are in love you love the moon, you love the tree, you love the river. Suddenly you are so full of love that it goes on overflowing. When love overflows it becomes prayer.

In love you are lost. In prayer the other is also lost. A moment comes when there is no lover and no beloved... only love energy. That energy is delight and that energy is no anxiety. That is the goal.

So to remind you, I give you this name. Mm? forget everything else – never forget love! The bible, the koran, the geeta, can be forgotten – but love cannot be forgotten. That is the basic, fundamental scripture. All other scriptures are man-made. Only love is god-made.

[Osho gives sannyas to another seeker:]

This will be your name... and remember that the change of the name is not an ordinary matter, because the name goes very deep into the unconscious; one becomes identified with the name. You were born without a name, then a name was given to you. That name has become very very deep-rooted. If somebody says something insulting about your name you will feel offended – although you know that you came without any name into the world. There is no necessary relationship between you and your name. You can change your name, because there is really no name – one is nameless.

Still, if somebody insults you and says something offending you will be in a rage. If a hundred persons are sleeping in this hall and in the night somebody comes and calls somebody by name, ninety-nine percent of the people won’t listen, but the one whose name it is will simply jump and say, ’Who is calling me?’ So even in sleep you know and remember your name. The other ninety-nine people are fast asleep – nothing has happened – but the person whose name it is suddenly becomes awake; the name goes so deep into the unconscious.

So when we change a name it is of tremendous import. It means dropping the whole identity that you have lived with up to now... dropping the whole idea that you have thought about yourself up to now... dropping the whole definition and starting from abc, as if you are born again. And it is not ’as if’ – it is really so... sannyas is a rebirth.

So from this moment start thinking of yourself in a totally fresh way. The old is gone, the new is born, and they are not even connected. The one who was ready to take sannyas is no more. He has done his last act – he has committed suicide. Now the one who is entering into sannyas is totally different.

Let it be a clean break, a breakthrough, a rift with the past... unbridgeable. That will cleanse you tremendously and you will feel very much unburdened, young, innocent... again full of wonder as every child is. That’s the miracle!

If you understand the meaning of the change of the name, you allow the miracle to happen. Then you don’t know who you are – you will have to learn again. You will have to learn everything from abc.

So the whole conditioned mind that has been functioning up to now as you is put out of gear. The new, the unfamiliar, the unknown starts. So don’t try to carry the old. Mm? just forget about it – as if you have read about it in a novel or you had seen a movie or somebody else had told you a story.

Of course the memory will be there, but don’t get identified with it anymore. By and by the memory will go far and far away, will recede and will disappear. That is the magic of changing the name.

Anand means bliss, the ultimate state. There are three states of being. One is pain. Many people, ninety-nine percent, live in that state – call it hell. Then pleasure, happiness, joys – rarely does one percent of people live in that. Or, people who ordinarily live in the first stage of pain, sometimes have glimpses of it – those glimpses are rare. Everybody hopes for it, but nobody lives in it.

Everybody lives in hell and dreams of heaven. That dream helps you to live in hell. That dream makes it comfortable to live in hell. That dream becomes like a buffer, a shock-absorber, so that the pain is not too much. That dream functions as a tranquilliser. It helps you – you can tolerate the pain because you know that tomorrow there will be happiness. You can hope. Heaven is nothing but hope – and hell is reality.

Sometimes, very rarely, in a moment of beauty, love, friendship, one has a little taste of it, but that taste is very momentary – comes and goes and again the hell erupts and explodes and one is thrown in the hellfire.

These are the two ordinary states of the human mind – both go on changing; nothing is ultimate about them.

The third state is bliss. The first I call hell; the second I call heaven. In india we have a special name

– which cannot be translated – for the third. We call it moksha, nirvana.

In the western religions there are only two things talked about – hell and heaven. That’s why I always say that christianity, judaism, islam, are poor in a way. They miss the ultimate.

There is a state of your consciousness where pleasure disappears, pain disappears... where nothing

– no excitement – exists... neither pain nor pleasure... just pure awareness and tremendous peace.

That state we call bliss, anand – and that is the goal. That is your destiny, and unless you attain it, nothing is attained. You can attain the whole world and you can possess the whole world, and nothing is possessed. You will always remain in a limbo – never certain where you are – and you will remain unaware of your being.

So let it be a conscious effort. Pain has to be dropped – so has pleasure. If you hanker for pleasure, pain will never be dropped – they go together. They are two aspects of the same coin. If you hanker for pleasure you will remain in pain. Sometimes, rarely, you will have a glimpse of pleasure and again you will be thrown in pain.

Don’t hanker for pleasure because it creates only pain and nothing else. Don’t desire happiness because it creates only unhappiness and nothing else. Don’t desire success because it brings only failure and nothing else.

Once you have seen this game – that success brings failure and pleasure brings pain in its wake

– you start on a totally different journey. Now you want to be just yourself – neither in pain nor in pleasure.

That’s what meditation is all about: an effort to drop pain and pleasure, the conflict and the duality, and to go deeper into oneself... just to be there without any desire for anything. In that moment of no-desire, the ultimate happens.

Devanshu means a part of god... and everybody is a part of god. The moment you start thinking of yourself as the whole, you miss the goal. That’s what the ego is – the part deceiving itself, thinking itself to be the whole. The ego is the part claiming, pretending, to be the whole... the drop claiming to be the ocean. The drop can be the ocean, but the drop has to drop into the ocean and has to drop all claiming.

If you go on claiming that you are the whole, there is nowhere to go. You are already the whole, so there is no way.... Remember that we are part – of course, part of god himself, because we belong to this whole existence – a very small part, but still part of the whole. And each single part is divine because the whole is divine. The part cannot be contrary to the whole. The part has to reflect the whole. The part has to carry the same qualities and the same attributes of the whole.

Once you remember that you are just a part, the ego disappears and you come to an agreement with the whole. Otherwise there is disagreement. The ego goes on fighting; it claims that it is the whole. The slave trying to claim that he is the king – then there is conflict.

When you have understood that you are part, and you are happy to be the part, suddenly the conflict disappears. There arises a great agreement between the part and the whole... a great harmony, accord and in that accord the part disappears in the whole and the whole disappears in the part.

And then you are the whole.

When you don’t claim, you are the whole; when you claim, you miss. Devanshu means a part of god, a part of divinity....

Dhyana means meditation, and akampa means non-wavering.

And through your name I am giving you a key – that you have to attain to a non-wavering meditation.

The mind is wavering, continuously wavering; it is never non-wavering. And when this wavering ceases, the mind also ceases. When there is no wavering, no-mind, there is meditation. Meditation is a state of your consciousness when there is no duality... when you are not going anywhere, not moving at all, no movement. You are simply herenow. Just this moment exists and nothing else.

There is no past and no future – otherwise there will be wavering. There is no good, no bad –

otherwise there will be wavering. There is no sin, no virtue – otherwise there will be wavering.

If there is a duality, wavering is bound to be there. When the duality is dropped you are simply herenow in a non-dual state. Your inner flame becomes nonwavering. It is there almost like a buddha-statue... no movement. So try it.

When you sit, sit silently like a buddha-statue. Let the body be silent – because body and mind go together. If the body is very still, the mind tends to become still. If the body is not still, the mind also tends not to be still. And the vice versa: if the mind is still, the body tends to be still.

So when you are sitting, sit silently, relaxed. When you are walking, then too walk very gracefully, very alert, conscious. Only make as much movement as is absolutely needed. That’s what grace is

– when you don’t make any unnecessary movement. And by cutting unnecessary movements one saves tremendous energy, and that same energy has to be used for the inner journey; you don’t have any other energy.

Eating, eat very quietly, silently. So each movement has to be done with an unmoving centre. Walk and still don’t waver. Inside remain unwavering. Talk but don’t get feverish. Remain cool, collected.

And soon within a few weeks you will have a few glimpses of what I am talking about. Suddenly one day you will feel that it has happened – you are sitting there and all duality has disappeared. A great peace surrounds you and a great benediction descends – you are almost in another world.

That will be your first contact and the first experience of the meaning of your name. You will have to wait for it – the meaning has to be existential. Mm? I can simply indicate the meaning but the real meaning will descend on you some day.

Krishna is one of the names of god, and one of the most beautiful concepts that has ever existed on earth. In India, Krishna is thought to be the perfect avatara of god – the perfect incarnation of god.

There have been other incarnations but nobody is so perfect. And the perfection is that Krishna is the only person in the history of human consciousness who is not divided... who does not know what is good and what is bad. He is at ease with the bad as much as with the good – that is his beauty. He is not an escapist. Buddha is an escapist – he left the world. He is tremendously good...

he is pure nectar. But krishna is both nectar and poison.

Hindus have called krishna’the perfect’ because if you are just nectar and no poison, you are half.

You have chosen only a few things of the world – you are not total. You are not absolutely with god because you have left something renounced. God must be both.

In India there is no concept of the devil – not at all – because god is both: god and devil. In christianity there is a concept of god and devil... a division. The whole christian religion is schizophrenic – good and bad. Christian saint are very good but they miss something. They have no salt – tasteless, medicinal, hygienic, clinical; you can smell the hospital but they are not true to life. The flavour of life is not there.... Dead.

Krishna is totally different. He lives in the world and lives, at the same time, out of the world – that’s his beauty and his perfection. He lives as ordinary human beings live and yet the world does not live in him. He lives in all the situations which can corrupt a man and he remains uncorrupted. A lotus flower remains untouched in the water. That’s his beauty.

So it is very difficult for the christians, for the mohammedans, for the jews, to understand krishna, mm? because there are many traits which should not be in a saint.

And gopa means a girlfriend. Krishna had thirty-six thousand girlfriends. Only in India is it possible!

The concept, the very concept is beautiful. Maybe it is just allegorical, because it is difficult to have thirty-six thousand girlfriends. One is enough... more than enough! Thirty-six thousand would have killed the man... but the concept is beautiful. Gopa means a girlfriend.

And I am giving you this name to remind you to love tremendously, love totally. Don’t negate. Go through laughter, go dancing. And become a girlfriend of god. Think of god as the beloved.

Now, the christian idea of god as father is poor. The very word ’father’ has no deep significance – it is institutional.

[Osho said that the father is just a social phenomenon something that came into existence with the advent of private ownership of property. In fact the word ’uncle’ is older than the word ’father’ for in communities where a woman was moving with many men, the child never actually knew who his father was, so all his mother’s friends were ’uncles’.]

So the christian religion depends on a very wrong concept. The father expelled adam because he disobeyed – now this is nonsense. He could not even forgive once.

And now christianity goes on teaching you to forgive people – and your father, god, could not even forgive once! Adam committed a small sin – not much of a sin... a childish curiosity. And god himself was responsible because he said, ’Don’t eat the fruit of this tree!’ When you say to a child, ’Don’t eat the fruit of this tree,’ he is bound to – it is so natural!

The christian god doesn’t seem to have known any psychology. It is simple. When you say to the child,’Don’t go to the fridge,’ he will go. You are provoking... you are challenging the child.

When adam went and ate the fruit, he was thrown out, expelled, because he disobeyed.

Disobedience is the first and the greatest sin because the concept is that of father and son.

In india the deepest concept is not of father and son but of a beloved and a lover. God should be thought of as a lover. It is more human, more intimate, close. And more wonderful... more mysterious... more romantic! And unless a religion is romantic, it is not a religion at all. Religion should be more of a romance than sex is; then only can religion succeed in the world, otherwise not.

So become a lover and think of god as your beloved. Think in terms of love and not in terms of logic.

That is the meaning of your name.

Anand means bliss, and chetan means consciousness; bliss consciousness. And one just has to be conscious about it to have it. It is not something that one has to seek. It is already there... it is already the case. Bliss is just your very nature. At the innermost core it is already present... present in its absolute glory. It is there in total fragrance.

Nothing has to be done to get it, and nothing has to be done to achieve it... nothing has to be done to manufacture it. It is not something that man has to manufacture – man brings it with himself. Man is born with it... it is inbuilt. The only need is to become conscious of it.

We are fast asleep. We are not aware of the treasure that we are carrying within ourselves – what jesus calls’the kingdom of god’. And he goes on saying,’It is within you... it is within you.’ That’s what anand is. You have to become conscious about it.

So whenever you are sitting, walking, moving, meditating, dancing, just remain alert – it is there. We are missing it because we are not looking for it. There is a very profound truth that you can only find something for which you look. If you don’t look, you will not find it.

For example if you move in a crowd and you are not looking for me, I may be in the crowd but you may not find me. If you are looking for me you will find me, because when you look you have a direction. When you look, you have a conscious effort.

If a painter comes into the garden he will see many colours – which you will not see – because he was looking for them; they are there. When a painter looks at the trees he sees many types of green. All trees look green, but when a painter sees it, there are tremendous differences between one green and another. There are as many greens as there are trees – different shades and different nuances.

When you are looking for colours you will see them. When a musician comes into the same garden he will hear the subtle noises. He will be able to hear these insects. Because he has an ear, he is looking for it; he is consciously searching.

What I mean by chetan, by being conscious, is only this: that you should remain alert... that it is already there. You are not yet in contact with it but it is there. So remain alert. Dancing, singing, walking, eating, remain alert. Again and again remind yourself that it is there. You have brought it from god himself... it is part of you.

One day suddenly the contact happens. And it happens out of the blue, unpredictable. Nobody knows when it will happen. Nobody can say anything about it, but it happens. When you look for it and you go on looking for it, you go on waiting for it – one day it happens. You go on striking again and again and hammering and hammering, and one day suddenly it is there....

[A visitor had previously written to Osho, confessing he was a con-man and hustler. He had asked Osho to help him put his abilities to positive ends.]

Hello,... come here. So you have come! Very good. This time don’t try to escape. Your whole life you have been escaping. There were many possibilities, many times.... But it is natural – one misses many times. But enough is enough! Now you have come home – don’t try to escape.

And let it be a total thing, because less than that won’t help. Less than that won’t go deep enough.

Only something total can be helpful to you. Because you are clever and very intelligent – and there is a danger with intelligence; it can deceive itself.

Intelligence is a great gift, but with all gifts there is always a danger. That comes with the gift; that is part of it. That is the price we pay for it. No gift comes without danger. So nothing is wrong in it. Everybody who has a gift will misuse it – that’s a necessary training in life. You have misused it enough... and now you have understood it also. So now let it be a one-hundred-and-eighty degree turn. Once you take the turn, the same intelligence can be used tremendously creatively.

And don’t feel guilty – because it had to be so. Now there is no point in feeling guilty. As far as I understand, in this life when we are not awake, there are only two possibilities: either you will cheat or you will be cheated... and both are wrong. These are the only two possibilities.

Unconscious people will either be cheated or will cheat. And if one has to choose, it is better to be the cheater rather than the cheated, because the cheater one day will understand and will be able to get out of it; the cheated will never understand. The cheated will never feel that he has done something wrong – because he has never done anything wrong! Others have done wrong to him. So he has grudges against others – but what can you do against others? He will never feel responsible for his own life.

The cheater one day or other will see something has gone wrong, and that is the day the turning comes, the conversion.

So as I see it, whatsoever has happened, has happened... and it was good. In fact, it has brought you to me, otherwise you would not have been here.

This is another beauty of life – that even wrong things fit perfectly in the total. That’s why I never condemn anything – there is no point – because if you look at the total, everything fits so perfectly.

So if you look at the total, nothing is wrong. Only the total result counts. If this conversion happens you will understand that all that happened before it was a necessary part, a preparation for it.

And now let it be total. Half hearted measures never help anybody. And I know it is going to happen.

... This will be your name... and with this change of name you cut yourself from the past with one stroke of the sword, with one blow. There is no need to be gradual, and a gradual thing is not going to help you... only a sudden break. So dare the sudden, and with one blow of the sword simply die to the past... as if it has never existed.

Become absolutely new – whatsoever the risk and the cost; that’s not the point. Games you have enjoyed enough – now for this last part of life be real, and play the ultimate game of being real.

Yes, being phoney pays – that’s why people are phoney – but being real pays tremendously. That’s why one day or other everybody has to come to the real. You can have the whole world, but if you don’t have your own reality you are a beggar. You may lose the whole world, but if you have got contact with your being you are an emperor. And by giving sannyas I don’t make beggars – I make emperors.

My whole effort here is not to create poor people, but to create infinitely rich people – rich in the soul, rich in creativity, rich in love, rich in awareness... rich in all the dimensions possible.

This will be your name: Swami Prem Nirvana.

Prem means love, nirvana means enlightenment. And these two things are going to happen.... Love is going to happen, nirvana is going to happen....

The word is buddhist and has a very particular meaning. It means’blowing out the candle’. It is a tremendously significant word. Buddha calls enlightenment ’blowing out the candle’ – the candle of the ego, the candle of ’I’. It is very small and gives a very yellow light and it is very smoky, but we become too much attached to it. Not much light comes out of it either but still we become attached to it. When one blows out this candle, the ego disappears.

For a moment there is immense darkness – that is because of the old habit. We miss the candle and our eyes are focused on it and on its small light, its tiny light, but by and by the darkness disappears; more and more light comes. But that light is not ours – that light is of god, of the whole.

Then we live in light, but that light is not ours. Then we move, do things, but we are no more the doer. Then we have no will of our own – that has been blown out. Now whatsoever god wills, it happens.

That’s what Jesus says on the cross. For a moment he had wavered. Christians have not analysed it. In fact christianity has not been able to bring jesus in his real perfume to the world.

On the cross he wavered for a single moment and he said in agony and with deep complaint,’Have you forsaken me, my lord? My god, have you forsaken me? What is this that you are doing to me?’

For a moment his ego takes hold of him and then he understands immediately that this is not right –

what is he saying? Is this his own will against god’s? For one moment jesus said,’I don’t will this.... I don’t want this. What are you doing? Have you forsaken me?’ He understood it. He was a man of tremendous awareness. And in a single moment he blew out the candle and he said,’No, don’t listen to me. Who am I? Thy will be done, not mine.’

Just a moment before, he was jesus, son of joseph and mary. In a single moment, in a split moment, he is no more Jesus – he is Christ. The candle is blown out.... He has become a buddha. ’Thy will be done’ – that is the meaning of nirvana. So simply surrender.

And don’t carry these ideas that you have done something wrong or you should not have done this or that; that’s pointless. In unawareness everybody is doing wrong. Either you do wrong or you allow somebody else to do it to you. Both are wrong.

To exploit people is wrong, to be exploited is as much wrong – both are wrong.

But in

unconsciousness, what can you do?

An unconscious person is not really responsible – cannot be – but from now the first ray of consciousness has arisen in you; now you will be responsible. Only with consciousness does one become responsible... and to be responsible is to be religious.

I call these the two r’s of religion: responsibility and relationship. Only a conscious person can have relationship. Others only pretend or others only think that they have relationships. They cannot have, because to relate you need tremendous awareness.

And only a conscious person can have responsibility. I don’t say to do good and not to do bad. I simply say to be responsible, and that’s enough! A responsible person has never done anything bad

– cannot do, by his very nature. So that is not the point – good, bad; that is not the point.

Now I make you responsible. This is just a small ray – it will grow. It will become more and more and it will become a vast, tremendous light in your being.

And I blow the candle out, so the old is completely gone – finished! Never think about it again – it is none of your business any more.

Deva means divine, and agochara means invisible. God is invisible. He is present. He is present in everything, everywhere – but invisible. His presence is almost like absence... and that is the beauty.

Just think, if god were visible it would have been a very ugly world, because if god were visible there would be no freedom left. It is his invisibility that becomes human freedom. Otherwise how would you go astray?

If you wanted to do something wrong it would have been impossible. He would have been present everywhere. He would have looked at you from the flower. He would have looked at your from the stone and he would have looked at you from the stars. He would have looked at you from the child and from the animal and the dog, and it would have been impossible to live! He would have been everywhere! So visible, it would have been a torture, a nightmare.

In his compassion he is present and yet invisible, so that you can forget him, so that he doesn’t become an interference in your way... so that if you choose to go astray, you can go. Your freedom remains absolute. Even if you want to go against him he is not going to interfere. This is tremendous compassion – that gives you total freedom... even to go against him.

If somebody wants to be an atheist, he is free to be an atheist. If god were visible it would be very difficult. Mm? just think.... Life would have been impossible.

But he is present. His presence is like absence, but he is present. So he becomes visible only to those who look for him intently. He becomes visible only to those who are really in search of him.

He does not come in your way, but if you look for him you will find a way to find him. A tremendous quality, a very intense desire to look for him, is needed.... Then your eyes are transfigured. You start looking into the inside of things. Then a rock is not just a rock – it is full of god!

It is said that in Michaelangelo’s life, it happened that he was passing by a marble shop and there were many marble stones there. One big rock had just been thrown out of the shop and he had seen it there for many days. So he asked the shop-owner, ’What is the matter? Why have you thrown this rock? I would like to purchase it.

The shopkeeper was very happy – he said, ’You can have it, and you need not pay anything to me because I don’t think that I can ever find a purchaser for it; that’s why I have thrown it away. You can take it! It is yours just for the asking.’

Michaelangelo took away the rock. After a few months he invited the shop-owner to see what had happened to the rock. The shopkeeper could not believe his eyes. A beautiful jesus, a tremendously beautiful jesus had come out... a very alive jesus. You could almost touch him and feel him. There was a feeling that he was breathing and that he was looking at you.

The shopkeeper said,’What have you done? This is a miracle! And out of that rotten rock!’

And Michaelangelo said,’Now, at least, don’t say that.’

’But how could you do it?’ he asked.

Michaelangelo said,’I have not done anything. When I was passing, jesus called me. He said, ”I have been encaged in this rock for many many years – thousands of years – and only you can release me.” I have simply helped him to come out, that’s all!’

Once you have an eye to see god, you will find him in every rock, ready to be released. You can touch him and you will feel his breathing. You can touch him and you will feel his warmth. You can touch him and you will feel his response.

But that happens only when you really look for him, otherwise not. When you put your total energy into looking, when your whole life energy flows through your eyes... when the intensity is total –

more you cannot do – then he is there, visible. Ordinarily he is invisible.

I give you this name: deva agochara... god invisible. I give you this name as a challenge. He has to be made gochara – he has to be made visible. I give you this rock... you have to release god from it.

And I can see it.... Just a little effort, just a little longing, just a little more thirst, and things will start happening.

[The new sannyasin says that in the West he was doing painting.]

Very good. That’s the right thing to do! That’s very good. My feeling is always for people who are creative, because to me only a creative person can be religious. Non-creative persons cannot be religious. Because god is the creator, and only by being, do you participate with him, otherwise not.

If your worship is non-creative it is not going to help. If your prayer is non-creative it is not going to help.

You can go on doing all the rituals prescribed by all the religions of the world, and they will be just impotent gestures unless you create something – a poem, a painting, a sculpture... unless you do something in the way god is creating. So you have to become creative... of course on a smaller scale. God has painted the whole world with tremendous colour – it is not a grey world; it is psychedelic.

His creativity is infinite; he never repeats anything again. His originality seems to be incredible. He has never recreated a single thing again. He has never created a man like you before and he will never create again. He creates only unique human beings... unique trees. You cannot find one tree similar to another tree – impossible!

If you take one leaf of a tree, you cannot find a second leaf exactly like it on the whole of the earth.

Of course his infinitude, his creativity, has no beginning, no end. But when a man becomes in his own small measure, in his own small way, creative, he participates. He throbs with god’s being... he breathes with him. He pulsates in those moments with his life: in those moments he is not himself.

That’s why creators always feel shy when they have to sign their paintings or their poetry... very shy.

Only mediocres don’t feel shy. Creators always feel, ’How to sign it? I have been just an instrument.

Something has happened through me, but I have not done anything.’

Creativity is not your doing. It is as if you allow god to do something through you... it is a let-go. But in those few moments one is prayerful.

And this has been a calamity on the earth – that up to now religions have not been very creative.

They attracted non-creative people; they attracted negative people. They attracted, somehow, pathological people. So religion up to now has been more or less pathological. It has not been life-affirmative. It has not been ecstatic and not creative.

My whole effort here is to bring a totally new religion into the world – a religion of creativity... a religion which can sing and dance... a religion which can love.

CHAPTER 15

Our home is beyond the stars

15 January 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin who is leaving for the west asks Osho to give her confirmation why she needs to wear orange and mala. She is afraid of her friends’ reactions. But also she is afraid if she doesn’t wear orange and mala, that Osho will not be with her... she doesn’t want to act out of fear.]

Don’t be worried about people. You need not worry about people. It is not a question of my being with you or not – whether you wear orange or not, whether you are a sannyasin or not, I will be with you. But if you don’t wear orange, you will not be with me – that is the problem. And just my being with you is of no help, because in these methods nothing can be done unless you cooperate with me. This is just a gesture of cooperation and nothing else. It is just a gesture from your side of,’Osho, I am with you. Even if you put me in some trouble, I’m ready....’

This is a trouble – going to london and then being in orange will be a little troublesome. That is done knowingly. I create many sorts of trouble – deliberately. This is a deliberate thing.

It is not a question of whether I will be with you or not – I’m with you – but the question is whether you will be with me... whether you will allow me to continue the work that has started in your being.

And this is just a gesture....

The second thing: the positive is yours, the negative is also yours. Negative and positive are not really two contrary things – they are complementary. And everybody starts from the negative because everybody exists in the negative. You have to start from the point where you are. If you are going to walk, you will have to start from the place where you are standing. Mm? you cannot start from somewhere else.

Ordinarily the mind is at the negative stage. The positive will come. These are the three steps: the negative, the positive, and the beyond.

One ordinarily has to start from the negative because that is where humanity exists. We have been brought up and conditioned for the negative. For the whole of your life you have done things because of fear. You were a child and you were afraid the mother would not love you so you did something...

the father would not be happy, so you did something. Because he would be angry and you were afraid, you did something... or didn’t do something because of fear. In school you were reading and working hard because of the fear of failure – the fear that you will be third class... and that hurts.

So from the very beginning everybody is being trained for the negative. That becomes the only motive – that’s where people are. Not a very good situation to be in, but what to do? That’s how we are... that’s where we find ourselves. Now, you are not responsible for the society, for the parents.

You are not responsible for what has been done to you, so there is no need to worry about it. Now you can grow.

Know it well – that this is the situation. You have to grow towards positivity. But remember, again, that I am not teaching a positive thinking or something like that, because any positive thinking carries the negative by the side.

In america there are many thinkers who teach positive thinking – all nonsense! because every positive statement carries the shadow of the negative.

For example, the French philosopher, Emile Coue, used to teach to his disciples that every day they should repeat in the morning, in the night, as many times as possible, that they are healthy, they are perfectly healthy. This is a positive statement. But whenever you repeat that you are healthy, you know you are ill – otherwise why are you repeating it?

Now, one who is really healthy would not go to coue... for what? Ill people will go to him, and he teaches them to repeat, ’I am healthy.’ This is positive. It looks positive, it appears positive: the formulation is positive, the grammar is positive, the linguistic form is positive. But whenever you repeat, ’I am healthy and I am feeling very good,’ why are you repeating it? If you are really feeling healthy there is no need to repeat it; there is no need to verbalise. The very statement shows you are aware of the illness. Now you are trying to hide it, to repress it, to throw it away from your consciousness – to throw it into the unconscious.

Whenever you say anything positive it inevitably carries the negative in it. So the real thing is to go beyond both the positive and the negative. There is a state of mind where neither the positive nor the negative exists... neither the no nor the yes. Then one simply is. That is the goal.

So if it is negative, don’t be worried – use it! Use the negative too, in a positive way. The negative can be used in a positive way; the positive can be used in a negative way.

You can kill somebody by your positive love... your love can be too much. Your love can become such a possessiveness, your love can suffocate somebody. It is very positive – and it can kill! Many children are killed by the parents because they were loved too much, they were protected too much.

The parents were too worried and too careful. Their very care killed the spirit of the child.

And you can use the negative also. Even no can become a step towards yes.

Jesus used to tell a parable about a father who had two sons. He called the elder one and said to him, ’Go to the garden because much work is to be done. The season has come and the fruits are ripe. If you don’t go to work, they will start rotting.’

The eldest said, ’Yes, father I am going... I will go. Immediately I will go’ – and he never went.

The father said the same thing to the younger one and he said, ’No! I have other things to do and I cannot go.’ But then he thought over it, repented deep down, and went.

’Now’, Jesus says, ’who was positive and who was negative?’ The first said, ’Yes, I am just going’

– and never went. He used yes to hide, as a cover for no. He was more cunning, clever. He didn’t want to say no. He said yes to be polite, to be respectful, and never went.

The other was more authentic, more true, less cunning, more real, less phoney. He said, ’No! I have other things to do and I cannot go,’ but then he thought over it, felt that this was not good, and went.

the one who said yes never went, and the one who said no went. It depends....

So right now if you are feeling that there are only negative reasons, let that be so. Use those negative reasons to rise higher... use them as stepping-stones. Don’t look at them as blocking your path –

use them as stepping-stones.

The positive will come. When the positive comes then too use it as a stepping-stone. I want you to remember it – because you seem to be too attracted towards the positive, hence you are so much against the negative. You are infatuated with the positive. The positive is as worthless as the negative! They are both two aspects of the same coin. The whole coin has to be thrown to the dogs.

But first use the negative to go to the positive, then use the positive to go beyond. One day, when my relationship and your relationship have no negative and no positive, then it is really something!

Then it has incredible value. It is not of this earth... it is divine. then something transcendental has entered into your being. and I see that the day will come... it is going to happen.

And it is good that you are alert – but don’t let this alertness become a suffocation. Use it to go higher... always use everything to go higher. Whatsoever happens, always use it to go higher.

We have to go a long way.... Our home is beyond the stars.

CHAPTER 16

Dance is the basic language of religion

16 January 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Prem means love and gayan means singing; love singing. Two things to be remembered about it: one, that love is always in sharing, in singing, in expression. You cannot hoard it. Hoard it and it is gone. Hold it, hoard it, and you kill it. Love is only when it is flowing... it is river-like.

Once the river is not flowing, then it is something else; it is no more a river. River means rivering.

Then it has become a big tank, a lake, but it is no more a river. And that alive quality is no more there – it is a dead thing. A lake is not alive in the sense that the river is alive. A lake is stagnant...

not going anywhere... unrelated. There is no dialogue in a lake. The other is missing... there is no love. It is not moving towards some goal. It is not reaching out – it is just in itself. It is a kind of suicide.

The river is reaching towards the ocean. Maybe it is very far, maybe it is very difficult for the river even to have a concept of it, of what it is, but in an unconscious way the river is moving towards the infinite... seeking its way towards that which is unknown.

Love is river-like, hence many people miss it – because they don’t understand its quality. People are hoarders – they hoard. They want to be loved but they don’t allow their own love being to flow, their own love energy to flow. Or, even if they allow it they allow only so far, with so many conditions attached to it. It becomes almost a bargain – ’you do this for me and I will do this for you’ – but then it is no more love.

Love knows no conditions. It is simply happy in sharing. Love is a luxury – it is not a need. Love is spendthrift – it is not miserly. It is extravagant, overflowing. That’s the delight of it.

So the first thing to remember is that love is in singing it. Don’t hold, don’t keep the song tO yourself

– let it be sung!

And the second thing to remember: gayan means singing, not song. Again, I make the same distinction. A song is something complete. Singing is always incomplete. A song is dead – singing is alive. A song is like a lake, and singing is like a river again. Singing is still trying to reach – still striving to flower. The song has flowered – and the moment something becomes complete, it starts dying.

Either you are achieving more and more life or you start dying – there is no other way. You cannot rest in between the two. Either you become more and more alive or you become more and more dead. There is no other alternative, these are the only alternatives possible. So once something is complete, it starts dying – deterioration sets in. It is a corpse... it is memory.

A song is a memory – singing is an on-going process. A song is complete – maybe even perfect...

but I am not a perfectionist at all. I am all against perfection, because perfection means death. And I say that god cannot be perfect, because he is so alive. God cannot be perfect, because he is still creative. And I don’t think of imperfection as a disqualification. That is the very quality of life.

Just think – a flower has become perfect... now what else is left? The only thing left is that the petals will start falling to the earth, and the flower will die. When it was still imperfect there was some way to go, to be.

God is a flower who goes on flowering and who is never going to be perfect.

Only neurotic people are perfectionists. Perfectionism is neurotic. So I love singing rather than song.

Mm? a song already is a corpse, a memory – it has happened;-it is no more happening. The full stop has come. The sentence is complete. Now there is no more pulsation... it is no more breathing.

Singing is still breathing – it is incomplete and imperfect, and there is still effort to be made. It can be polished... it can grow. It has still some hope and future. And that’s the beauty of it: with hope, there is throbbing, the heart beats. So these two things... prem gayan.

Deva means divine, nartan means dance.... Life is a dance... in many meanings life is a dance. First

– life is not constituted of matter but of energy. And energy is never static – it is always dancing.

Now the physicists also say that there is no rest in the world – nothing like rest exists. Everything is moving, dancing. A tremendous dance is on. The electrons are dancing, the neutrons are dancing, and from those invisible electrons up to the greatest star, there is continuous dance. Only man has forgotten how to dance. Trees are dancing in the breeze, the birds and the animals are dancing.

Only man has forgotten how to dance – and by forgetting the language of dance, man has forgotten the language of religion. Dance is the basic language of religion.

But the so-called religious people are almost dead people... far, far away from dancing. If you start dancing in a church they will think you are mad! One has to be serious in a church. One has to go into church with a long face. To laugh loudly in a church will look like a sacrilege.

Man has created pathological religion. Rather than religion making man healthy, man has created pathological religions just like himself. So I want to bring the dimension of dance back.

Here, this is going to be your very focus: dance as much as you can... sing! And don’t take things seriously – take it easy. It is fun to be alive and it is fun to pray and it is fun to meditate.

So concentrate on the word ’fun’, and remember, the more that you can enjoy life, the closer you are to god. If you can celebrate this moment you are in god!

Through celebration one reaches into the very innermost core of existence. It happens in dance more easily than anything else. In dancing there is more possibility that you will be lost. When you are lost, god is. When you are, god disappears. Both cannot exist together.

The relationship is almost like darkness and light. The room is dark – you bring light in. The moment you bring light in, the darkness is no more there.

I was reading an old sufi story – a parable – about a very ancient cave. The cave had never known any light – it was so dark, and it was hidden so deep in a mountain. The sun started feeling very sorry for the cave. He would come every morning and would knock – but the cave wouldn’t listen.

One day he knocked unusually loud and he said to the cave, ’What are you doing there for centuries and centuries? I come every day and I bring such tremendous beauty and colour and light and love and life and warmth – and you continue hiding there! What are you doing there? Come out! Just for once, just for a change, come out and see what is happening outside. It is no more night. There is no need to hide!’

The cave could not believe it. She had never heard anything about light, colour, warmth, love, life. She had always been there deep in the darkness. She laughed and she said, ’I don’t trust.

Whosoever you are, don’t try to befool me’

But the sun insisted. And just to see whether it was true – very unbelievingly, in great doubt, in a tremendously sceptical mood – the cave came out. It was true, and it was really wonderful – and she had been missing for centuries and centuries!

She was very thankful and she said, ’Now, I listened to you – you listen to me. Come in. You see my deep darkness too – you may not have ever seen it. I cannot offer you anything else. I know only one thing and that is darkness. Come in and have a taste of it as I have tasted. As I accepted your invitation, accept mine.’

The sun came in... and there was no darkness. The cave could not believe it. She said, ’What has happened? It was there – it cannot disappear. It has always been here, for centuries and centuries.

What has happened?’

The sun laughed and he said, ’When I am there, the darkness cannot be – we both cannot exist together. Darkness is my absence.’

Man is the absence of god. Man never meets god, remember! When the meeting happens, man is no more there – only god is there. It happens with the death of man, with the disappearance of man.

And this possibility.... I have looked into all possibilities. This possibility of disappearance is more in dance than in any other activity that man can become engaged in. It is the simplest and the most spontaneous door to the divine. So pay more attention to dancing, mm? Good!

CHAPTER 17

Become an offering, an opening, a prayer

17 January 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Prem means love and achintya means inconceivable. And love is inconceivable through the mind, through the intellect. You cannot think about it, you cannot know it by thinking. There is no way to approach it intellectually. You can know it, but the knowledge has to be totally different than that of the intellect. the knowledge has to be intuitive. The knowledge has to be more total – not only in the head, but spread all over.

Love can be known only as a participant, as an insider. You have to move into it. Unless you are affected by it, you will never know it. and the scientific approach is that you should not be affected by the thing you are going to know. You should remain aloof, detached... unaffected. You should not get involved in it: that is the scientific way to know a thing.

So science knows everything except love. and because the scientific attitude cannot know love, it cannot know prayer. Because it cannot know love, it cannot know the innermost core of human beings, because that core consists of love. Because it cannot know love, it cannot know god, because god is nothing but the ultimate love.

[The disheartened reader with a scientific bent, should refer to ’Shadow of the Whip’ December 3rd, where Osho talks to a biologist about science and meditation. He said, ’... In fact a scientist can meditate better than anybody else...’]

So ordinarily, love is inconceivable. But there is a way to approach it. The way is not of a detached observer – the way is of one who gets involved in it, the way of commitment, involvement. One can know it by being drunk with it. One can know it by being drowned in it. The way is not scientific but artistic – the way of all aesthetics.

A poet knows the flower – not the way a botanist knows it. The poet participates in the being of the flower. He forgets himself in it. The observer becomes the observed and the observed becomes the observer. They both become one. There comes a moment of a poetic participation when the poet and the flower are not two things... merging into each other, melting, overlapping, overflowing into each other. A moment comes when the poet does not know who is who – who is the flower and who is the poet.

In that moment, exactly in that moment, there arises a totally different kind of knowing. It is not good to even call it ’knowing’, because the very word gives a sense of your being aloof.

The same way – the poet’s way – is the religious way. The poet tries to be involved with flowers, with a beautiful face, with the moon, with the stars... with particular manifestations. And religion tries to get involved with the total – not with any particular: the flower and the moon and the river. No –

the religious person wants to get involved in the basic reality which flows as the river somewhere, blooms as a flower somewhere, shines like a star... the substratum of it all. He wants to get involved with that substratum.

That’s what god is – not a person, not someone sitting there in heaven, but the basic substratum of all reality.

And there are two ways to approach: one is the scientific way. It is doomed to fail from the very beginning. It will know many things but it will always miss the ultimate. Before the ultimate it will be simply useless... not only useless, but dangerous too, because it will deny.... When it is not able to know, it will say,’If I cannot know, then it cannot be.’

So try love. Try the approach of the poet and the mystic. That is going to be your way. Love is going to be your way of knowing. To remind you, this name will constantly work: love inconceivable. And all conceivability is of the mind, hence love is inconceivable. You can experience. It is experiencable, but not conceivable....

Prem means love, and angali means a prayer... and many things more. It means offering, too. And literally what you are doing with your hands – this is called angali.

When somebody goes to the temple with hands put in this gesture, it shows,’I am ready to receive you’ – a gesture of receptivity...’If you come, you will not find my heart closed. If god comes, he will find me a ready host. My doors will be open for you – and not only that, there will be welcome. You will not have to knock on the doors. I will be ready, and I will be waiting ecstatically.’

Angali means all this. It is one of the most beautiful names possible. So become an angali, mm? an offering, a prayer, an opening and a receptivity.

CHAPTER 18

In the hands of love even a rock starts throbbing

18 January 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Prem sandesh means message of love... and when you are really in the right space, you become the message of love. Your whole being flowers like love. Your whole life is nothing but love energy then, and whatsoever you touch becomes gold.

With hate, whatsoever you touch becomes poison – hate is a poisoning element. Love is the only elixir, the only nectar. Love is the philosopher’s stone – touch the baser metal and it becomes gold.

And remember one thing – that one can carry this love energy inside oneself without expressing it, but if one doesn’t express it, one will miss it. Without expressing it you will not be able to know it. It is known only when it is shared. It is known only when it is given – there is no other way to know it.

Unless you become a message of love you don’t understand what love is. In loving, love is known.

Only in loving is love known. And those moments when you are loving are very rare. Ninety-nine percent of the time you only pretend that you love – you simply make the empty gestures. You say, ’I love,’ you hug a person, you hold the hand, but you know that there is nothing – the message is not there. The envelope is there but the letter is missing – it is an empty gesture. So remember – never make empty gestures. It is better not to make any gesture rather than making empty gestures.

Never say, ’I love you,’ without meaning it, otherwise those words will become ugly on your lips. By and by those words will become rotten and you will forget what they mean. People go on talking about love and they have forgotten what love is. So never make empty gestures – be authentically true about it.

When you are really in the loving space, then on1y be in it. Then by and by you will know the reality of love, and more and more moments will be coming, because you will enjoy it tremendously – it is the only delight there is. I hen you will be sharing it more and more.

And it is not a question of relationship – remember! Love is not relationship. Love is a state of consciousness. When love is there many relationships happen, but love does not happen because of relationship – relationships happen because of love.

It is not that when you are in relationship, suddenly love happens – no, just the contrary. When you are in a love-consciousness, relationship grows. And a man who loves will be loving even when he is in no relationship. Even when he is sitting alone and there is nobody, he will be loving.

It is just as when a flower has bloomed in the forest and there is nobody to appreciate it – but that doesn’t matter. It has not flowered for somebody in particular – it has simply flowered. If some passerby appreciates it, good! It will go on spreading its fragrance.... Maybe nobody comes to know about it, but that is irrelevant. If somebody comes and smells and feels good, good – the flower will be happy – but the fragrance is not addressed... it is unaddressed. So is love – it is a state of consciousness.

You are loving, and then with whomsoever you come in contact you are loving. Even if you take a rock in your hand, you are loving. And in the hands of love even the rock starts breathing...

throbbing.

Prem yamini... It means a love night. Yamini means night, and prem means love. And there are a few things about love which are in tune with the night and not in tune with the day.

For example, love needs privacy. Its very nature is intimacy. The night is more intimate than the day.

Darkness is more intimate than light. Light separates – darkness joins together. If you come into this garden in the night, trees are not separate. You simply feel trees are there – the fragrance, the coolness – but there is no separation, because darkness joins everything together In the morning when the sun has risen, every tree is separate. The light makes egos, separation...

demarks people, defines. The light is very defining. Darkness is indefinable, indefining. It simply envelops you. Light is always shallow. Howsoever great it is, it is shallow. There is a limit to it.

Darkness is unlimited. It is depth. Light has no depth.

And these are the qualities of love – depth, joining together, melting, going beyond the ego, forgetting the limitations of your body-mind, forgetting yourself, drowning yourself in the infinity. So it is not coincidental that people make love in the night except Americans! (laughter) When you make love in the day, something is ugly about it. And you must have watched – whenever a woman makes love she closes her eyes. She knows better than the man... because it is something inner – it is not something outer that you have to look at. It is something inner, where you have to drop, disappear. Yes, the woman knows better than man – at least she knows better about love. She closes her eyes, because when love is happening, darkness is needed. In the day better to close the eyes... create darkness.

When you look at the other, the other is separate, you are separate. With closed eyes it is easier to melt into each other and become parts of each other. But because man is a voyeur and he wants to look, that’s why ’Playboy’ and magazines like that exist. Man is a voyeur.

The woman is not a voyeur, and certainly her love experience goes deeper than the man. And man will be very much benefited the day he understands that making love is something like meditation.

You close your eyes... you go deeper into your own innermost core, because from there orgasm arises. The other is just a help to bring you to your own self.

Love is coming to your own self via the other, that’s all. It is meditation. In meditation one goes directly. In love one goes via the other – and of course love is more interesting. It is a pilgrimage and the other enriches it. But love is more like darkness – it has depth it has intimacy.

And remember always that light has a cause – darkness has no cause. You cannot cause darkness.

If you need the room dark, what can you do? You can put the light off, but you are doing something to the light – not to the darkness. You cannot do anything to darkness directly. You can bring the light in, you can take the light out, but you cannot bring darkness in and you cannot take darkness out – that is impossible.

Darkness is primitive. Darkness is eternal. Darkness is uncaused. You cannot cause it to be there or to disappear.

And love is also darkness – you cannot cause it. Either it is there or it is not there – you cannot cause it. You cannot order somebody to love. You cannot make it a dictum, a commandment, to love. You cannot make a’should’ out of it. It is an uncaused experience. If you try to cause it, then you will pretend. It will be false, it will be pseudo – and it is better to live without love than to live with a pseudo-love. That’s why I have given you that name....

CHAPTER 19

The master is to shock you out of your sleep

19 January 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

.... Meditation is nothing but a remembrance of the kingdom that is yours, the kingdom that is within...

of the kingship that everybody brings with himself into the world. A reminder is needed. Somebody has to shock you out of your sleep. That is the function of a master. That is what initiation is meant for.

Initiation means that you go to a master and you say,’I am ready – if you shock me, I will be thankful.

If you can hit me hard to bring me to my senses, I will be thankful to you. So I am ready.’ That is the meaning of initiation: do something so that this stupor is broken, so that this drunkenness is broken... so that you can come home, and know yourself.

[A new sannyasin says: I am a therapist, a child therapist... Also working with brain-damaged children and using hypnosis.]

Hypnosis has many possibilities and more people should be working in that direction. Hypnosis has not been yet taken seriously, and it is one of the very fundamental things which can lead to the innermost core of all problems and of all solutions.

The whole western psychology has gone away from hypnosis. In fact psychoanalysis was born under hypnosis. Freud had gone to learn hypnosis, and then by and by he started moving away from it. So psychoanalysis has been going away from hypnosis. It has done much good but one very significant thing has been lost in the process, and people have to come back.

So work harder on hypnosis. Because the work that can be done through psychoanalysis in three or four years, can be done in three or four weeks in hypnosis... and sometimes there are things which cannot be done by any psychoanalytic methods and can be only done by hypnosis.

Hypnosis can go so deep that you can help the person to remember not only about this life but about past lives. That has to be worked out. Work hard in that direction....

One life is not enough because one life is a very fragmentary thing. Unless you know the whole connection, unless you know the whole series, to decide anything about life is going to be very fragmentary. It is almost as if you tear a page out of a book and read it and decide about the whole book according to that one page – that is foolish!

Unless we know the whole interconnection of the past.... First hypnosis has to go deeper into the past, and once hypnotic techniques have become capable enough to enter into the past, then there is a possibility to enter into the future too. But that is possible only when the past has been well mapped-out, planned, measured. Then the same techniques can be moved towards the future.

And when we know the past and the future, only then can we know exactly where we are and what we are doing. Only then can we know the meaning of life – never before it. We can philosophise, speculate – but speculations are just speculations. They don’t really matter much – they are irrelevant. And hypnosis can go both ways.

First the past has to be penetrated and then the same techniques can be used for the future. And once a person becomes capable of going into the past he becomes automatically capable of going into the future, because the process is the same. It seems impossible to enter into the future first, because the very thing seems inconceivable. We think the future is that which is not – that’s not true.

Almost ninety-nine percent of the future is already there. Only one percent of the future is not there, and that one percent of the future very rare people touch. That is the phenomenon of enlightenment.

That is not in the future. That cannot be predicted – that is the only unpredictable element. There is no prediction about when a person will become a buddha – that is not part of the future. Otherwise, the future is as mechanical as the past. It is just the continuity of the past.

So ordinarily everything about the past and the future of a mechanical man can be known. about a buddha’s past everything can be known. Only one thing – if he is going to become a buddha –

cannot be known about the future. Or, if somebody has become a buddha, then you don’t know anything about his future – because his future is freedom. Now he doesn’t exist in time, so there is no reflection in time. And hypnosis cannot penetrate into eternity – there hypnosis is impotent.

There meditation enters.

Hypnosis is a horizontal method. It goes into the past, it goes into the future. It will cover the whole ground. Meditation is a vertical hypnosis – it goes from depth into more depth and into height. It does not move on the horizontal plane. And hypnosis and meditation together is the meaning of the cross, the christian cross – the horizontal and vertical.

A man has to spread himself in both. One has to rise in consciousness vertically, and one has to penetrate all the stuff of the mind – of the past and of the future. The mind is past and future, and consciousness is vertical. Hell and heaven, the lowest and the highest – that is in the consciousness.

And this consciousness cuts every moment of the horizontal and there it becomes a cross. Eternity enters into time every moment, vertically.

First hypnosis has to travel into the past. That is easier, more believable, because we think that the past has happened so we can remember it. Once it has happened, then it becomes believable to enter the future. Once that too has happened, then it becomes believable to turn vertical and enter into height and depth.

Meditation is hypnosis in the vertical dimension, and hypnosis is meditation in the horizontal dimension. Work at it deeply!

CHAPTER 20

Just get more and more drunk with me

20 January 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[To Toshen who had taken sannyas in the West:

.... And do you know the meaning of your name?

That should not remain just the meaning of your name – it should become the meaning of your life too! It means bliss, contentment... and both are aspects of one phenomenon. From one side it is bliss, from another side it is contentment. Only in bliss can one be contented and only when one is contented can one be in bliss – they are not separate. And when I say to be contented, I don’t mean the ordinary thing that is always being preached about contentment.

When the priests all over the world say, ’Be contented,’ they mean to repress... they mean to be false. They mean that if you have a discontent inside you, throw it into the unconscious; don’t take any note of it;... forget about it. Even if your heart is weeping and crying, go on smiling. They create a split. That contentment is just hocus-pocus... and very dangerous, because that type of man becomes dull and dead. I don’t mean that contentment.

For me, contentment has nothing to do with repression. A repressed person can never be contented.

It is not something that you have to do – it is something that follows understanding. Just understand the nature of life – it is tremendously beautiful.

There is no need to ask for more. To ask for more is simply ingratitude. That which has been given is so much, so immense, that it is impossible to ask for more. We are not worthy even of this. All that has happened is a gift – this vast sky and these stars – and we should be grateful. But we are oblivious... oblivious of the obvious.

H. G. Wells used to say that if stars appeared once in a thousand years, people would go crazy. But because they are here every night, there is nobody to accept them.

God is so present in existence – that’s why we miss him. He’s such an everyday phenomenon – you come across him every moment of your life – hence you miss him. And life goes on giving so much that we take it for granted and we start asking for more. From that ’more’ arises discontentment.

So one has not to impose a contentment on oneself – one has just to understand the beauty, the grandeur, the splendour of life. In that very understanding, there is contentment. Not that you impose it, not that you cultivate it, not that you practise it – suddenly it is there and your heart is full with its peace. It is so throbbingly present that you can touch it... you can feel its breath.

So the first thing: contentment is not to be practised, not to be cultivated. Cultivated contentment is no contentment. It is a false, pseudo-entity – beware of it! Only a natural contentment, a spontaneous contentment that arises without any practice... that arises just because you have looked at life.... The love that continuously flows towards you – all that was given to you and you had not asked for it... one is contented.

I am not saying there will not be any sorrow then – no! I am not saying there will not be any tears

– no! Still there will be tears, but once you have understood life even tears are beautiful. They are not against contentment, remember! One can go on crying and tears can go on rolling down the cheeks – and one is contented. Because tears have a beauty of their own. Just think of a man who cannot cry and weep. Something deep is missing in him. He is a dry shore – nothing wells up. He is desert-like.

When a man understands life, even sorrow is deeply accepted and has a depth in it and has something to give to you. Sadness showers – tears bring tremendous silence.

No happiness can bring as much silence as sadness brings – and brings naturally. A happy person is more or less hollow. A sad person has a depth, a substratum to his life. The laughter of a person who knows only how to laugh and has forgotten how to cry will be ugly, vulgar. It won’t have that plenititude of grace in it.

Unless you can cry and weep your laughter will have a certain violence in it – it will not be of love. In your laughter there will be ridicule. Your laughter will be obscene. It will hurt somebody somewhere.

It will simply show your ugliness. It will not show your humour. It will simply show that you are very unaware and very shallow.

A buddha laughs too, but his laughter has the quality of a smile. His laughter has the feminine quality of grace. When an ignorant person laughs, his laughter is very aggressive, egoistic. The ignorant person always laughs at others. The contented person, the person who knows life a little, laughs at himself – at the whole play of life itself. It is not addressed to anybody in particular. He just laughs at the absurdity of it all... the impossibility of it all.

So laughter and tears go together with a contented man – there is no choice. In fact he drops choosing. He remains choicelessly contented. Whatsoever happens he is ready to accept it. When sorrow comes he welcomes it. When happiness comes he welcomes it. He is a host to all opposites.

And all the opposites lose their opposition in his being. In the host they drop their opposition and become complementary.

I am not saying that a contented man is never unhappy – he is unhappy, but his unhappiness is also beautiful, as beautiful as his happiness! And a person who remains in discontent – even his happiness is ugly, vulgar, obscene.

So remember this!

[A sannyasin newly arrived says: I’m very glad I’m here, but I feel like I left a part of my heart in london. It’s making it a little difficult but I’m trying very hard to be present here.]

Don’t try very hard. Just relax! If you try very hard you will not succeed. Trying never succeeds, because trying creates the split. A part of you is still there, and you are trying hard – this is another part. At the most you can repress the first part, but the repressed part will take revenge. Whenever you are not repressing it, it will bubble up again. Don’t do it.

It is natural... it is very natural – it happens to everybody, so there is nothing unnatural about it. When you come from a place where you have lived, loved, where friends exist, the familiar atmosphere, the home, you feel uprooted for a few days – at least for three, four weeks... natural. If it is not that way, that will be unnatural. No need to fight with it – just accept it; it is natural, mm?

You uproot a plant and put it into new soil – for a few weeks it will suffer. The roots will take time to get acquainted with the new soil, to make love to the new soil, to enter into it, to again become desirous of living with this new home. It takes a little time, a gap. In that gap everybody hankers with nostalgia – naturally.

So my suggestion is not to fight – because that will repress the other part. Rather than coming out of it naturally, you will repress it – and the repressed is never destroyed. That can become a very deep bind. You know because you have repressed it, so you know where it is. It is just there in the basement of your being and you know! You will become afraid of going into the basement, because whenever you go into the basement it will be there. You will become afraid of really going deep into meditation, deep into groups, because it will be there. So you will go so far and will not enter further, and that will become a hindrance.

And it is not only about this thing – I am saying in general: don’t repress ever! Accept it – it is natural.

This is new. Within a few days this will become your home so that when you go back to london, for three, four weeks you will remember poona – again it will happen there... natural.

Always remember: never fight with natural things, otherwise perversions arise. Accept the natural and you will never be moving into perversion in any way. The natural has to be accepted and lived.

So relax completely and it will go soon.... And that will be a real going because it will go on its own accord. Rather than fighting with it, put your energy into being here. Dance, sing, meditate, rather than fighting with it – because that means you are still in London. If you continue fighting, you are not here.

And you say that you are trying hard to be here.... you are here! Trying hard will take you somewhere else, because there is no need to make any effort to be here – you are here! If you make some effort to be here, that means you are not here. The very effort will take you far away – and I am against effort.

The whole of humanity is suffering from effort, and everybody has been taught to make effort. Effort comes out of will, and will is nothing but another good name for the ego. The ego is the basic root of all problems, and that has to be dropped. But when I say that it has to be dropped, I don’t mean that you have to fight, because who will fight? You are the ego! So only through natural understanding, by and by.... The more understanding you become, the more things start disappearing.

A woman was brought to me – she is a professor, a very intelligent woman. Her husband died, and she was brought to me after six months, because she was going a little crazy. And nothing was wrong. I enquired into the whole thing. The only thing wrong was this – that when her husband died, she didn’t cry. Intellectually she resisted the very idea of crying. It was below her. ’What is the point?’ she said. ’If somebody is dead they are dead, so what is the point of crying? It is illogical, meaningless. By my crying, he is not going to come back.’

So she tried hard not to cry and not to show the weakness. Everybody appreciated her and people said, ’She is really a woman of strong will!’ And she had loved so much... it was a love marriage.

Against her parents, against her society, against her religion, she had married a Mohammedan –

she was a Hindu. It is very difficult in India... almost impossible! She had fought for it. Her family denied her, the society expelled her, but she fought with it, and then this man died... and she would not even cry and she would not weep!

For three, four months it was okay – she maintained that control. But then the repressed started destroying her from the within... it started like a worm. And then she became shaky... a little crazy.

Mm? the repressed became too volcanic and she was sitting on the volcano.

When they brought her to me, I listened to the whole thing and I said, ’There is no problem... there is no need’ – because the psychiatrist was suggesting electro-shocks.’There is no need – she needs simply to cry.’

And when I told it to her, she said, ’But what is the point?’ I said, ’That is not the point. It is natural!

If you love a man you have to cry when he goes. If you were happy with this man, who is going to weep and cry when he has gone? I am not going to weep and cry for him! You have to bring the balance!’

She understood the point. Immediately she started crying and within a few minutes she was sobbing madly, and started rolling on the floor. Within half an hour the storm was gone and all her craziness disappeared. She was happy, and to see her face was beautiful – those tears washed away the whole dust of those six months. She cried like a child. She had wanted to cry but she had been repressing it.

So never repress anything. That’s why the whole humanity is a little berserk. Never repress. And it is good – if you feel you remember london, cry a little. It is good! London is beautiful... as beautiful as poona! Nothing is wrong with it... but don’t fight!

And bring your total energy into it, because in the fight the energy will be wasted – it won’t help and it will be wasted. And the repressed part always takes revenge, so it becomes a vicious circle: you repress, it takes revenge; you repress more, it takes revenge more. On and on it goes.

Simply relax. Sometimes in the night, sit on the bed. For half an hour think of London nothing wrong... cry a little! You will feel very good... and you will be more here.

Bring your whole energy into meditation, into dancing, singing. And soon... mm? you will find your real family here and real home. I’m here! Just get more and more drunk with me, mm?

CHAPTER 21

Celebrate as if you are already a buddha

21 January 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Prem means love, anshujal means a net of rays, light rays. the whole name will mean a net of love and light rays, a synthesis of love and light. And in fact, that’s how reality is.

If you go through the scientific approach you will find nothing but light, a network of light and rays. If you go through religion you will find a network of love energy.

Life is one – it can be interpreted in two ways: either as light or as love. It depends on the method of your approach. If the approach is scientific you will come to the ultimate stratum of reality, as light. If the approach is of the heart – not of logic, but of intuition, not of reason, but irrational... if the approach is that of prayer and not calculation – you will stumble upon the same reality, because the reality is one, but now your interpretation will that of love. and it is better to understand it in both ways – then a person has a total concept... the vision is perfect....

Anshu means light rays and jal means a net. Try to understand from both sides. Sometimes approach your inner reality as a light phenomenon... just think of yourself as nothing but light.

And sometimes approach your innermost door as love. When you are alone, think of yourself as light; when you are with somebody, think of yourself as love. When you are alone, enter your reality with this meditation – that you are light.

Jesus uses two maxims: in one he says that god is light, in another he says that god is love. When you are alone, become light – that is the way of meditation. When you relate with people become love – that is the way of prayer. And try to catch hold of your reality from both ways. Any one way is lopsided. And there is no need to miss the other, because the other is also tremendously beautiful. Just to feel oneself as light – as infinite criss-crossing waves of light, rays of light; just a net, a beautiful net of nothing but light is so incredibly beautiful. It’s fantastic.

Many people come to reality through this experience, but this is half – one aspect of the truth. And if one remains confined to it, something is missing. This type of man will become very much detached.

He will not relate. He will become an escapist... he will avoid relationship. In fact he will become afraid of relationship, because whenever he is in relationship that incredible experience of light will disappear.

It happens only when you are alone... tremendously alone, unrelated – only then it happens. It is a non-relationship experience. Because of this experience, buddhists, the jainas, all became escapists... renounced the world. Love became a dangerous word. The same happened in christianity too. It should not have happened there, because jesus goes on saying that God is love – still it happened!

The human mind tends to choose. It is very difficult to choose the whole, because to choose the whole means to be choiceless, and the human mind tends to choose one aspect of it. Once you choose one aspect, the other is denied. And then you become afraid of the other, because if the other happens, your first experience will be disturbed, so you become protective.

Sufis, bhaktas, devotees, have experienced the other aspect of reality through love, prayer, feeling, heart, but they become afraid of the light, because light disturbs their love, their relationship. And my whole effort here is to create the ultimate synthesis, so a man is capable of knowing reality in as many ways as it is.

Don’t become obsessed with any partial view – remain available. Even to the opposite remain available, even to the contradictory remain available. If one is available to contradictions and can easily float from one to the other, the mind disappears utterly, because the mind cannot exist with a choiceless awareness. So don’t choose between these two.

When you relate with people, become love – when you are alone, become light. Go on playing with both the ideas, and soon you will see a synthesis arising. And that synthesis is what life is – a synthesis of light and love.

These three l’s are the most important: love, light, life. Just as there are three r’s in the world of learning, these are three l’s in the world of unlearning.

Prem means love, atandra means alertness, no sleepiness, no unconsciousness, awareness.

Love can be unconscious and can be conscious. When it is unconscious it becomes lust. When it is conscious it has a sacred quality to it: When it is unconscious you fall in love. When it is conscious you rise in love; then there is no fall in it.

And the most difficult thing in life is to make love conscious. Everything else is very easy, because love is the most basic thing in life and to transform it means a radical change.

You can change anything else – that won’t matter much unless you change your quality of love. You can change your character – nothing will happen out of that. From bad, you can become good; from a sinner, you can become a saint – and nothing will happen.

The so-called saints and sinners all sail in the same boat. The saint has repressed his sinner, that’s all, and the sinner has repressed his saint, that’s all. They are the same people. One is standing on his feet, the other is standing on his head – that is the only difference. But their totality is the same. The sinner goes on fighting with his saint – continuously there is fight – and the saint goes on fighting with his sinner. The fight is continuous – and fight is destructive.

One can change one’s character. One can become moral, respectable... one can fulfill all the rituals of the religion one belongs to, but that religion remains superficial. Unless your love is changed nothing is changed. Then all else is just befooling others and oneself.

Love is your innermost core... it is your centre. There is no point in changing the periphery –

the periphery is irrelevant. It goes on changing on its own. A bad person becomes tired of his badness and one day starts becoming good. The good man becomes tired of his goodness and starts becoming bad. It is a wheel that moves. Just like day and night and summer and winter, it is a wheel that goes on moving. You are not needed to do anything really. It changes on its own, like the climate.

So there is no need to become obsessed too much with the periphery. The whole energy should be focussed in the centre, and the centre is love.

If love remains unconscious, you fall. Then love remains more a part of the animal world. Then it is a mechanical habit, a biological habit, a chemical habit. And then it brings misery, nothing else. It may promise you much – it brings only misery, anxiety, anguish.

But if love can have consciousness in it, it becomes luminous. Then the house is no more dark. You have wings – you can fly! Then you are not crawling on the earth.

Consciousness gives you wings – and that is the meaning of your name, prem atandra: alert love, love alert. Let that be your secret key which has to be used every moment. Become alert in other things too, but become very very alert in your love. What do I mean when I say become alert in your love?

When you are unconscious, love is just a name. Just on the container’love’ is written, but inside the container there is no love. There are some things – many things – but they are not love. Jealousy is there, possessiveness is there, anger is there, ambition is there, lust is there, a great need to be needed is there – but these are not really love. These are all pseudo-coins.

When you become aware, you suddenly become aware that love cannot exist with jealousy – it is not possible. When love is there jealousy cannot exist. If jealousy exists then love cannot exist – they never go together. But whatsoever is called love is ninety-nine percent jealousy, possessiveness...

more of an effort to dominate or sometimes even to be dominated – an effort to be dominated – but that’s not much difference. That too is a subtle trick of the same game. When love is there, there is no question of domination. Then it is not politics, and one is not ambitious.

When love is there, one respects the other so tremendously, so totally – how can one possess?

Only things can be possessed, not persons. How can you possess a person? A person is basically a freedom. How can you possess a person? If you possess you kill the person – he becomes a thing. That’s why husbands turn into things, wives turn into things – they are no more persons.

So become very alert. Your alertness will destroy many things in you. All that is destructive will be destroyed: jealousy, possessiveness, anger – they will be destroyed. And when all these negative qualities are no more there, something blooms in you that you are not yet alert about... a totally new flower.

That flower is love. It is uncontaminated by your mind. It is incorruptible and it is unconditional.

You simply love. It becomes your very climate... it surrounds you like a perfume. Wherever you go, wherever you move, you move with your love climate around you. And whomsoever comes close to you, shares your love energy.

[A sannyasin’s father has died after a long illness and she says: I have to go somehow more to be with my mother, to finish something there. There is something there that feels so... unfinished emotionally with her, and now seems the time.]

It is always so with parents... very difficult to finish. The relationship is such that to finish it needs great awareness – only then can it be finished. Even the idea to finish it may not allow it to finish.

So don’t carry that idea – that you have to finish it. Just be there... naturally there, lovingly there.

Do whatsoever you can do – because parents have done much, and in the West they are not even thanked for it. Nobody feels any gratitude.

In the East it has been totally different. In the East it is never an unfinished situation. It is always complete, because parents have given so much and children have always been giving as much reverence as possible, as much respect as possible. Mm? that has become so natural in the East, and it has to be so for a very deep reason.

If you are not in rapport with your patents you will not be in rapport with yourself, because parents are not just an accidental phenomenon – they are deeply in your roots... you come from them. Half of your being comes from your mother, half of your being comes from your father. They both will carry on in you. All their conflict will continue in you... all their anxieties will deep down continue. It is for your sake that you have to come to a rapport. And the easiest way is not to make any effort for it.

Effort will never help – it is very artificial. So drop this idea, otherwise you will come back feeling again that something has remained incomplete. Simply drop that idea. Go there....

In fact in the east it has been always said that there is no way to repay... no way. Whatsoever we owe to our parents, there is no way to repay it – it is not possible. This has been accepted. With this acceptance, repayment becomes easy, because then there is no problem. If it cannot be done, there is no problem. So we love, we respect.

Just go there, be there. And she will need you in this moment. When your father is gone she will be in a great sorrow – she will need you. So don’t make any effort deliberately, mm? Just be with her, caress her, care about her... sometimes meditate with her, help her to meditate if she can.

Otherwise just tell her that you will meditate in her room. She can simply rest in her bed – you will meditate. And that very vibration will help her.

Be happy. It will be difficult in a situation, in this situation, but still be happy. Take cheerfulness for her... make the burden light. Help her to accept the situation.

And don’t bother about your relationship, mm? simply don’t bother about it, and suddenly you will see that it is healed. It is indirect – you cannot work directly. And if for two, three weeks you can be very loving and helping and she feels happy that you have come – she feels happy that you have some totally different kind of energy that she needed... that you have been a nourishment to her –

that’s enough. You will feel a rapport coming.

If we can be loving, no relationship remains hanging. Each moment it has a completion.

And I don’t like the word’finished’, because that seems like a dead end, a full stop, as if something has been closed, filled in, and closed... no need to bother about it – finished.

The connotation of that word is not very good – that it was something which had to be done. One is happy that it was finished – that one is out of it, that one need not look back again, that one is able to forget all about it now. That is implied in the word’finished’.

I like the word ’completion’. Completion is never finished in a way and yet it is complete. Each moment of it is a complete moment.

If I die right now, my relationship with you all is complete. If I live, the relationship continues.

Completion is not against continuity. Finishing is against continuity. Completion is each moment but with an opening into the future – it is not a closed thing.

In fact the more complete a relationship is, the more it becomes open – open-ended – and you can look forward; there is no need to look back. Not that it is finished so there is no need to look back

– there is no need to look back because now you can look forward. There is future, there is hope, there is thrill. The next moment will bring another completion. We go from completion to completion, from perfection to another perfection.

And nothing should be finished while you are alive – how and why should it be finished? Everything should continue – that’s what your life is. The more rich it is, the more it is related. If you have thousands of relationships of course you have a richer life, because they all pour their love energy in you and they all share your love energy. You live tremendously enriched in that give and take, in that sharing, in that meeting of energies.

In the West that too is happening – people are becoming very very poor in their relationships. It is becoming a very very small circle every day. First the joint family disappeared – otherwise it was a wider circle. Uncles and aunts were all living together, and children of the uncles and the aunts and the cousins and faraway cousins – they were all living together. It was a big family. One had a better possibility of communion, of relationship. One was richer because of it.

Then the joint family dropped, disappeared. The family became a very small unit wife, husband, children. Now even that is dropping! Even wives and husbands are not living together. Even children are like a burden – servants are taking care of them. The wife has her own life, the husband has his own life. They meet like strangers. The home is no more a home – it is more like a hotel.

At the most a house, but not a home. There is no communion left. Yes, people stay overnight, meet and talk and even make love – but the communion is not there. And people are becoming very very poor.

That’s why these growth groups have become so important in the west. A great need to commune, to relate, to touch people, to be touched by people, exists – and that is fulfilled nowhere. Hence so much impact of encounter, gestalt, psychodrama. They will spread because the family has disappeared and they have become now a temporary sort of family. For ten days you meet in a group – twenty people. At least for ten days twenty people become a family. One wants to relate and belong.

In the East it will be difficult. Unless the family disappears these groups cannot function. People ask me why I am not allowing indians in the groups. I am not allowing because it is pointless! They still live in big groups... the family still survives. Maybe it has disappeared in Bombay and Calcutta –

then I will allow Bombay, Calcutta people by and by but in the greater india it is not a problem at all.

In small villages the whole village exists like a family – everybody is related to everybody; nobody is unrelated. Everybody is taken care of by the community. So it is impossible for indians to conceive of any need to be touched, hugged, and they cannot see... they will think, ’These people are crazy!

What are they doing?’

There is no need to finish any relationship, but there is a need to make every relationship so complete each moment That if you drop dead suddenly there is nothing left which is incomplete. You will not hang... your spirit will not haunt people. You will simply disappear on your path. There will be no need to look backward – everything is complete.

[A visitor says: I came here to be close to you and to feel who you are... I think I have a lot of hesistancy because of my life in California, and I feel torn between the two.]

It is natural. You have a life there and now a new life is starting, but soon a synthesis arises. In the beginning you feel torn apart, because you have lived in a certain way with certain ideas – you have a certain pattern of life – and then you come to me and a totally new thing starts taking root.

You will be tom apart in the beginning, but once you have come to me there is no way to go back.

Even if you go to california – that doesn’t make any difference; you will be tom apart. And it is better to be here and tom apart than there and tom apart! Because here there is the possibility of achieving a higher synthesis in which california and poona can become one.

And hesistancy is natural – everybody hesitates, because one is moving into the unknown. The mind never hesitates if you are moving in the same old rut. You know the ways... you are acquainted with the territory; the geography is known so you can go on moving. You can go on moving and remain in your sleep, because there is no need to be awake – the territory is so well-known. You can move like a sleep walker.

The problem arises and then the mind hesitates with something new. Then you cannot move like a sleepwalker – you have to become awake. The new is challenging, and the mind is always for the old. That’s why it is for the old – because the old is comfortable, convenient. The new is dangerous.

Who knows? There is no guarantee – it may prove worse than the old!

So the mind says,’Keep to the safe side. Move with the old – never go to the new unless the new fits with the old.’ But when the new fits with the old it is no more new. It is not new at all – it is just another modified form of the old... maybe a little decorated here and there, but it is still the same thing.

So everybody who comes to me hesitates. The more intelligent a person the more hesitation there will be. But if the person is really intelligent he will accept the challenge in spite of the hesitation. He will say,’Okay, there is hesitation, but I have to go and see. I have to investigate, explore.’

You cannot be back in your state now – there is no way! Once some desire to grow has arisen, once an enquiry has entered your being, once you have started dreaming about the unknown, about future possibilities – call it religion or whatsoever – once a dream has arisen in you, there is no way to go back. You have to follow the dream.

You can delay. The more you delay, the more you will suffer. But these dreams are such that they haunt.. Blessed are the ignorant – because they don’t have any dreams... they don’t try to reach into the unknown. But they are not really alive.

Life is always when there is challenge. Life is always between the old and the new. When you take the step, when you take the jump, you are alive. Sooner or later the new will become old again –

then you have to jump again. And this goes on.

Once you have learned that life exists only between the old and the new – just in the middle, in the gap, in the interval – then you move every moment. Because you know that is the only way to be alive – to be really alive! Otherwise people live dead lives. They are already in their graves. They were not really ever born... they are still in the wombs.

So don’t be a coward – be courageous, and take the jump in. If you have really come to feel me, then the only way to feel me is by trusting me; otherwise you cannot feel me. If you remain far away, standing like a spectator, you will not be able to feel me. You have to become an insider... you have to become part of my family, then you will be able to feel me. By becoming a part of my family you will become open and vulnerable. You will allow me to enter your heart – otherwise you won’t allow.

You will just remain on the periphery.

So become a sannyasin – don’t be afraid! Mm? Take the jump right now – there is no need to wait.

Or would you like to think about it?

[She answers: What do you mean when you say surrender?]

You don’t surrender anything – you simply surrender; your ego, that’s all.

Nothing else is

surrendered.

[She asks: How do I know what that is?]

By surrendering because that is the only way to know it. If you ask me how the tea tastes, I will say...

taste it! What else can I say? There is no way to define the taste of tea – such a simple thing, but you have to taste it. Let surrender be your cup of tea – taste it!

By surrendering one knows what surrender is. By loving one knows what love is. There is no other way! Intellectually there is no possibility to understand – only existentially. If you have not loved and you ask somebody,’Before I love I would like to know what love is....’ How can it be explained?

Surrender is a love... the greatest love there is. Surrender in fact is not the right word – in english there is no right word for it. In sanskrit we have the right word – it is’samarpan’. It means offering oneself in deep love and trust. The english word ’surrender’ is ugly. It is used in reference to war.

Adolf Hitler surrendered, Germany surrendered, Japan surrendered. It is a sort of defeat.

In sanskrit, samarpan is not a defeat. It’s a great moment of rejoicing – that one has offered oneself.

It is a dedication. If you have had a small glimpse of somebody further ahead than you, you offer yourself – you say, ’Hold my hand,’ – that’s all. And all else will come by and by.

And it is not just by Lying down under a tree and not doing anything – no! You will remain the same

– only one thing will be missing. That one thing is the ego concept. And by dropping the ego your individuality is not effaced. In fact by dropping it you will become more of a individual.

You can see my sannyasins.... By surrendering themselves they have not become zombies. They have become more authentically individual. They were not individuals before – they were zombies!

They were drugged with their ego! They dropped the ego – now they can celebrate... that fetter is broken.

And I am here to give you freedom, so by surrender I don’t mean that you are going to become a follower – no! Even that word is not good. With me, anyone who falls in love becomes a companion

– he is not a follower. Because I don’t say to imitate me and I don’t say to be like me. I don’t give you any ideal to follow and I don’t give you any ideology. I simply make you free of all ideologies and free of all ideals... free of all conditionings.

You surrender the ego, and I give you back your freedom.

[Osho gives her sannyas.]

Deva means divine, vilas means play; divine play. And that is one of the most fundamental secrets of the eastern teachings – that life should not be taken as work but as play. God has not created the world... because the word’creation’ seems to be too serious – he is playing. It is his leela, his play. The eastern concept is very simple, non-serious, more joyous... closer to the great beauty that surrounds – the flowers, the birds, the rivers, the ocean. Everything seems to be in tremendous play.

And god is not doing something – it is a game... it is hide and seek. Once you take life as a play the total concept changes. Then the anxiety, the tension of reaching somewhere, is dropped.... There is nowhere to arrive.

Life is not going anywhere – it is simply here. There is no goal. It is not goal-oriented – each moment is the goal. The journey is the goal, and each moment is of tremendous celebration. There is no need to wait for tomorrow – that tomorrow we will celebrate... when we have become buddhas or christs then we will celebrate – no! Then you will never celebrate. Each moment we have to celebrate... as if we are buddhas already. In the beginning it is’as if, but soon you realise that it is not an’as if – it is a reality. We have not recognised ourselves as we are.

’Deva vilas’ means to take life as fun... divine fun, a beautiful joke! Theologians are very serious people, and seriousness is an illness – it is a sort of neurosis. More laughter is needed, more humour is needed.

And I am trying to create here a totally new kind of religion – where laughter is not against prayer.

You can laugh and pray together. Your laughter can become prayer – your prayer can because laughter. Then – only then – does each moment become luminous, glorious. Then a splendour enters your life... from very small things.

Eating can become a sacrament and taking a bath can be meditation. Just going for a morning walk is incredibly holy! And there is no need to go to the church or to the temple, because the whole existence is his temple. and there is no need to be against your body, or anti-life in any way, because your body is his temple – he is hiding here. A great life-affirmation arises.

Serious people become negative. Serious people become so much obsessed with god that they are ready to sacrifice life for it – but god is in life! He is as much immanent as he is transcendent. He is in life – of course he is more than life, too, but the way goes through life. He is in love – he is more than love too, but the way goes through love. It does not go against life, it does not go against love.

So a great affirmation is needed.

.... Make yourself less serious. Think less, feel more. Do less, dance more. Act less, play more.

Acting will do, but to act is not good. and once this is understood, things start changing.

CHAPTER 22

When the dance is total, the ego is nullified

22 January 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva means divine, godly, and shalabha means a moth. And in indian mythology and in indian poetry too, the moth is a metaphor. Just as the moth is attracted towards light, knowing well that coming closer to the flame is going to be his death.... Still, it is impossible to resist – the moth goes into the flame and dies. That has become a very significant metaphor in the east.

Man is attracted towards god like a moth is attracted towards light, knowing well that it is going to be his death. But only through that death is resurrection. The ego dies, but something eternally beautiful is born out of it.

It is a sacrifice worth making. It is a bargain, but obviously great courage is needed because you will never be able to see the resurrection. You will be gone before it happens. Hence, trust is needed.

There is no way to be logically convinced about it. It has to be taken on faith – because you will not be there, you will be gone. Only when it happens – then.

There is a discontinuity – you are no more – and then something happens for which you are seeking and searching. That longing is fulfilled but the one who was longing is no more. The thirst is quenched but the one who was thirsty is no more.

God happens, but we disappear – in that very happening! In fact that is the condition for that happening – that we should disappear.

The moth is really a beautiful metaphor. Man is attracted towards the divine flame. No man, who is worth the name, exists who is not seeking the divine in some way or other. It is impossible to be without being a seeker. You may be seeking in the wrong direction – that’s possible – but the search is there.

A human being as such is the search. It is not something accidental. It is not something that you can choose or drop, choose or not choose – that is not the question at all. It is not within your power to not choose. It is intrinsic... it is built-in.

So, many times religion has been destroyed – again and again it revives. It is not accidental – it cannot be destroyed. It is very essential. It is as essential as life itself – maybe even more essential than life, because there have been people who sacrificed their life for it. There must be a greater value in it than that which life itself carries.

So everybody is seeking. Somebody is seeking in the world – he will not find, but because of that we cannot say that he is not seeking. He may be seeking in the illusory – he may be frustrated, but his search was true. The direction wrong, the methodology wrong, the goal misplaced – but his search was true. Somebody is seeking in a relationship and somebody is seeking in prestige and power. They are all seeking one thing – how to become a god... how to be a god.

They may not say so, they may not be even aware of it... they may not have ever thought about it so articulately, but deep down somewhere in their unconscious a shadow is lurking... a longing, a dream.

Humanity is born with that dream – and unless that dream is fulfilled, man remains a wanderer...

goes on knocking on many doors and being refused... goes on searching in many directions and again and again is frustrated. But the search continues! From one life to another, the search continues.

If one is ready to die, the search can be fulfilled any moment.

People want to seek the truth but they are not ready to sacrifice themselves – they are not ready to pay for it. They want it for nothing – that’s not possible....

Your name will remind you always that you have to become a moth. God is the flame. You have to take the risk of dying in god – disappearing, utterly disappearing. And there is no way to be convinced about the outcome; there is no guarantee.

If you can see that guarantee in my eyes, it’s okay – otherwise there is no guarantee. That is the meaning of trust – getting into a deeper, more intimate relationship with a master, about whom you feel from the very bottom of your heart, ’Yes, he has arrived!’

There is no way to bring that conversion – no intellectual discussion is going to help. Intellectual conversion is not a conversion at all – only the conversion of the heart.

If you can feel it in me and trust me, the journey will become very very smooth. And remember –

belief is not faith. Just as knowledge is not wisdom, exactly like that, belief is not faith. Belief is bogus. A man is a Christian by belief, a man is a Hindu by belief, but the first disciples of Jesus were not with him because of belief, but because of faith.

While I’m here those who are with me can only be with me because of faith. When I’m gone people will be with me because of belief. Faith exists only when a master is alive. When you can feel his pulsation, then faith is born. Faith is an alive communication. The impact of the existential is faith.

Believing out of fear, out of conditioning, out of the accident of birth, is not faith. And belief is not religious either. It is a very false substitute, a false coin. You can carry it and you can believe that you have it, but whenever there will be real need you will find that it is pseudo and that you cannot purchase anything with it – not god, not prayer, not meditation, not love. Nothing can be purchased out of it. In the first place the coin is false.

And there is no way of cheating in the inner world – only real coins work. So remember this....

[The sannyasin says: I’d like to stop making myself up. All my energy is going into that... ]

You just wait, mm? It will disappear. Nothing has to be done about it. There are a few things about which nothing should be done, because if you do anything you make them persist. This is one of such things. Whatsoever you do, just the contrary will be the result.... So leave it alone.

It is like sleep – if you are not falling asleep then simply forget about it... don’t try! because whatsoever you do is going to disturb your sleep more. Just forget about it! It is none of your business to worry about it. You just rest in the bed, enjoy rest, but don’t think about sleep at all. Any moment when you are not thinking about it, it enters from the back door. It always comes from the back door – you cannot force it from the front door.

Now, if you are doing something continuously – like making yourself up, and playing a game – if you try to do something, even that will be another game. It will look on the surface as if it is against the first game; it will be simply a continuity of the same game – under a new guise!

Simply don’t do anything about it. If you don’t do anything, you don’t feed it. If you do something, you feed it – it is an ego game. If you do anything, every act on your part will feed the ego.

... So don’t do! Simply dance – and not dancing because you have to destroy this game. It has nothing to do with your game... your game is irrelevant. Let it be there – if it continues, let it continue.

We are not worried about it, not bothered about it. Simply dance, meditate, relax, meet with people.

Now you are part of my family. Leave it to me – I will destroy it. You will not be able to do anything about it. If you do anything, one day you will find that it is again there – the same game in a new name.

This is one of the most basic things to understand – that you cannot do anything about the ego directly. It disappears. If you are too engaged in something deeply, it disappears... but not if you are doing something for its disappearance – then you are not engaged totally.

For example if you dance totally and you enjoy the dancing, in those moments you will become aware that there is no ego... that you are not putting yourself higher than others... that there is no question of comparison... that you are not interested in that game at all – it simply does not exist.

When the dance is total, the ego is nullified – it is like zero.

And then you will understand how the ego can be dropped. Get into each moment as totally as possible and you will not accumulate the ego.

A man who lives totally each moment has no problem with the ego – it does not arise. The ego arises out of your partial involvement. Total involvement – it is gone! Nothing is left behind.

So simply meditate as totally as possible... dance, sing and meet with people. And this is none of your business – I will see to it!

[The tathata group is present. One member said he was confused because: I’m just not... I’m just not sure what I’m doing here.]

Except me, nobody is sure! And nobody can be sure, because you are not even sure of who you are, so how can you be sure of what you are doing here? And it is not a question that is only relevant here. Wherever you are and whatsoever you are doing, the same question will be relevant there too.

You may not ask the same question if you have become too much conditioned in a certain situation, but the question is there too.

In fact, what is one doing here on this earth? Why does one get up every morning and why does one go to the office and do things and earn money – for what?

People don’t ask it, because to ask it is very inconvenient and one becomes very nervous about even asking it. So people don’t ask it – they avoid it... they keep themselves engaged. But when you change a situation – for example, you have come here.... Now this whole situation is new and things that you are doing are so new that the question arises. In the old situation the question was not arising but the question was there... was as relevant as it is here.

So this is part of this whole game that we are playing here – to make you aware that whatsoever you are doing is meaningless unless you come to know who you are. Whatsoever you are doing is meaningless, is absurd, cannot have any significance. Maybe it is an occupation and you keep yourself engaged in it to avoid yourself, but otherwise the question is irrelevant: what are you doing?

If you become aware of this question you will feel a little confused. In fact this confusion is better than the clarity that was there before. That was not clarity – because a clear mind can never be confused. The confusion was there in your unconscious – now it has bubbled up, surfaced. The new situation has forced it to come up. And it is good – to be confused is good because it will bring awareness.

To ask such confusing questions is good. It needs courage even to recognise the fact of what we are doing here. It needs courage, because if you go on asking it too pertinently, you will feel that you will go mad, because no answer seems to come. And no answer will satisfy you.

If you go on asking this question deeply, persistently, you will come to a point beyond which there is no answer. The question is with you like an arrow in the heart – penetrating, painful, agonising. You cannot go back and there is no way ahead – a cul-de-sac or a precipice.

If a person asks any question persistently, he will come to a point where no answer is possible.

That’s why philosophers go mad many times.

It happened to friedrich nietszche, because he persistently asked questions which people avoid and then he came to a point where no answer seemed to be valid. The question was there like a fire burning his whole being, and there was no answer! It burned his whole consciousness – he became mad! People avoid – these questions are maddening.

But in the east it has never happened, because once we ask the question, ’What am I doing here?’

and you don’t find any answer to it, we change the question. We come to a basic question, ’Who am I?’

In the west it has never happened. They go on asking the same question. When there is no answer it is better to ask a more fundamental question. Maybe there is the real answer ’Who am I?’... not

’What am I doing?’ Because doing is secondary – being is primary. In the first place you are, then you do something. You cannot do if you are not – although you may not do even if you are. So doing is non-essential – being is very essential. Maybe the answer to ’Who am I?’ is in being.

Rather than asking, ’What am I doing here?’ ask, ’Who am I?’ And all these groups are to corner you into that place, into that space, where this question becomes the most significant thing in your life

– so significant that unless you have answered it, everything seems to be futile. Yes, I understand

– the confusion comes, but confusion is good and healthy, because only through this confusion will there be a transformation.

And in the East.... If Friedrich Nietzsche had been in the East he would have become a buddha –

he would not have gone mad. The same questions have been asked in the east, but once we find that this is a secondary question.... Maybe the answer is not coming because in the first place the question is secondary. You have to ask a more fundamental question.

For example if you cut leaves off a tree and the tree does not disappear, that simply means that the leaves are not the roots. So better find out the roots and cut the roots – only then does the tree disappear. You are cutting leaves – it is not going to disappear. On the contrary, it may become more dense; more leaves will be coming out. You cut one leaf, three leaves will come out. You have to cut the root.

So this question – of what you are doing here – will haunt you. And not only here – now you can go anywhere in the world and this question will remain with you: ’What are you doing?’ This is not a confusion that you can drop easily. Once it has arisen, it cannot be dropped easily. You have to go beyond it, only then is it dropped. You cannot go back – there is no way.

And this confusion will bring a maturity to you. It will be hard – inconvenience will be there, it will be uncomfortable – but these are the prices we pay. And once we have paid and we become worthy of receiving the answer, it is tremendously fulfilling.

So don’t be worried, mm? This is part of my work here – to confuse you and then to help you to find a clarity on a higher plane... a real clarity!

People look as if they are living a very unconfused life – just false pretension! They are living below confusion, that’s right, but not above confusion.

With this confusion, a new sprout of life is trying to explode in your being – accept it!

[Another group member says that he had previously done the encounter group and still had a left-over feeling of fear for that leader – because he seemed like a magician.]

So you have to repeat encounter once more, mm? Something is still incomplete. And this time fall into the trap of the magician completely!

You resisted a little, that’s why....

Repeat it any time you feel like it, but repetition will be very good. It has to be completed – the fear has to go, otherwise something is hanging, and it needs to be completed. Otherwise it will go on knocking inside and that is not good. If the group is complete you will feel tremendous love for the leader – that’s how it should be. If fear remains, that means the group is not complete.

Fear is the same energy that becomes love when something is complete. It is the same energy...

fear and love are the same energy. That’s why when you love a person, you are not afraid of him.

That’s why when you fear a person, you cannot love him.

Christian, Jews, have been telling the world, ’Fear god,’ and they go on saying, ’Love god’ – this is absurd! A religious person is known as a’god-fearing person’ – which is foolish, because if you fear god you cannot love. Then you have not even come to an understanding with god.

Fear means you are hiding something, resisting something, fighting. Fear means you are afraid that you will be caught. Fear means you are guilty. Fear means you are not yet able to be naked, totally naked before him. And if you cannot be totally naked before god, where are you going to be totally naked?

Whenever there is fear it simply means that a process has remained incomplete. Christianity and Judaism are incomplete religions because they still think in terms of fear. Sufis or Hindus are far ahead. They think not in terms of fear but of love.

Love certainly is a higher value – fear is no value at all. Fear is an anti-value. If you fear a person you can hate him, but how can you love? And once you try to find out the reason why you are afraid, you will find that something has remained incomplete. You resisted – you were afraid that he might become so powerful over you that you might not be able to get out of his power; that’s why the fear has remained.

This time you simply go headlong. Tell him, ’Magician, do whatsoever you want to do – I am totally available.’ You will love him and you will come out of it. Mm? Good!

[Another group member said: I had some experience during the group and here in the lecture when my body became very big. When I closed my eyes I had the feeling that my body expanded a lot, became very big.]

Very good! Then you try it deliberately every night. Just sit in your bed for five minutes, ten minutes.

Just sit in your bed and visualise with closed eyes... feel that your body is becoming bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger. Mm? make it as big as possible – so big that it almost starts touching the walls of the room.

You will start feeling that now you cannot move your hands – it is difficult... your head is touching the roof. First for two, three days just feel this; then start spreading out of the room. Fill the whole house, and you will feel that the room is inside you... two, three days. Then spread outside the house – fill the whole of Poona, and feel the whole of Poona inside you. And then fill the whole sky, and feel the sun and the moon and the stars moving inside you.

This you continue for ten, twelve days, mm? By and by, slowly, fill the whole sky. The day you have filled the whole sky, start the reverse process. For two days again, become small. In the reverse process, sit and then start imagining you are becoming very small. Just move the other way. Your body is not as big as it appears – it has become one foot high. You are just like a tiny toy – and you will feel it. If you can imagine the hugeness, you can imagine the smallness. Then even smaller –

so small that you can hold yourself in your hand. Then even smaller... then even smaller. And within twelve days bring it to such a point that you cannot find yourself. You have become so atomically small that it is impossible to find where you are.

Make yourself as huge as the whole space and then make yourself as small as an invisible atom –

twelve days one, then twelve days the other.

Report to me on the twenty-fifth day, mm? You will feel so beautiful, so happy and so centred that you cannot imagine it.

This is one of the meditations. It has happened naturally – that means it will fit you very very easily.

So start for ten minutes every night and then go to sleep, mm? Good!

[Another group member says: I feel like the whole of my life somebody told me something to do and I did it, and I didn’t want to. And now I came here – you told me also to do groups. I want to do them, and somehow I also.... ]

I understand, mm? And I will make you free soon. I can make you free right now – but that won’t help. I know it happens – because from the very childhood, if somebody has told you do something, and always told you to do, you become a little resistant. One wants to rebel against it. One wants to assert one’s freedom. You come to me in search of freedom, and then suddenly I say,’Do this, do that.’ You start feeling again the same thing. But these things are told to you to do so that you can be allowed real freedom – otherwise there is no question: you can stop doing, you need not do, but that won’t help. You will remain the same.

The purpose is different. Your parents were telling you to do something because they wanted you to be obedient. They wanted you never to go against their pattern, never to go against their style of life. They wanted you just to be replicas, ditto copies – their extension, their projection. They wanted to live through you. One day or other they will have to leave the world, but you will live as their representative. Mm? they were seeking a sort of immortality through you.

That’s why children are loved – not for their sake, but because the parents are seeking a sort of immortality through them. They will be gone, but a part of them will live, and they would like to condition the part to be absolutely like them – that was their purpose.

Here, there is nothing like that. I am not telling you to do certain things because I want to condition you. In fact, the only way to uncondition you now is that you should be put through a few processes so that your conditioned mind is destroyed and your freedom can assert itself. Your parents, your society, have made a wall around you. Here I am trying to destroy that wall. But work has to be done, otherwise the wall will not be destroyed.

Once the wall is destroyed you will be completely free under the sky – then there is no need. And you will feel it soon. If you can do a few groups, you will start feeling that smaller and bigger chunks of the wall are being removed by and by... more air is coming in, more sunlight, and you can have a few glimpses of the faraway stars in the sky. You can breathe in a different way and you can be in a different way. A new life will start happening... and then you will understand what I am doing here.

But it is up to you!

I have no investment in you. If you want not to do, perfectly good. Don’t do any groups, don’t do any meditations, or whatsoever you want to do, do. But that is up to you! This much I should tell you as a caution – that you have great walls around you. They have to be broken – and work is needed. It will not take long if you really work hard. If you resist – don’t work hard – it will take long.

So if you really want to be free, work hard so that within a few months you completely shatter the whole wall and come out of it, mm?

So what do you say? Would you like to do something or not to do anything?

[She answers: Yes, I booked for tao and the primal scream.]

Very good, then later on we will see. Do these two first, mm?

But do really hard work, and forget your parents – because they are still disturbing. They have told you to do something, and you carry that hangover here; then they are still interfering. Forget about them! Here nobody is your parent.

This is a community of a certain type of people who want to be free of all conditionings. Alone it is difficult – together it becomes easier. Alone one becomes very afraid. Hence, I have created this device of sannyas – so that you can feel a belonging, and you are not alone. So many orange people and you know that you are not alone. Otherwise, the night is very dark, and the path is very alone – you may get scared. And if you get scared, you will again shelter in the old – there is no other way.

So I am creating an alternative society which can give you freedom, allow you freedom – because all people around here are searching for freedom. They are not in any way putting their trips on anybody – they are in search of their freedom.

And remember – if you want to be free, you have to give freedom to others; otherwise you can never be free. If you make a slave of somebody, in the very process you become a slave to him. So nobody is interested here in making anybody a slave – everybody is interested in becoming free.

Hence they have to help you to become free too, because your freedom will be their freedom.

CHAPTER 23

You are just part of a big orange ocean

23 January 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva means divine, and vasundhara means the earth; divine earth. And I give you this name for many reasons: one, the earth represents the feminine mind – the sky represents the male mind.

The feminine mind is very earthly, and every woman has to understand the meaning of the earth because that is her innermost core of being.

The second thing.... The earth seems to be the least divine thing, but that’s just an appearance – it is the most divine.

In the East we have a very ancient parable. God created man out of the earth and then he breathed into the man and the man became alive, conscious. God asked his angels, ’What do you think about him?’ One sceptical angel said, ’Everything is okay, but I wonder, why have you chosen earth to make man? Why not gold, why not silver? At least you could have chosen steel – but why earth?

Why the lowest? And you say that man is your highest creation – then why the lowest?’

God laughed and he said,’Only the lowest has the possibility of the highest... only the lowest can grow to the highest.’ And secondly, god said,’Have you ever seen anything growing out of gold? Only things grow out of earth.’

So earth is a possibility to grow. All evolution depends on the earthly element. Gold may be valuable but it is dead. Earth may not look so valuable, but it is the very source of life.

God said,’Put a seed into gold and the seed will die. Put the seed into the earth and the seed will disappear and a tree will appear instead. There will be great rejoicing, because great beauty will come out of it – many flowers and many fruits and much fragrance.’

That which was hidden in the seed, the earth helps to explode. The earth is explosive – and so is man!

Man is not yet... man is a promise. Man is not a being but a possibility. Man is not yet at his peak but only at the beginning. And earth has to be understood because we have to grow our roots in the earth. If you grow your roots in the earth, you grow into the sky. The earth is divine – the lowest, but the lowest carries the possibility of the highest.

[A sannyasin couple recently returned from the west say that they have been moving away from active meditation towards passive meditation together.]

If you continue both together the results will be deeper. What happens is that when you do the active meditation, you create the possibility to move into an inactive meditation. It is just like a pendulum.

The pendulum goes to the left; it creates the momentum to go to the right. It is just like in the day you work hard; in the night you sleep very deeply. Life is very paradoxical – it is not linear logic; it is dialectical. It goes through thesis, antithesis. It moves from the opposite.

If a person thinks that now he is sleeping very well in the night so it will be good to rest in the day too, sooner or later he will find that sleep has disappeared – because the need is not there. He will start becoming a victim of insomnia.

That’s why insomnia becomes prevalent only when a society attains to a certain affluence – never before. When people are not working hard and their work is such that they can do it without putting any strain on their bodies, sleep disappears. This seems very illogical.

It seems logical that if they rest the whole day – the whole day they practice rest – in the night they should be going deeper into rest... but life does not work that way. And it happens to many people.

When you do active meditations, by and by, you will start feeling that now when you sit silently it is going so well, so why not stop the active? If you stop the active, within a few days you will feel that the passive meditation has also disappeared.

Right now, continue. I only suggest dropping the active meditation when even the passive is not needed. Because they are polars, they are joined together – they are two aspects of the same coin.

A moment will come.... Just now you have started feeling that the active is not needed – very good.

It is a great step – the feeling, but if you follow the feeling you will be missing something. Soon you will find that now the passive is not going very deep. Let the passive go deep – the active you feel is no more needed, but continue it as a primary step towards the passive meditation. Let it be a part of the passive meditation.

Continue it not for itself now but to create your energy so that you can move into the passive meditation, and continue the passive too. More emphasis should be paid now to the passive, but this should be continued like an exercise.

One day when you feel that now even the passive is not needed, you can drop both, but not before it.

[A sannyasin of two weeks says: I feel that I must drop sannyas]

Mm... there is no problem in it.

[The sannyasin answers: It’s like greed for enlightenment that you talk about.

And it feels

uncomfortable – it feels wrong to get into that pattern again... ]

... But how will you be out of the pattern by dropping sannyas? If you can be it is perfectly good.

That’s what my effort is – that people should get out of patterns – but how will you, by dropping sannyas, get out of the patterns, tell me?

[The sannyasin answers: The point is that I find the same patterns in myself from before.]

Because you are the same – it has nothing to do with sannyas. Drop yourself if you want to change.

By dropping sannyas you will be the same! You were a non-sannyasin two weeks ago. Just think about it – two weeks ago you were a non-sannyasin. You can immediately drop it and become a non-sannyasin. You were uncomfortable, you were in a pattern – you will be the same again. So how are you getting out of your old pattern by dropping sannyas?

You will get out of your old pattern by dropping your ego! And that is the meaning of sannyas! In fact you are not a sannyasin – that’s why I am so easily ready for you to drop, because you have never been a sannyasin! For these two weeks you think you have become a sannyasin, but to become a sannyasin means to drop the ego.

If you have dropped the ego, who is there to drop the sannyas now? You have not dropped yourself and you create that problem – that you have not changed. Unless you drop there is no way to change. And now you are so easily ready to drop the sannyas – you are not so easily ready to drop yourself. And the reason that you are giving is absolutely bogus!

If that is the real reason, you should think of dropping your ego! You understand me? Because it is such simple arithmetic. The question is not the sannyas or no sannyas – the question is that you have lived in a certain pattern and you want to get out of it, mm? Now, many things have to be understood

First, this effort to get out of it may be just a part of your pattern. Then it will be very difficult, because who is this one who wants to get out of the pattern? Maybe it is just part of the pattern. Then you will be in a dilemma – you will be chasing your own tail. And the more you jump, the more the tail will jump. And you will go crazy!

The second thing: you have taken sannyas, but it has not happened. It is not necessarily that just by changing your clothes and taking a new name, you become a sannyasin. Something deeper has to happen – and that something deeper can happen only if you understand the meaning of it and work it out. The ego has to be dropped!

You are uncomfortable because your ego is feeling uncomfortable; otherwise there is no discomfort.

It is the ego that is creating discomfort. You think yourself something, somebody – and sannyas has effaced that. That is the whole meaning of giving you the same colour and the same dress, the uniform – so you cannot be somebody in particular, so you are just part of a big orange ocean, just a wave in it, nothing special... and you have the idea to be special. That may have been the cause of your taking sannyas.

When people take sannyas they do it for so many reasons that they may not be even aware of. A few people take sannyas because they think that they will become very important – they are sannyasins.

If a person takes sannyas to feel that he is somebody, sooner or later he will be frustrated – he will see he has become a nobody rather than becoming a somebody. Then he is ready to drop the sannyas. But then too the mind plays cunning games; then too he is not true and honest.

You cannot say the true thing about why you want to drop it. Maybe you don’t even know it –

maybe it is very unconscious and very subtle and you cannot catch hold of it. Now you are finding rationalisations. You say’I have been uncomfortable’. I asked you, you said you were uncomfortable before also, so what is the problem? You say you were in the pattern – now again you are in the same pattern. So what is the problem? By dropping sannyas you will not be dropping the pattern.

Drop the pattern! That is the whole significance of sannyas. Drop the ego! Just try to be a nobody for a few weeks... just think of yourself as nobody. Efface yourself, be a non-entity for four weeks, and then see whether something happens or not.

And in fact, nothing is needed to happen. If you can just stop thinking about the future and the greed and the longing for the future.... This too is a greed – to want to drop the pattern. Why For what?

Why not be in a pattern and be happy? Then the pattern disappears! Then there is no problem! You accept it – that’s how it is, so it’s okay! You have got a certain face, a certain height of the body, a certain weight of the body, certain type of hair, certain type of eyes, so okay – you have got a certain pattern! How will you live without a pattern?

Everybody needs a certain pattern to live. A language is needed, a discipline is needed, otherwise you will not be able to keep yourself together – you will start falling apart. The pattern is not wrong

– just remember that you are not the pattern. One has to live in a house – one does not become a house by living in a house. One need not stop living in the house because in the house one becomes confined. There is no need to feel confined. A house is a shelter, and you don’t become a house by living in a house. You use the house and you know you are not the house.

These things have to be meditated upon... but it is up to you. I am not trying to convince you about sannyas. You can simply drop it – that is not a problem at all. But that is not going to solve anything

– remember it!

If you are really interested in solving, don’t try to escape. Then the challenge is there – try to face it!

Do a few groups, meditate.... And two weeks is nothing! You have been a non-sannyasin for many lives, so two weeks is nothing! You must be too greedy...

The day I gave you sannyas, I was aware that I was giving sannyas to a person who is going to betray. Because that very moment you were dishonest; that very moment you were not honest. You had only taken sannyas to see whether there is something in it or not, so why not try it? For two weeks try it, and then if there is nothing you can leave it! That was the idea deep in your unconscious

– even in that moment. And even before you took sannyas, for two, three days you were thinking about whether to take sannyas or not, whether it will be a betrayal to M – [his former guru] or not....

But these things were in your mind – that’s why the sannyas has not happened. So I say you can give it back. I have to say this because you have never taken it. So never think that you have given it back, because one who has taken it can never give it back....

Perfectly good. Tomorrow go to laxmi and give the mala back. Very good!

[Osho gives a seeker sannyas.]

This will be your name... and let this not only be a change of the name – let it be a radical change in your very lifestyle. Sannyas should be a break, a complete break with the past and a fresh, clean beginning, unburdened by the past. The only problem – and I say the only problem – is how to remain unburdened with the past. By the very nature of things, the past becomes accumulated again and again.

Just as you travel on the road and you collect dust, the mind collects memory. It is nothing but dust, but when a mirror collects too much dust it loses its mirror quality. Then it does not reflect things as they are – it starts distorting them, the dust becomes a barrier. Then the reflection is not true, then one starts seeing things which are not, and one starts not seeing things which are – hence the whole confusion.

If the mind-mirror remains clean there is no problem at all. Nothing else has to be done – just one thing: keep your mind-mirror clean. Never allow any dust to accumulate.

And sannyas means the beginning of this process – a decision, a declaration that from now, henceforward you won’t collect dust – you will keep alert. Old habits are there and the mind, through its mechanical routine, automatically collects, so one has to be very alert. If one is alert each moment one slips out of the past, because each moment becomes the past. Each moment you are again and again in the grip of the past – and you have to slip out of it.

The slipping-out-of should not be done with effort. If you do it with effort, your mirror gets scratches.

It has to be done very smoothly, like a snake slipping out of the old skin – not with effort, because effort can again be very destructive.

And there is no need to fight with the past, because to fight with the past means fighting with phantoms. You can never succeed, you can never be victorious, because in the first place those phantoms are not there – they are only shadows.

So never fight – just slip; this is the whole art of sannyas. And my whole teaching is to be effortlessly spontaneous. Just remember that this is gone, so gone is gone. Now there is no need to be bothered by it, this way or that, for or against. No need to think about it, no need to fight with it. In fact, the gone is gone. Slip out of it so that you become available to the fresh moment that is waiting at the door. Welcome it and welcome it with your totality. Face it with your mirror clean, and you will be surprised when everywhere you find god and nothing else – because nothing else exists.

We are seeing the whole world of millions of forms because of the dust that has collected on our minds – it is a distortion, just as on a full-moon night you can look for the full moon in a lake. It is there, but distorted by the waves. It is spread all over the lake – you cannot find where it is exactly, and the waves are continuously disturbing the reflection.

If the mind accumulates the past you go on being distracted by those accumulated thoughts, memories, ideas. Just remember that from this moment you will not accumulate, you will not hoard the past, you will not be a hoarder of the dead memories. That’s all sannyas is!

Ananda means blissful, and mahant means a saintly man, a saint; a blissful saint.

And to me the most saintly quality is blissfulness, cheerfulness, delight, joy. A serious man can never be a saint, although down the centuries serious men have pretended to be saints. But a serious man cannot be the saint – he lacks the basic quality: cheerfulness, joy, celebration. He is pathological... he has not understood the mystery of life. He has not yet become a participant in this great celebration that goes on and on. God is a celebration, and when you participate in it you become a saint.

Once you know that god is a celebration, your whole quality changes. Everything brings a new joy –

small things. Food brings joy. A friend comes and brings joy. Nobody is there, you are sitting silently, and a breeze comes and surrounds you and there is joy. You look at the tree and there is great joy.

You look at the sky and suddenly you are no more on the earth. Small things – holding the hand of a beloved person, or looking into the eyes of a child, or into the eyes of a cow or a dog.... Doing something small or not doing anything at all – just breathing is enough. Each breath brings such joy.

One is alive – what more can one ask for?

One is capable of love, one can love and be loved – what more can one ask for? One is able to see the rainbows and flowers... one is able to listen to the birds. What more can one ask for? There is tremendous joy.... And this joyousness is to me the basic quality of a holy man, a saint.

Seriousness I call a sin. So don’t be serious – that has to be avoided. I want my sannyasins to be madly in love with life! I would like you to go dancing towards god – in no other way!

When you enjoy anything, that thing becomes sacred... it becomes a sacrament. So wherever you are, if you are happy, thankful for your happiness, grateful for your life, you are in prayer... and you are my sannyasin! Let joy be the goal and create your life in such a way that more and more joy becomes possible.

Infinite joy is possible – we are missing. We are living at the minimum. When you live in an optimum way, with maximum joy possible, you explode into divinity – you become a saint.

CHAPTER 24

To become aware is to become desireless

24 January 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Anand means bliss, and mahashunya means the great emptiness. Anand is the natural state of resting in oneself. It is not happiness – because it is not unhappiness. It is not part of the duality, the dual world – happy and unhappy, sound/silence, day/night, life/death. It is not part of duality; it is the non-dual state. All duality rises out of it and all duality one day merges back into it. It is the very source and the goal, the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega.

So remember it, because that has to be understood very clearly – otherwise the very word ’anand’

or ’bliss’ gives a feeling as if it means great happiness. No, it doesn’t mean that.

Happiness is a state of excitement – that’s why one will even get tired of happiness if it continues too long. Have you watched sometimes?? – you cannot bear happiness for too long. It becomes tiring. Even happiness can create boredom: the same, the same, the same – one wants to move somewhere else just for a change. Even a little unhappiness is good just for a change.

So happiness can never be eternal – one cannot bear it. It turns into unhappiness after a while.

When you have settled with it, the excitement loses its meaning and becomes tiring. And it exhausts

– it does not rejuvenate.

It is just like unhappiness – there is no basic difference between the two. The basic difference arises because of our choice. The excitement that we like is happiness – the excitement that we don’t like is unhappiness. So the same excitement that you like today you may not like tomorrow – then it becomes unhappiness. And something that is unhappiness today may become happiness if you learn to like it.

Many people by and by learn to like their unhappiness – then they talk about it. In fact they enjoy it and they don’t want to get out of it. They have started liking it – it has become a sort of friendship.

They may talk about it and they may say they want to get rid of it, but they never try. In fact if it is taken away from them they will miss it.

So the basic difference between a state of bliss and the states of happiness, unhappiness, is that it is a non-excitable state – no excitement, mm? – just absolute quietude... neither this way nor that, just in the middle. It is just as the pendulum of an old clock goes from right to left, from left to right.

On the right call it happiness, on the left call it unhappiness. Just in the middle where the pendulum stops and stops going anywhere – stops moving, stops desiring.... Because through desire comes movement, through desire comes motivation to move. When there is no motivation to move and nowhere to go, one relaxes into oneself. One simply collapses into one’s own being.

That rest into oneself – when the pendulum is not moving anywhere, and the time has stopped... one is at home – that is anand, that is bliss. It is as far away from happiness as it is from unhappiness.

It is a totally different state. Only in deep sleep sometimes do we come close to it a very deep sleep when even dream is not there, a dreamless sleep. Patanjali calls it’sushupti’ – a sleep where not even a dream exists, no ripples arise, a non-dreaming state. You are completely unconscious, almost in a coma, but it is the closest state to bliss.

Ordinarily man comes closest to bliss only in deep sleep. It is unfortunate, because we should go there fully alert. That’s why after a great sleep, in the morning you feel so fresh, so virgin fresh –

as if you are born anew – so vital, rejuvenated... a rebirth. That’s why deep sleep is such a healing force.

If a person is ill the most important thing that he needs is deep sleep, because through deep sleep he will come in contact with his own source of energy, and that is the only healing source. Medicine helps you to come in contact with that source – medicine doesn’t help you directly. It simply helps you to move to your own source – you have forgotten to move to that source.

This state of bliss which ordinarily we come to know only in deep sleep, has to be known in full consciousness. So either in great deep sleep one comes to it, or in great awakening – in buddhahood, enlightenment, one comes to know it.

So there are only two possibilities of being blissful: either blessed are the ignorant – or the awakened. You are blissful either when you fall back into deep unconsciousness.... Then you become part of the cosmos – your ego cannot exist there. When you cannot dream, how can your ego exist? – because the ego is a dream. Then your desires are not there, because all desires are your dream. And with that whole bundle of desires disappearing, you have disappeared – because you are nothing but a bundle of desire – so you are part of the cosmos.

You vibrate with the cosmos – you are not separate. You are no more an island; you have become a continent. You are joined together with the reality. with the whole.

This is one possibility. That’s why down the centuries alcohol has attracted people so much, because it can lead you to this state of deep sleep. Drugs and chemical devices have always existed to help people to go to this source – but then you go very unconscious, so it is a temporary contact. You are thrilled by it but you lose it again and again because you cannot catch hold of it – you are not there to catch hold of it.

The other way is to become so alert, so aware, that you can go into it with pure awareness.

Ordinarily we have two layers of our mind: the conscious and the unconscious. This is our duality, this is our state – schizophrenia. That’s why we are divided into the conscious and the unconscious, the day mind and the night mind – this is our division.

In deep sleep this division disappears – the day mind dissolves into the night mind. The night mind is very big; the day mind is very small... one-tenth of it. Nine parts of your being are unconscious; only one part is conscious. In deep sleep that one part of consciousness also goes down into unconsciousness... disappears.

In enlightenment just the opposite happens: those nine parts of your unconsciousness rise, meet and mingle with your one part of consciousness and dissolve into that – again oneness.

Oneness is the key. Either become totally unconscious then you have the state of bliss or become totally conscious – then you have the state of bliss. In the middle is anguish, anxiety, because you are divided, continuously torn apart: a part trying to become conscious, a part trying to remain unconscious. And man is pulled in opposite directions. That is the whole pain of life... that is the misery.

So bliss is a state of natural rest, and the possibilities are two. The first possibility is natural.

Animals have it, trees have it, rocks have it. It has no challenge – it is not for man. For man a new possibility has already opened its doors. It will be falling back if man remains with the bliss that comes through sleep and remains confined to it; it is a falling back. And that is not possible, because the consciousness has taken one step ahead and it cannot be taken back. There is no way to take it back – one has to go whole-heartedly in the direction.

Up to now evolution has been unconscious – with man it becomes conscious. Nature has got you to the point where you have to take hold of your own being and you have to become a conscious seeker. And that goal of conscious seeking is bliss.

And the second – mahashunya – means the great emptiness. I don’t call it just emptiness – I am calling it’the great emptiness’ for a certain reason. Let me tell you one zen anecdote....

A very famous zen monk, Bokuju, had given a meditation, a koan, to one disciple. He told him to sit silently, doing nothing, unmoving – to just sit silently. He said, ’Something great is going to happen.

When it happens come to me and report.’

After seven days the disciple came running. He was ecstatic – he said, ’Master, it has happened!’

But the Master was very stern. He said, ’What has happened7 Relate it!’ He was very hard and the disciple was very much shocked because he had come so happily.

He said, ’Just this morning it happened – some energy started arising in my spine, and it was tremendously beautiful. I was full of a new power. Maybe it is Kundalini, Master, that has arisen?’

And the Master says,’All rubbish! Throw it out and never talk about it again. And if it happens again, don’t come to report! This is nothing! Go back. The great experience is going to happen some day

– when it happens, come back.’

For two, three weeks the disciple sat silently. Again and again the Kundalini was rising and one day it disappeared, and then a new experience! He rushed back to the Master in the middle of the night, because the experience was so great that he thought the Master would be very happy. But the master was very stern, very hard, and he said, ’What has happened?’

And the disciple said, ’So beautiful! I was full of light... Light was showering from all the dimensions.

I was nothing but light. I could have flown... I was absolutely weightless! Is not this the great experience you were waiting for?’

And the Master says, ’All nonsense! Throw it! Come to me only when the great experience has happened!’

The disciple asked, ’Please tell me what that great experience is so I will know when to come and when not to disturb you.’

And the Master says, ’When you have become empty, then come to me.’

Months passed and then one day it happened – it was absolutely empty inside. No experience, no thought, no Kundalini rising, no light, nothing showering, nothing happening – absolutely nothing...

a great emptiness. And the disciple was very happy – it has finally happened! Now the master will be happy. He came, he touched his Master’s feet, but the Master was still stern.

The disciple said,’But it has happened, master! Why are you looking so sternly at me? That emptiness has happened. Now I have come to realize absolute emptiness.’

And the Master said,’All nonsense! Throw this too! When emptiness is thrown, then the real emptiness happens.’

That is called’mahashunya’, the great emptiness... when even emptiness is not there. Otherwise one can cling to emptiness – one can make an experience out of it, and the ego again starts gathering its energy.

When even emptiness is thrown... one is so empty that one is empty of emptiness too – then it is mahashunya. That has been the goal in the east. And both bliss and emptiness are the same.

When you are in the state of mahashunya you will be blissful – when you are blissful you will be in the state of mahashunya. These are two aspects of the same experience.

So remember, mm? And when the great experience happens, report to me!

[The new sannyasin says: Some people seem to feel that you should be experiencing hell while you’re here... I wonder whether that’s really true or not. I mean, I can see that playing a very important part.]

It plays an important part, and it depends... it depends on the person, mm? But it is good to pass through the experience – it is always good – so that something is finished. Otherwise deep in the unconscious many things remain rooted. You can start working but they are there – they will disrupt your work.

Once you are finished with your hangovers.... Hell is nothing but your hangovers; the incomplete experience is what hell is. When all is completed, you are in heaven – then there is nothing. You are empty – the great emptiness is possible.

So it is very very essential to pass through it, and it is very rarely that I come across a person who does not need it, because the type of society does not exist where that type of person can exist.

No society is nonrepressive. They may differ in their repressions – something is repressed in india and something else is repressed in canada – but all societies are repressed. Emphases differ, but repression is there.

So because society is repressive, everybody is carrying a hell – it has to be let loose. Once you have gone through it, you will be finished with it. If you don’t have anything, you need not force it.

You simply remain available: if there is something, let it come. I am not saying to pretend, because that is useless. If you don’t have anything within you to cry, there is no need to cry. It is not to be done. The only thing to be remembered is, if it comes, allow it – don’t prevent it. No need to pretend it; just don’t prevent it.

If you don’t prevent and it comes, good. If it doesn’t come, very good – then you don’t have anything to throw out. But two, three groups will prove it to you. And don’t be afraid.

[The enlightenment intensive group is present. One member says: There was a moment... when there was only love left inside me... You talk about two paths – one is meditation and one is love –

and I wonder which one is mine.

Osho checks his energy.]

The group has been tremendously helpful. It has released your repressed energy of love... and love is going to be your path. When love is the path, to forget oneself is the method. So sing, dance, and forget yourself completely. Drown yourself completely, be drunk, and tell me after three weeks....

For three weeks you just be drunk with love. Mm?

[The sannyasin said he would like to do hypnotherapy. Osho suggested it would be more helpful to do hypnotherapy later.... ]

When you have worked really hard, hypnotherapy goes very deep. Otherwise you can do the group now but you will not be benefited by it. It is just as when in the day you work hard, have been cutting wood, chopping wood, in the night you go so deeply asleep that not a dream exists. But if you have been resting the whole day, in the night you will have to toss and turn in the bed – sleep won’t come.

You have not created the need for it.

Hypnotherapy is a beautiful group, but wait for it a little, mm?

[Another group member said that he could only answer the question ’Who am I?’ by describing his desires, and asked: How can I change all these desires into desirelessness?]

Just wait... you watch, mm? In fact one should not be in a hurry to change. The very hurry to change becomes the hindrance. There is no hurry, because if you are in too much of a hurry you will start repressing rather than changing. That is cheaper and easier – that is what the whole of humanity has done up to now.

That seems to be the short-cut: simply repress and forget about it. It remains in the basement – and you can enjoy the idea that you have got rid of it. It goes on working from behind you and it goes on pulling your strings from behind. So both are happy – you are happy with the idea that you are free of it, and the desire is happy that now you don’t disturb it and it can go on working in subtle ways, disguised.

Don’t be in a hurry. The first thing is to become very watchful and alert; that’s what has happened.

In this group you became aware of your desires – that is the first and the right step: to become aware so that all that is repressed comes back, is reclaimed by the consciousness and you become aware of it. That is the most fundamental step, and almost half the journey. Then things are not very difficult.

Once you have become perfectly aware of what desires are there, not much is left to be done.

Become more and more aware that these are your desires – and don’t fight with them. Just watch them to know perfectly what they are, how they arise, how they take possession of you, how you become clouded, how you lose your consciousness through them, how you become possessed by them, how they drive you mad!

Just watch every single step of the desire: how it arises, how it possesses you, how it drives you crazy, and then how it leaves you weak, frustrated, defeated. Just watch the whole process of it –

and that very watching brings freedom.

To become aware is to become desireless, but awareness has to be really penetrating. For example, you see a beautiful woman passing by and a desire arises to have her. Now watch from the very beginning, the very stirring of it – how did it come? The first ripple of it – you had seen a beautiful woman; up to that moment there was no problem. The woman was beautiful – that was not a problem, but suddenly there is a jump, and a desire arises.

Now watch that jump – that from observing the beautiful woman, how suddenly you become possessed by desire – that interval between seeing and desiring. Watch that interval – because there is the clue, and if you can become aware of it you will be surprised. Next time a beautiful woman passes by you can stand there watching and seeing when the desire arises. You will be surprised – if you can watch, it will never arise. It arises only when you are not watchful... it arises only when you are unconscious. It only comes from the back door – it never comes from the front door. It comes through unconsciousness.

So don’t ask how to be desirelessness – just ask how to become perfectly aware of the desire. And the first beginning has happened.

[The sannyasin says he has booked to do the ’hell group’, a new group based on boredom.]

Very good! That’s the place where people go who desire too much, right? Sooner or later I am going to create another group – the paradise; that will be the end. One who has passed through all hell and everything – purgatory and things like that – will be given a three days holiday in paradise!

[Another group member says: Something has changed in the group but I don’t know what it is. I fear that I’m being destroyed... but I feel very good.

I want to know how to surrender.]

That fear is true – you are being destroyed, but that is the only way to make you anew, to create you anew. The old has to be destroyed for the new. The old has to be utterly smashed and destroyed.

Only out of that utter destruction can the new be born. You are being destroyed – that fear is perfectly true; your mind has judged rightly. And then fear arises – that too is natural. Watch that fear and don’t go with it, don’t cooperate with it. It will be there but you need not cooperate with it. Then it is impotent – it cannot do anything to you.

And surrendering has started. There is no need to ask about it – you are surrendering. It takes time

– slowly, slowly... but the seed has sprouted. That’s why you are asking, because you would like it to happen sooner. It is so blissful – just the first taste is so blissful. But it is happening – don’t be worried.

There is no how to it – mm? there is no how to it. You have just to allow me. You are not to do anything...

CHAPTER 25

Life is a risk, that’s why it is so beautiful

25 January 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Prem means love, atideva means the great god; love, the great god. And love is the great god.

All gods are lower than love – there is no value higher than love. Every value is a value because it partakes of love, but love is the supreme value. Compassion is a value because it reflects love.

Service is a value because it reflects love. To be good is a value because it reflects love. All values are values because in some way or other – directly or indirectly – they participate in the supreme value. So all values are lower gods – love is the supreme value and the supreme god... the utmost, the ultimate. So let love be the only law.

Jesus says somewhere,’Moses brought you the law – I bring you love.’ The law is good – it is a substitute for love. If you cannot love, law is needed. If you can love there is no need for any law.

So many laws are needed because human beings have forgotten how to love. And more and more laws are needed every day because we are losing more and more, forgetting the language of love.

We are forgetting what love is, so love has to be substituted by law.

If love happens, laws disappear. If humanity can again learn how to love and be loved, laws will not be needed. Law is an ugly thing – a necessity... not something to brag about. A person who says’I am a law-abiding person’ simply says that he is repressing himself. He has not yet understood life...

he is not yet flowing.

A law-abiding person is better than the law-breaking person of course, but both exist on the same plane. The radical change happens with the entrance of love. Then you are no more law-abiding and you are no more law-breaking. Law follows you like a shadow, as a consequence. And you don’t do things because you have to – you do things because you enjoy now; now it is a joy!

So let this become a deep remembrance in your heart. Let it vibrate in the deepest core of your being – and this name again and again will remind you.

[Osho asked the new sannyasin his experience in an encounter group in the west. He replies: The main thing that I encountered was my wish to kill... and I also encountered that in the enlightenment group.]

Everybody carries that – nothing is special about it, so don’t become too much concerned.

Everybody carries the whole humanity within himself: the murderer, the suicidal, the criminal, the sinner, the saint – everybody carries all possibilities. Nothing to be afraid about. Unless you cooperate with a possibility it never becomes actual – it is just a possibility.

For example you have a sword in your hand – now whether to kill somebody or not, is a choice. The sword does not force you to kill anybody – cannot! The sword is neutral – it is just a possibility. You can use it in killing somebody or you can use it in saving somebody. If somebody is being killed, you can rush with your sword and protect the man. Now the sword itself is neutral. It has no prejudice –

to kill or to protect things.

Whatsoever is possible for any other human being – present, past, future – is possible for you too.

But those are just pure possibilities. Unless you cooperate with a possibility it never becomes actual.

It happens to many people through groups – they become aware of things, and then they become very scared; they should not!

It is good that now you know; now there is more possibility to avoid it, because you know it. You know that there is a murderer in you. Without knowing it there was more possibility of falling into its trap. Unconsciously you may have done something and repented later on – but then it would have been too late; nothing could have been done. Now you have become aware of it – this is a good experience – don’t become afraid. And don’t throw it into the darkness of the unconscious again.

It is human to have this capacity to kill... it is human to have all these capacities. It is human to go to the lowest and to the highest. Man is a ladder between hell and heaven – you can go up, you can come down; the ladder is neutral. It is the same ladder – only the direction will be different. Now you know that this murderer is inside you, you can cooperate with it; you can drop all cooperations. You can cut off all cooperations – then it is impotent. It cannot do anything on its own.

But it happens to many people through encounter-type groups. When for the first time they become aware, they become very much afraid:’What am l? What thing am I carrying?’ They become very much depressed too and great anxiety arises. There is no need. If that happens the whole purpose is missed.

The purpose is to make you aware of all that you can do. But there is no need to do it... there is no necessity to do it. It is just a pure ’can’. And if you know, you can avoid it more easily and you can direct your energy into different dimensions, into different directions.

A saint is aware of the sinner in him. The sinner exists there as much as it exists in the sinner. The sinner is unaware of his saint; the saint is aware of his sinner, so he avoids it. And the sinner is not aware of his saint – he is not even aware of his sinner, so he goes on falling into its trap. And it is easier to fall down than to climb high. It is easier to go down – it needs no energy; it is downhill.

I have heard that a very rich and evil man was dying. He called his chauffeur and told him, ’Just to say good-bye to you.... You have been in my service for thirty years and you have done a good job

– I was very satisfied. But I never said so – I have never thanked you. Now I am leaving this world –

thank you for all your services.’

The chauffeur said, ’I am very sad that you are going. There is only one happy thing about it – that your journey is going to be downhill.’

He was a chauffeur and he understood the language of downhill and uphill! ’Your journey is going to be downhill – that is the only satisfaction. Uphill it will be difficult for you to drive your own car. And I will not be there with you. This time you are going to self drive. There is only one satisfaction – that you are going downhill.’

In fact when you are going downhill not even petrol is needed... nothing is needed, no energy is needed. To become a sinner no energy is needed. In fact that is my understanding – that a criminal is a powerless person; a sinner is a poor person. He has no power... he has no energy. He cannot go uphill – he is going downhill. A saint is tremendously powerful. He is going uphill... he is rising every moment higher and higher on the ladder.

So, good that you know that one part of the ladder is resting in hell – good that one knows! Now look upwards – the other part of the ladder is touching heaven. What is the fear? There is no problem about it – move upwards!

Do a few groups here too, mm? and don’t drop out of a group easily. Even sometimes if it is hard, it is better to finish – because your mind can deceive you. It can say, ’There is no point why are you struggling? Relax – there is no need to strain. Osho talks so much about effortlessness – why are you making the effort? Relax – don’t do anything. God is going to happen – you cannot achieve.’

The mind can play all these things and deceive you. Many things have to be done and many things have to be done against the mind, because the mind is just what you have accumulated in the past as a habit pattern. It pulls you back, it drags you back. It is a very heavy load – it does not allow you to fly in the sky. It is happy if you move in the routine pattern. You go off the track a little bit, and the mind pulls you back and creates a thousand and one reasons why you should come back.

Do a few groups – and do them, whatsoever the mind says. Just don’t cooperate with the mind.

Samadhi is the ultimate state of consciousness... the absolute state of awareness. Literally it means’when you have gone beyond all problems’. Not that you have solved them – nobody can solve them. The very effort to solve them is childish. One simply grows and goes beyond them –

that is the solution.

[Osho said that the West and East had different attitudes towards problems. The west attempted to solve them – the east, to go beyond them, to rise higher in consciousness.]

And samadhi means the highest consciousness, from where all problems are meaningless –

unconditionally all problems are meaningless.

That is the literal meaning of the word’samadhi’. But in English the closest word is ’ecstasy’ – not very correct, but the closest. Samadhi has a dimension of ecstasy too, because of course when all your problems are irrelevant you will become ecstatic, you will be so blissful. You will start simply dancing out of the joy and the delight that now there are no more problems, no more anxieties... no need for the mind. The very mechanism is futile now. What are you going to do with it? – because you have no problems. And then the whole energy turns upon oneself – one is showered in one’s own energy.

So samadhi has an ecstatic dimension... it is tremendously blissful. And the english word’ecstasy’

is also significant. It comes from a root which means ’standing out’. Ecstasy means ’standing out of oneself’.

That too is very meaningful... slipping out of oneself. The ego, the personality, is enclosing you; it has become your boundary. You are unbounded but you have started thinking that you are bounded because of the boundary of the personality, the ego. To slip out of it, to slip out of the egg of the ego, to slip out of the old skin of personality and to come to claim the whole sky as yours – that too is the meaning of ecstasy.

Just this morning I was reading a book of Alistair Crowley. the man has some great insights into things... not always right, but when he is right he is right; when he is wrong, he is really wrong. He is a very double-bind personality – very good and very bad together – but he is not a mediocre. Either he is very bad or he is very good; either he is really right or he is really wrong – but he is never lukewarm.

He writes about samadhi – and I liked his four sutras. In the first sutra he says ’Sit still’. In the second sutra he says ’Stop thinking’. In the third sutra he says ’Shut up!’ And in the fourth sutra he says ’Get out!’

I liked it.... This is exactly what samadhi is: get out! That is the meaning of the word ’ecstasy’.

And prem means love – love for the ultimate state, love for that ultimate vision where all problems drop. Create that love... create that great desire – the greatest desire of all! Because once you crate that desire you become focused. Then you are not falling apart in many directions and your whole energy is channelised... starts moving towards the ultimate goal....

[A sannyasin, a filmstar, who is leaving says: I might need some energy while I’m away.]

You will not be away – I will be with you, nothing to worry about. The contact has happened, so there is no problem. You are plugged in!

Much has to be done while you are there, so do it, mm? Whatsoever you feel like doing, do it, because many more people need me... and they should be informed. Otherwise, people who are around me will be blamed later on. When I am gone people will never forgive you: ’Why didn’t you tell us?’ So don’t be shy about it!

Jesus has said to his disciples ’Go and shout from the tops of the houses!’ Exactly that has to be done because many people need... but how can they come unless they know it? Even if they know it, it is difficult to come, so how can they come without knowing it? Even if they know it, they will resist. They will find a thousand and one ways not to come. But then that is their problem and you will never feel guilty about it – that you knew and you didn’t say.

So at least to people you have been connected with, the message has to be given. And don’t be shy about it! There is no need to be aggressive but there is no need to be shy either. Just state the fact and just give them this much idea so that they can come and feel for themselves.

Just a few days ago, a man was here.... He was once an ambassador to Canada from some country and has belonged to a Gurdjieff group for a long time. When he came here he tried to rationalise –

he even argued with Laxmi, saying, ’We are working with the Gurdjieff group, and our work is alive.

Osho says our work is no more alive – that is not right. We are growing and the work is going on, and we don’t need any other help – Gurdjieff is enough.’

So Laxmi said, ’That’s okay. Then you continue.’ He went to Teheran and wrote a letter from there:

’I am sorry... very sorry. It was a rationalisation on my part. I was trying to protect myself and my ideologies. Now I realise it and I cry over it – but I will be coming back.’

So rationalisations continue, and when a person has been searching in his life, naturally he accumulates many ideas.

And this is one of the misfortunes – that when Gurdjieff was alive, people would not go. By the time they would go, or by the time they would hear, Gurdjieff was gone. And then they became very fanatic about him – but then it is meaningless.

So while I am alive, this is your responsibility – to tell people.

[The sannyasin says: I’ll probably be coming into contact with a lot of Gurdjieff people.... What sort of line should I take with them?]

You just... yes, just make it more personal – because that’s what attracts people. If you talk impersonally, that doesn’t help. An impersonal communication remains dull and dead. Only when it becomes your heartbeat and they see that you are committed now, involved – that you belong to a certain thing and that it has become a luminous reality in your being; you are ready to stake all that you have for it – will they become interested, otherwise not.

So many ideologies go on floating around, but unless there is a person in whom the ideology has taken roots and they can see it, actualised, and the person is ready to vouch for it, to be a witness to it – the people don’t.... Then it is again another ideology. There are so many and they can choose.

So make it personal – then only does it reach to their heart.

And don’t be afraid in any way of what they will think – that is not the point – because whenever a person has something to convey, people always think he is mad. That is nothing new – that’s very natural. Only mad people have something to convey. And when they see a deep involvement, they become afraid, scared.

If you have created even that much fear, that’s enough – they are bound to come. The first stirring has happened... I will start haunting them. You just do the first thing and the remaining I will do!

[A sannyasin is leaving to buy a ship on which to open a sannyas ashram.]

Many things are going to happen. A really beautiful community is going to be born soon; it is just the beginning. All the beautiful people will gather together sooner or later, because there is nowhere else to go.

... Finish your work – that is part of me, part of my work. The groups you will be leading will be good.

Many people will become sannyasins out of them.

There is a story in mohammed’s life.... He is being chased by the enemies and he has only one friend with him – abu bhaka is his name. A moment comes when they are hiding in a small cave and the enemy is approaching closer and closer every moment – they can hear the sound of the hooves of the horses. It seems that there are at least a few thousand people.

Abu Bhakta naturally is very much scared and he says to Mohammed, ’We are only two and they are many thousands! Now what is going to happen? Are we going to be killed?’

Mohammed laughed and he said, ’You don’t count well. We are three – we are not two!’

Abu Bhaka looked around – and there were two. Mohammed said, ’You don’t count well – we are three. We two don’t count much – the third is the real thing.’

And it happened that those thousands of people who were in search of them just passed in front of the cave and they could not see. They searched all over the place – except for that cave!

So whether people see me or not, I will be with you – you can count on it, mm? Good!

[A sannyas couple who are engaged in business in the West, have brought many of their friends to Osho. The woman is at darshan without her husband who, she says, is ’heavy’ because of business problems.]

But when you stay this time, and he has no business, you have to be very alert – otherwise things will go even worse than before. Because when people have business they are occupied; their energies are engaged. And what you see as a repercussion is not really a repercussion. When people are in business and things are heavy or difficult, that is an excuse. They can always find the excuse that because of the business things are heavy between them. When that excuse is gone things can become really heavy – and then there is no excuse either.

This is natural, but if one is aware this can be avoided; if one is not aware, it becomes difficult. He has been busy continuously – now he will be completely free. You have to be watchful about it, and you have to be a little different than you have been before. Because in a relationship, even if one changes, the whole quality of the relationship changes. One need not wait for both to change.

Even if one changes, if one becomes a little more understanding, the quality of the relationship immediately changes, is transformed. Then the other finds it easier to change.

And this is my understanding – that women can understand better than men because women are less burdened by the so-called business. So in a way they are more natural.

It happened to one of my friends.... He is a very rich man, and he asked me,’Just tell me the right time when I should leave all my business and just be at ease – because I have not lived at all.’ He loves his wife very much, and he had enough, so I said, ’Why wait? Stop tomorrow.’

And he is really courageous – he stopped! I was not hoping for that much. I was thinking that he would find some way out and say that it was impossible – that he would have to settle things, and this and that. He simply dropped out of it – he never went to his office again! The next day he simply dispersed everything – all the responsibilities and everything. He said, ’I am finished! If I die, I die –

you take over.’

But after just two months his wife came to me and said, ’What have you done? He is killing me –

he will murder me! I had always thought,’ she said,’that he is too busy – that’s why we could not be together. And it was a good dream to be together some day. Now we are together, and it is too much. Just start his business again! Otherwise we are just fighting and nothing else! All his mind that was engaged is free. He needs something to fight for, he needs to compete, to be aggressive, to achieve, to do this and that – only we are left! So put him in the business again, otherwise I cannot live with him any more.’

And I had to put him to business again, in a subtle way. I told him to do something for the poor people – this and that – so he started an orphanage and he became very involved in it. Then he started a school and now he runs a college too, and he is very much into it. Again the same old pattern, and again they are very happy and hoping some day.... But now I think they will never try it.

This time when [your husband] comes you will be together, so you have to change – and it is easier for you to change than for him. So prepare for it. Not much has to be done. Change is not out of effort but just a little understanding. And he will need more understanding from your side now that he will be free.

When I say that a woman can be more understanding, I mean many things. Even a small girl is more understanding than an old man! A girl, from the very beginning, is motherly, and the motherly attitude means a great understanding of the other... how to give the other freedom, love, and how to give love without there being any bondage attached to it... how to nourish the other. Man always seeks the mother again and again. A woman is seeking a child and the man is seeking a mother.

And lovers are happy when this understanding has arisen – that the woman has become the mother and the lover has become the child; then there is tremendous beauty. Difficult – because the man tries to show that he is the master, the husband, this and that, but deep down he is just a child wanting somebody to take care... somebody to take responsibility, somebody to look after him for every whim... somebody to feed him, somebody to sing a lullaby so he can go to sleep. That’s what he’s seeking – but out of the ego he cannot say it, that’s the trouble. He pretends that he is a grown-up man – and no man is a grown-up man. Except for the buddhas I have never seen any grown-up man.

Man as such is childish – woman as such is grown up. She has more possibility because she has more passivity... she can allow many things to happen. But in the West now the problem has arisen on the part of women too. They don’t want to be the mother. They also pretend that they are not mothers – they are not going to play the role of the mother.’I am not your mother,’ they say. ’You drop your mother fixation. I am a companion, a friend, a beloved, but not a mother – and don’t hope for that.

But deep down every woman – ancient or modern, eastern or western; it makes no difference.... It is something very intrinsic that each woman is born to be a mother. That is not an accidental thing

– that is very essential. Once a woman understands this – that that’s her destiny – knowingly she becomes a mother... things change.

So when [your husband] comes I will talk to him but I would like you to be ready to be a mother.

Forget that nonsense of being a girlfriend, a this and that; that is not very important. Start feeling like a mother and see how beautiful the relationship becomes and how so many anxieties and conflicts are simply dropped. Not even a little noise is created... a harmony arises.

In the old eastern scriptures it is said that when in ancient India a newly married couple went to a master or to a great enlightened man to be blessed, the Master would bless them – particularly the woman – saying, ’I bless you that you should become mother of at least ten sons, and finally I bless you that your husband will become your eleventh son.’ Looks very strange – that your husband finally becomes your eleventh son – but seems to be very deep, profound.

So start being a mother, and that will make you very soft. Because you have become very hard –

you have gathered around yourself a very hard crust. That hard crust hurts you and because of that hard crust you cannot allow love to enter in you.

You have developed it as a protection... you have developed it as an armour, as a defence. But I know that deep down you are tremendously soft. Once that crust is broken you will become very very fragile – and that fragileness is beauty.

So before he comes... just become more and more fragile and wait. Wait for him as if you are waiting for a child and from the first moment start mothering him very consciously. When he is here, for three weeks mother him, and then report to me how you are feeling. You will feel better than you have ever felt before.

It is very simple, but we have lost contact with that simplicity. When [your husband] comes I will talk to him about becoming a child, mm? So you be the mother and he becomes the baby....

[The hypnotherapy group is present. One member says: Love flows in me but I still fear so much... I feel frightened of pain.]

The very possibility of love gives you an idea of pain, mm? It is not ungrounded – love can bring pain... tremendous pain. If you are not very understanding. Love can become hell! Love is a fire.

If you don’t know how to use it, you will be burned. If you know, you can cook many things you can cook many things out of love!

But that’s my whole work here; to teach you how to cook out of love!

.... Sometimes you even cook, and you fear that something may get burned or something – but that fear has to be accepted and you have to go in still. The fear comes not from love exactly but from many other things which are hiding behind the cover of love. Jealousy is always hiding behind love, so whenever you are in love you become afraid. You love a man: the man may start loving someone else – then what? Then there will be pain – so it is better not to get into it from the very beginning.

Be on the safer side – that’s what the fear is.

In love there is the possibility of rejection. If you take the initiative the other may say no, so the ego will be hurt. The ego says,’Don’t take risks. Who knows? You may be rejected and that will hurt you your whole life! So it is better not to take any initiative. Wait!’

If the other person takes the initiative you start thinking whether he is simply interested in sex or if he really loves you... and there is no way to know! Maybe he will just use you and will be gone. That hurts – the very idea that somebody used you is very painful. Nobody wants to be used... nobody wants to be a thing! That is very ugly, nauseous. The very idea that somebody can use you, exploit you sexually and then be gone, and forget you.... He cheated! Better to be alert... watch each step.

And there is no way to know whether he really loves you – there is no criterion. So one is always wavering about whether he loves or not.

And it is not only in the beginning – even if you have lived with the man for twenty years, still the problem is the same: whether he really loves you or you have just become a habit. He makes love to you, he says’I love you’, but does he really love? How to know? He may be just pretending; it may be just a habit. He may be just polite, may be very cultured, does not want to hurt you so he goes on playing the role... goes on pretending that he still loves you – but does he love or not?

These are the problems – the ego, the fear of rejection, the possibility of being used, the fear of being reduced to a thing, the possibility of the man or the other moving to somebody else some day.

First you get attached – you love the man, you become so happy – and then one day he is gone.

And the more happy you are, the more is the possibility of pain when he is gone, so better not to be happy from the very beginning. So people have settled in not taking the risk.

But this is my suggestion: if you don’t take the risk, you don’t live at all. Risk it is! And there is no way of guaranteeing – the man may be deceiving – but still I will say to be deceived rather than wait.

Because in this deception there is a possibility that he may not be deceiving, but if you don’t allow you are simply deceived. The time is running fast... Life will go on slipping out of the hands. Sooner or later you will find that the opportunity is gone. And then nothing can be done – there is no way to go back, no way to reclaim the opportunity.

So if he is going to deceive you, okay – nothing to be worried about; at least you tried. And by moving with many people you will learn more and more and you will become more and more intuitively aware of what is deception and what is not. There is no intellectual way to know it – it is a knack. If you love and move with so many people, by and by you come to have the knack of it, the hunch. So when there is real love you simply know it.

It is just like a swordsman.... You take the swordsman to the shop where swords are sold. He will take and hold the sword in his hand, weigh it, look at it and will simply say ’No, this won’t suit!’ They say – swordsmen – that when a sword suits you there is simply a knack. Inside something says ’Yes, this is the thing!’ There is no way to intellectually prove it – why you are saying this – but it simply fits. Simply by the weight, the size, the very quality, the vibe, the swordsman knows, ’Yes, this fits with my being. It will become my soul.’ But these are just knacks.

There is a very famous story of a Chinese Emperor who was reading the famous Buddhist Lotus Sutra. His carpenter – an old man – was working; he was making some furniture for the king. The carpenter came, stood there, listened to the sutra and then asked the emperor, ’What are you doing, sir?’

The Emperor said, ’I am reading this lotus sutra.’

The old carpenter said, ’This is nonsense! How can one come to know just by reading? This is impossible! Experience is needed, sir!’

The Emperor was very angry, in a rage. He said, ’You fool! You don’t know how to read – you have never heard anything about this lotus sutra – and you are trying to teach me! You have to explain yourself, otherwise you will be killed! What do you mean by ”experience”?’

The old man said, ’I don’t know about your book and I don’t know anything about books, but I know about my work. Look at me – I’m ninety years of age, and I am still working, because there is no way to teach my son what I know. It is a knack!

’When you asked me to make your furniture, I fasted for three days so that my mind became completely silent, pure, no thought. Then I went to the forest to find the right wood. I would touch so many trees... stand by the side of the trees, put my ear to the tree and hear it – its sound, its music, its vibe. For three days I searched in the forest, and then it happened near a certain tree – my heart simply jumped and said, ”Yes, this is the right wood!” I felt it and I was one hundred percent satisfied.

Then I brought the wood.

’Now, I cannot teach this to my son. He says, ”Daddy, teach me! You have become so old – I will go to the forest,” but how to teach? I can say this in so many words – to go, fast for three days, and then go and listen... what will he do?

’For seventy years I have been listening to the sound of the wood, to the feel of it – I know it by my heart.’

The carpenter said, ’Sir, I will suggest that you don’t waste your time in the book. Go to somebody who knows it by the heart. Be by his side – learn the knack of it. I am a carpenter – I don’t know anything about your books, but I know about wood, and when you have found the right wood, the wood leads you – it guides you.’

There is no intellectual way to judge beforehand – one has to take the risk. One will err many times.

Life is... so many errors. But that’s how one learns.

So let the fear be there – accept it; it is natural – but go into it. And remember, jealousy can be dropped. In fact why people don’t drop it is a miracle because they don’t get anything out of it except misery! Unless people are masochists there seems to be no reason why they continue with jealousy.

Drop the jealousy rather than dropping love. The fear comes because of jealousy. The fear comes because of the ego – the other may reject you: then drop the ego! Rather than throwing the bathwater, you are keeping the bathwater and throwing the baby! Drop ego, drop jealousy, and take the risk.

Life is a risk – that’s why it is so beautiful, of value, because it is a risk. It is an adventure. Good!

CHAPTER 26

OUr destiny is to have wings, to fly

26 January 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Anand means blissful, and sadhu means simplicity; blissful simplicity. And these two things are to be remembered – be blissful and be simple. Only a complicated mind is lost – a simple mind is never lost. A simple mind is always at home – and you have that simple mind. You have not yet lost your innocence – it is there; you are fortunate. Very rarely are people capable of saving it – it is lost.

Within two, three years a child starts losing it. By the time he is four he has almost lost it. By the time a child is seven he has completely forgotten that he was master of a certain different dimension

– the dimension of simplicity, innocence.

But you have not lost it yet – it is still flowing. Just a very small effort on your part and it will spread all over your being. That’s why I am giving you the name ’sadhu’. It means simplicity, spontaneity, goodness, natural goodness – not any cunning goodness, not calculated goodness... not that one should be good so that one can achieve heaven and paradise... not that if you are good you will succeed in the world... not that honesty is the best policy. One is simply good because one feels good in being good. There is no other end to it – its value is intrinsic. One is good because to be otherwise is to be miserable. One is good – not for anybody else. One is good because one feels happy only when one is good.

And remain blissful. That too will not be an arduous thing for you just the decision will be enough

– because I don’t see any barriers. So nothing is to be drastically broken in you. You can become absolutely new without any demolition; no destruction is needed.

Ordinarily it is not so. When a person comes to me I have to destroy him utterly – only then the new can come up. But with you this will be totally different – no destruction is needed. You are already on the brink... you are already on the boundary – just a little push....

Satya means truth, and sadhya means the end; truth is the end, truth is the goal. And a few things to be understood....

First, truth is not in the theories, not in the philosophies – truth is alive all around you. Truth is in life – it is not in dead scriptures. It is in the trees, in the rivers, in the stars... it is in man, in woman.

Truth is not a dead concept, so don’t look for it in the books – search for it in life, in existence.

Ordinarily whenever a person becomes thirsty for truth he goes to the library. And once you are lost in a library it will be very difficult for you to find where life is. People are lost in the jungle of words.

It is good to look directly. It is never helpful to use somebody else’s spectacles – they are never going to suit your eyes. They will make things blurred... they will give you a headache. It is better to search with one’s own eyes. So experience directly – that is the only way towards truth.

And the second thing – truth is the goal of life. Ordinarily we live in lies – convenient lies, comfortable lies, but they’re all lies. We live in many sorts of fictions – in the illusory, in dreams. We create many dreams and we waste our life. The time that is wasted cannot be reclaimed, and howsoever beautiful the fictions may be, they are not true. Only truth liberates and only truth satisfies.

We are here to know what truth is. This life is an opportunity to seek and search... to explore. So let it be an adventure – it is a great challenge. Truth is not given to anybody – one has to work for it...

one has to become worthy of it.

That is the real meaning of the old word’worship’. Mm? ’worship’ means ’worth-ship’. There is no other worth, and there is no other worship – unless you become worthy of truth....

[A sannyasin who is leaving for the West to lead groups said that she was very unsure of herself, and her role as a therapist. She has recently separated from her sannyas husband.]

You are becoming more aware, that’s why. When awareness arises for the first time, it creates a rift.

One becomes very much puzzled and muddled – everything becomes blurred. You cannot see and you cannot make any distinctions about what is what: whether it is real or unreal, whether you are dreaming or you are really seeing something which is there.

Ordinarily people take their dreams to be real – they are clear-cut. It may be a dream but they are certain that it is a reality, so they are not confused; they go on head-long. They are stupid but they are very certain – they are not confused.

This is one of the troubles in the world – that the idiots are very certain and the intelligent people are very uncertain. And those certain idiots run the whole world! They become the politicians and the priests and everything – they run the whole world! Certainly they create confidence because they are confident! And the intelligent people lag behind – they always lose the opportunity because they are hesitating so much about what to do, what not to do, about where they are, whether this is –

right or wrong, whether what they are doing is just an acting or really coming out of their inner world.

By the time they decide, the moment is gone – the moment does not wait. And in fact they are never able to decide. So when for the first time in an idiotic mind – ant all minds are idiotic; the mind as such is idiotic – when for the first time the first ray of intelligence enters, everything is topsy-turvy; everything goes into chaos. The old certainty is no more and the new certainty has not yet arrived.

That’s where you are.

There is no need to fall back to the old pattern, and even if you try you cannot fall back. That is one of the most troublesome factors – that once a certain intelligence has happened you cannot fall back. You have to go forward – howsoever arduous, you have to go forward. So you have to become more and more alert and more and more aware. Now don’t get puzzled by this – this is beautiful.

Up to now you were certain that whatsoever you were doing was good. Now you are hesitating – but go on doing it, there is no need to drop it. Do it with more awareness. Sometimes it may be coming from your innermost core – sometimes it may not be coming. Both are good, because nobody can be flowing for twenty-four hours – unless one is enlightened. Nobody can be, so don’t expect that!

That is expecting the impossible and putting an unnecessary strain on your being.

Sometimes you will be able to give love naturally, spontaneously, with no effort, and sometimes suddenly you will feel that you are closed. Then pretend, but pretend consciously, because if the other is helped – even by your pretension – why not help him?

Just look at the thing: even a pretended love helps,. so what to say about a real love? Love is such a miracle that even when you are pretending or playing a game, just acting – then too it helps people.

So what to say about when the love is real? It helps tremendously.

But I am not saying to drop the pretended one. I am saying to let it be there but to be conscious about it... that it is pretended. Don’t be befooled by it, don’t be deceived by it, don’t get identified with it – be an actor. And do it as perfectly, as impeccably as possible, but fully alert that it is not flowing – you are maintaining it, managing it... but the other is helped!

People are in such need that even a false love helps. People are in so much misery that even if somebody just says’I love you’ – not meaning anything by it – they feel grateful. Mm? just look at the misery of people....

People are coming into groups only because they have lost all contact, all relationships. They are hankering to be related, they hanker to belong, they hanker for a family somewhere where people will love them and accept them as they are and nobody will demand that if they be this, be that, then they will be loved... where love will be unconditional.

Now, in a group, twenty strangers meet – how can they suddenly be truly in love? But even the imitated love creates an atmosphere – even the pseudo-love creates an atmosphere – and people relax. And when they relax, by and by the real love starts coming up. The pretended functions like a triggering point – it triggers something in them. It is a simulation, it is not real, but it helps them relax.

Mm? first they are tense because for the whole of their life they have been always given love as a bargain. Even their parents were bargaining: ’Do this for us, then we will love you. Be like this, then we will love you. Don’t do this, otherwise we will withdraw our love.’ Everything was just business-like.

They always wanted to be loved for themselves – not for what they do, not for what they achieve in the world, but just for their beings, just as they are – and nobody loved them.

So now they are hankering for someone... even for strangers. In a group strangers meet: they are all in the same boat, they all need love, they all understand each other’s need – they help.

In the beginning they pretend, but the pretension helps. By and by they become more relaxed and they see that something is happening. In that milieu the real starts flowing.

Once a person is accepted as he is, he starts blooming.

You will not be able to love these group people all the time, twenty-four hours, or for the whole time you run the group. Mm? sometimes you will really hate them! Sometimes you would like to escape from the whole nonsense. Sometimes you will start thinking, ’I am never going to do another group!’

So how can you love all the time? It is super-human to love all the time – it will not be possible. Don’t ask, mm? otherwise that will create much anxiety in you.

When you can love, love really. When you cannot love, at least you can pretend; it will be helpful.

Only be aware – what is needed is awareness – so that you know when you pretend and when it is real.

And by and by you will see that the pretension is needed less and less, because what is the point?

When you can give the real thing, why give the false thing?

This is one of the most fundamental things – when you give real love you are tremendously satisfied.

Maybe it reaches to the other or not – that is not the point; it may not reach. The other may not receive, may not be in the mood, may not be in the space to receive it – you may miss the target, but that is not the point. When you really love you are so tremendously happy that you love.

So sometimes it happens that the real love misses and sometimes it happens that the pretended love reaches. Life is very mysterious. When you see that the real love makes you so happy, why pretend? Why not let it be real? That will come by and by – the more you understand that the pretended makes you tired. All pretensions are tiring, very tiring. Mm? you have to manage and you have to do something against yourself. It is repression; it tires, it exhausts... one feels wasted.

The real love fulfills – you are rejuvenated. You feel more vital, more alive. You feel more when you have loved than you had ever felt before. You don’t lose – you gain.

When you see these mechanisms, by and by the pretended will drop. But right now it will continue.

So only one thing: be alert. Know it well – if others are deceived, nothing wrong in it; if they feel happy, good. You should know that it was pretended. Then it will be possible... it will drop on its own accord. So one day suddenly you will see that the pretended has disappeared – you can deal in the real thing, so why pretend?

And the real is so much and so infinite that you can go on giving it. It is not that when you give, it is less – when you give, it is more. When you don’t give, it is less. If you never give it, it dies within yourself, dries. Then the juice flows no more... you are a dry bone.

Go, do the groups, finish your work and come back, mm? And you are moving in a good space, so continue to move in that. Don’t let the West disturb it! Disturb the west – don’t let the West disturb you.

There is a very famous Buddhist sutra.... The day Bodhidharma said goodbye to his disciples and moved into the Himalayas and disappeared – and nobody knows what happened to him – the last message was this: ’Remember one thing – when you read a Buddhist sutra, don’t let the sutra disturb you... rather, you disturb the sutra’ – and he escaped!

For centuries the zen monks have been thinking and meditating upon it: ’Disturb the sutra – don’t let the sutra disturb you. Mm? if you are reading the bible, disturb the bible but don’t let the bible disturb you.

And the same I say to you: Go to the West, disturb the west, but don’t let the West disturb you!

Good!

[Another sannyasin who is leaving says: Sometimes I feel that there is energy but I don’t know how to bring it out... ]

Where do you feel the energy most in the body? (He indicates his abdomen.) Don’t try to bring it out. If you try you may disturb the whole thing inside. Bet it rise, mm? It is just the beginning – it is accumulating. Soon it will become such a powerful dynamo that it will explode.

It will come on its own – you cannot bring it. The very effort will make the process delayed.

Forget about expressing it, bringing it – no! That is an ego effort, and this energy has nothing to do with the go. The ego cannot catch hold of it – it is beyond the ego. Just wait, just feel it. Whenever it is there, just put your hand there. Have you got a box with you? I will give you a box.

Whenever you feel the energy is very much there, just put the box there, hold it there, and the energy will become almost like fire. You will feel that all the life has reached there; it has become almost like a ball of fire, and you will feel a burning sensation – but very pleasant, not uncomfortable. If it becomes uncomfortable, take the box away and immediately it will subside.

But let it rise, mm? By and by it will start finding its own way – it will come up. It will be expressed and used in many creative ways.

[Another sannyasin says: I feel that if I’m doing an effort to get something, it just seems stupid, but if I hang around and just sit there I feel stupid too.... ]

So what is wrong in it? – you are stupid! (laughter) What can you do about it? Start enjoying it you are fighting with it.

And the moment you start enjoying stupidity, you start becoming wise. Wisdom is not something that is against stupidity – it is a way of enjoying it. Everybody is stupid – a few people enjoy it; they are called wise! What is the difference between a stupid person and a wise person? A wise person is one who starts enjoying it!

Now, you feel that whatsoever you do you feel stupid; if you don’t do you feel stupid. In every way you are stupid – now why not enjoy it!

[The sannyasin asks: There’s no way out, huh?]

There is no way out! And there is no need... there is no need. Enjoy it – and if you start enjoying it you will suddenly see that nothing is stupid; it is a delight. Sometimes sit and enjoy that stupidity; sometimes do things and enjoy that stupidity – and both are good. And for a change sometimes one can do this, and sometimes that.

... If you enjoy it you will stop calling it stupid. What is the point of calling it stupid when you enjoy it? In fact if you don’t enjoy something you call it stupid. It is derogatory – the word is derogatory, condemnatory. If you enjoy something you don’t condemn it. In fact you pray,’God, give me more stupidity – I am enjoying it so much. Never make me wise!’

If you enjoy it the time will not look so long. Time looks long only if you are not enjoying it – the length comes from non-enjoyment. When you enjoy, time shrinks and becomes very small. One hour can pass as a second if you enjoy it – one second can be like an hour if you don’t enjoy it. So I don’t think you enjoy it. That is one of the criteria – time.

If time feels very very long – and the day goes on and on and seems non-ending – you are not enjoying. If you start enjoying you will see that suddenly it is the morning and then suddenly the evening and where has the day disappeared? It disappeared into your enjoyment!

Enjoyment is alchemical... it is magic.

Try it – you have not tried it. Just because I said to enjoy it, you said that yes, you enjoyed it. You are very much against this stupidity. You somehow want to get rid of it – you cannot accept it. You think that others are wise and you are stupid. That is not the case at all – everybody is stupid. A few people are wise enough to enjoy it, that’s all.

Try it for three weeks – enjoy, and then you report to me, mm? Make another statement after three weeks – no need to make a question out of it, mm? I hope you will be able to enjoy! And if you cannot within three weeks, then I will do something, so please do! Good!

[A sannyasin said her relationship had recently finished and she still felt hurt and love.

Osho said that one should allow the other to go without resentment, without ill-feeling. He then recounted an incident from his days as professor at Jabalpur.]

It happened once that I was in Allahabad lecturing in the university there, and a professor was just sitting in front of me. I saw that he was crying while I was talking. For twenty, thirty minutes he was there, then he suddenly got up and went out. I was surprised – what happened? He was so deeply vibrated. He was falling almost in tune with me, he was merging with me and then suddenly.... So when the talk was over I enquired, ’Who was this man, and where has he gone? What happened?’

So somebody enquired – somebody went to him and asked, and he said, ’I had to leave because once I fell in love with a man – a very rare man he was – and then that man died. Again with this man I started to feel the same relationship – I was again falling in love – and then I became scared, because the first experience has been such a wound.’

He escaped from the meeting and he wouldn’t come to see me. He said, ’I am afraid, because if I go this man is going to catch hold of me and again I will be in trouble. I am still not free of my first affair.’ That was also an affair. He was in love with a sannyasin – and he was a rare sannyasin. I used to know that man – he was worth falling in love with.

Then suddenly he died, but he had been dead for almost seven years and this man was still bitter:

’I am not going to fall in love with any other saint again!’

He had come to listen to me – he must have thought maybe he would just listen and then go home, but then he started feeling that something was going to happen. Then he wrote a letter to me asking my forgiveness: ’Forgive me – it was rude of me to get up. It was hard also – impossible really – for me to get up from there, but I had to because I was again moving into the same space with you as I moved with my first spiritual love-affair. Again I might have become possessed, and again the same trouble would have started, and who knows? You may die, you may disappear; you may never come again to this city. You may not accept me.’ This happens....

So be clean about it. Close it with beauty, with grandeur, howsoever it hurts. Just say to him,’If it is finished, then good – be happy; wherever you are, be happy. All that you have done for me, I am glad for.’ Then there is a possibility that he may come back.

Good, if he comes back; if he does not come back, that too is good. And one never knows – you may find a better man, a man who fits deeply with you. He may be simply making space for the other to come in. Who knows?

Always remain thrilled with the possibilities – they are infinite. And never hanker for the past – remain open for the future; who knows? Just let it happen....

[A sannyasin asked about an understanding he had in the sahaj group: We all have love and hate for each other. The existence of one person might be a burden on my own existence. So I take it the other way: my existence is a burden for other people’s existence. It makes sense?.... This was new for me to discover and very scary.]

Good that you came to know about it – but it is only the beginning of a certain truth; you have got hold of only part of it. Yes, that is true – somebody’s existence can be a burden to you, so your existence can be a burden to somebody else; this is a half truth. The other half is: somebody’s existence can become wings to you; somebody’s existence can give meaning to your existence, can give significance to yours, and so can your existence be significant to somebody else’s existence –

that is the other side of the coin.

Now it depends on you, on how you live. If you live in an unconscious state you will be a burden. If you live consciously you will never be a burden to anybody – you will be an unburdening presence.

With whomsoever you are, he will feel light. Just your presence will help him to float easily. It depends....

If you have a luminous presence inside you, your impact on others will be unburdening. If you are an unconscious, rock-like person, your presence is going to be heavy on everybody you meet, everybody you come in contact with.

Out of one hundred people, ninety-nine exist like rocks – they crush each other, they destroy. But each has the possibility and the potentiality to become luminous, aware, conscious. Then suddenly you are a light – not only on your own path: you are a light unto others’ paths too. Whosoever walks with you, walks in light. Whosoever walks with you, walks meaningfully – your meaning surrounds him too. Then your life can be a great sharing.

You have come to understand – good – but this is only half of the truth; the other half is still waiting.

This is the negative part that you have seen – now you have to look for the positive part. But good!

In the beginning the negative comes always to mind, because the negative is our reality. e other is our possibility. We are like rocks – that is our reality... but that is not our destiny. Each rock can fly and have wings – that’s our destiny.

Soon the other part will also arise in your consciousness... but the experience has been good. Mm?

don’t be worried about it – the other will be coming.

[A sannyasin said that before going to a doctor he wanted Osho’s comments on physical sensations he had: It’s as if you get this peculiar and orgasmic feeling all over the body. It is a localised feeling when you ejaculate, but it’s something that you feel all over your body at times.]

You can go to the doctor and let it be checked but I don’t think it has anything to do with the body and the doctor will not be able to do anything about it. But it is better to be checked.

And it will disappear on its own as it has come on its own; nothing special is needed to be done for it. It is something that is happening in the body but is not of the body – it is more concerned with the mind.

The mind is going through a process, and the process is so up-rooting, it is such a radical change in the very roots of the mind, that the mind has become shaky. But you cannot feel that shakiness in the mind – you will feel it in the body.

It is very subtle in the mind but when the vibration reaches the body it is easily detectable. If you become watchful you will see that the trembling starts in the mind, then it spreads towards the body.

It spreads on the body but it doesn’t come from the body.

This is one of the oldest experiences in yoga. It has always been a problem and many people have tried to locate it – as if kundalini is something in the body – and then they move into stupid speculations. It is not in the body.

Of course the spinal column is the most sensitive part of the body so there it is felt more, but it is not there... it is just because it is the most sensitive part of the body. So it catches easily and vibrates.

And through its vibration the whole body vibrates, because the whole body is connected with the spinal cord and when the spinal cord throbs, the whole body throbs.

And the head, the brain itself, is nothing but one end of the spinal cord. So when the spinal cord starts throbbing, by and by it becomes too much in the head because that is the most sensitive part of the spine. The spine is the most sensitive part of the body and the brain is the most sensitive part of the spine. Just hidden behind the brain is the mind. The throb is coming from the mind, then it enters the brain, then the spinal column, and then all over the body.

And your guess – that it is orgasmic – is almost right, because what happens in sexual ejaculation is that another end of the spine is affected. These two ends – one is the brain, another is the sex centre, and spread between is the spinal cord.... When you ejaculate, that ejaculation, that throb, enters the spinal cord but it remains local. Mm? just one part of the spine – but the lowest part throbs.

When the same orgasm happens through the mind and enters the brain the whole spinal cord vibrates. Why? Because for the energy to go upwards is difficult – the gravitation pulls it down.

You may be surprised to know that in khajuraho there are a few statues depicting a man standing on his head making love to a woman. Now this is absurd – looks on the surface to be very perverted....

Yogis became aware almost five thousand years ago, that if you can make love standing on your head, even sexual orgasm will become total because the spinal column will be throbbing on one part and then the gravitation will pull it towards the head; ordinarily it remains local. But it is very difficult to make love standing on your head – almost impossible – unless you practice it for years. It is difficult for many reasons.

It is difficult to get the erection while you are standing on your head it needs long practice – because the energy is being pulled in the other direction. And it is almost unnatural for the body.... But the statue is very symbolic and very meaningful....

It shows that very early on, yogis became aware of the fact that the spiritual orgasm and the sexual orgasm have something similar. The only difference is that the sexual orgasm happens at the lowest rung and cannot go up because the gravitation pulls it down. The spiritual orgasm happens at the uppermost rung and then easily spreads because the spinal column sucks it very easily – the gravitation helps – and then the orgasm spreads all over the body. That’s why you are throbbing.

It is odd and a little strange, but I don’t think that it is uncomfortable.... Just go and let it be checked.

If there is something they can do, good – because it will not hinder your process, so you need not be worried about it. If there is something wrong in the body, let it be treated.

It is not going to affect the process at all because the process is not arising in the body. You may be able to absorb it sooner or later without any shivering or shaking. That’s why in yoga they move very slowly from yama, neeyama, pranayama, pratyahar, dharna, dhyana samadhi; they go very slowly.

First they teach yama and neeyama; then they teach asana. These three steps make the body very very strong – so strong that when in pratyahara these vibrations start, the body is ready to absorb it.

Then dhama it goes still a little deeper. Then dhyana – then still a little deepen But the process is so long that almost a person’s whole life is wasted by the time he reaches the third. So I have dropped all: I simply start from dhyana, the sixth to the seventh; from dhyana to samadhi. The other six have been dropped.

But only very rarely does it happen that a person feels this, otherwise nothing is a problem. A few asanas will be helpful to you. Sirshasan will be very helpful so your body will become a little stronger.

The vibrations will come but the body will not be shaken by them, that’s all. The vibrations are very strong and your body cannot control them so it goes into sparks. But you go and let the body be checked, and when it is checked and if they want you to take some medicine, take the medicine.

After it you can start doing sirshasan and a few other asanas; whatsoever you feel good with, you can learn. Just a fifteen, twenty-minute procedure will be good, mm?

[The sannyasin asks: Should I continue with my meditation that you have given me? Because the moment the throbbing is there and I become aware of my breath, the turmoil is accentuated... but that doesn’t worry me.]

Continue – meditation you continue, because these are not reasons to stop meditating.

CHAPTER 27

To be blissful is the greatest courage

27 January 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Anand means the ultimate state of bliss, mahavira means greatly courageous. And that’s what is needed!

Nothing else but courage is needed, and everything will happen on its own accord. We go on missing many things in life just because we lack courage. In fact, no effort is needed to achieve –

just courage – and things start coming to you rather than you going to them... at least in the inner world it is so.

And to me, to be blissful is the greatest courage. To be miserable is very cowardly. In fact to be miserable, nothing is needed. Any coward can do it, any fool can do it. Everybody is capable of being miserable but to be blissful, great courage is needed – it is an uphill task.

Ordinarily we don’t think so – we think, ’What is needed to be happy? Everybody wants to be happy.

That is absolutely wrong. Very rarely does a person want to be happy – notwithstanding what they go on saying. Very rarely is a person ready to be happy – people have so much investment in their misery. They love to be unhappy... in fact they are happy in being unhappy.

There are many things to be understood – otherwise it is very difficult to get out of the rut of misery.

The first thing – that nobody is holding you there; it is you who has decided to remain in that prison of misery. Nobody holds anybody. A man who is ready to get out of it, can get out of it right this very moment. Nobody else is responsible. If one is miserable, one is responsible, but a miserable person never accepts the responsibility – that is his way of remaining miserable. He says, ’Somebody else is making me miserable.’

If somebody else is making you miserable, naturally, what can you do? If you are making yourself miserable, something can be done... something can be done immediately. Then it is within your hands to be or not to be miserable. So people go on throwing the responsibility – sometimes on the wife, sometimes on the husband, sometimes on the family, sometimes on the conditioning, the childhood, the mother, the father... sometimes the society, the history, fate, god, but they always go on throwing. The names are different but the trick is the same.

And a man really becomes a man when he accepts total responsibility he is responsible for whatsoever he is.

This is the first courage, the greatest courage. Very difficult to accept it, because the mind goes on saying,’If you are responsible, why do you create it?’ To avoid this we say that somebody else is responsible: ’What can I do? I am helpless... I am a victim! I am being tossed from here and there by greater forces than me and I cannot do anything. So at the most I can cry about being miserable and become more miserable by crying.’ And everything grows – if you practise it, it grows. Then you go deeper and deeper... you sink in deeper and deeper.

Nobody, no other force, is doing anything to you. It is you and only you. This is the whole philosophy of karma – that it is your doing; ’karma’ means doing. You have done it and you can undo it. And there is no need to wait, to delay. Time is not needed – you can simply jump out of it!

But we have become habituated. We will feel very lonely. If we stop being miserable, we will lose our closest companion. It has become our shadow – it follows us everywhere. When nobody is there at least your misery is with you – one is married to it. And it is a long, long marriage; you have remained married to misery for many lives.

Now the time has come to divorce it – and sannyas means a declaration of the divorce. That I call the great courage – to divorce misery, to lose the oldest habit of the human mind, the longest companion.

And this name is also the name of one of the greatest enlightened persons of the world – the twenty-fourth teerthankara of the jainas. His name is Mahavira. He was a contemporary of Buddha and really a very significant man. If ten persons are counted in the whole world as the topmost, he must have a place in those ten persons.

He is not very much known – at least not known in the west – because his whole way of life was so tremendously revolutionary, so radical, that nobody could follow. Or even the people who followed him – a very small group – also followed him in name only.

Christians have not betrayed Jesus as much as jainas have betrayed Mahavir. Buddhist’s have not betrayed Buddha as much as jainas have betrayed mahavir... and the reason is because he is the most courageous of them all! He is so far away, the distance is so big between the ordinary human world and him, that it is impossible to follow him.

He is the first enlightened man in India who remained naked. It was very difficult to move naked in those days. Being nude was very rebellious. Mm? he was chased from one town to another.

Nobody would even give him shelter; everybody was afraid of him. Who will follow this naked man?

And not only that he was nude – he was so revolutionary in everything that he said and did.

His original name was ’Vardhamana’, but because of his courage, by and by people started calling him mahavira. Mahavira is not his original name – it is the name given by the people who started loving him and who felt his great courage, his tremendous courage. His revolution is very radical.

If you can find some books on Mahavira, read them, mm? it will help you....

[A sannyasin said: The last few days in meditation I felt energy coming up and getting stuck somewhere in my arms. I was looking for a way to let it out and I started to do deep massages

– which felt very good. It comes up and it stops somewhere here (indicating upper arms).]

Massage can be really helpful... it will release the energy. Anything with the hands will release, and if you can do something lovingly the energy will start flowing. Energy always flows towards the object of love.

So whenever you feel energy stuck anywhere, that is the secret to make it flow. Find an object of love – any object will do; that is just an excuse. If you can touch a tree very lovingly the energy will start flowing, because wherever love is energy pours towards that. It is just like water flowing downwards – so wherever the sea is, the water seeks the sea-level and goes on moving.

Wherever there is love, energy seeks the love-level; it goes on moving.

So massage can help. Mm? if you do it very lovingly it can help. But anything can help, so don’t get addicted to massage, because then you will think that only massage can help.

Take a rock in your hand with deep love, with a deep concern. Close your eyes and feel tremendous love for the rock... grateful that the rock exists, grateful that it accepts your love, and suddenly you will see a pulsation and the energy is moving. Then by and by there is no need to have any object really – just the idea that you love somebody, and energy will be flowing. Then even the idea can be dropped. Just be loving and energy will be flowing. Love is flow, and whenever we are frozen it is because we don’t love.

Love is warmth, and the frozenness cannot happen if the warmth is there. When love is not there, everything is cold. You start falling below zero point.

So one of the very important things to remember: love is warm – so is hate; indifference is cold. So sometimes even when you hate, energy starts flowing. Of course that flow is destructive. In anger energy starts flowing. That’s why people feel somehow good after anger... something was released.

It is very destructive. It could have been creative if it had been released through love, but it is better than not being released. If you are indifferent you don’t flow.

A man who hates can be converted into love, but with a man who is simply indifferent, there is no go.

So if somebody hates you it is possible to make friendship with him. But if somebody is indifferent, there is no possibility; friendship cannot grow. It never grows on the soil of indifference. It can grow even on the soil of hate but never on the soil of indifference.

So anything that melts you and warms you up is good. The first choice always must be love. If that is not possible, the second choice is anger. And these are the only two choices – the third is not a choice. That is where people are, already are.

That’s why you see so many dead people, walking corpses.... They are alive only for the name’s sake – because they are indifferent. They don’t look at the trees, they don’t look at the moon, they don’t look at the clouds, they don’t look at the dewdrops, they don’t look at the rainbows, they don’t listen to the birds. They are insensitive, indifferent. They exist closed inside themselves in a capsule of indifference. They are not yet born – they are still in the womb.

Once you start flowing.... Mm? by experience you have discovered a very basic law. It is not massage really – it is your concern for the other person... that you want to help... that love. Massage is not the real thing.

If somebody becomes very much trained in massage, becomes technically trained – a professional

– this will not happen, because there will be no love; he will do it professionally. He will remain indifferent... he will not be there at all; he will do it only physically. Because you are not a professional and you just wanted to release the energy somehow, you have stumbled upon a very significant fact.

On the path many facts are discovered – sometimes just by coincidence, sometimes accidentally.

And one should be very alert. Whenever you find that something works, remember it: there must be something hidden in it.

For example, it is not massage that works – it is your concern, your love. Now try the same thing on a rock: just massage the rock and see what happens, and be loving. Try it on a tree. When you feel that it is happening, just sit silently and try. Remember somebody you love – a man, a woman, a child, a flower. Remember that flower – just the idea – and you will see suddenly that energy is flowing. Then drop that idea too.

One day simply sit silently just being loving – not addressed, not to anybody in particular. In a loving mood, just sit silently, lovingly, and you will see that it is flowing. Then you know the key: love is the key.... Love is the flow.

[Osho invites a seeker to take sannyas. She answers: I hesitate the whole time. I don’t know why. I think about it and I ask everybody what it is to be a sannyasin, and.... Nobody can really tell me.]

Mm! Nobody knows really... not even l! Nobody knows. This is something that has to be experienced. If you know it beforehand, you miss much.

There are things which one should not know beforehand. For example, you want to go to see a movie and somebody tells you the story. He is your enemy – he has spoiled the whole thing! Then what is the point of going now? Why not go directly, firsthand? Why not see for yourself?

That’s why I go on talking about sannyas but I manage it in such a way that nobody can exactly say what it is. I talk every day about it but nobody can explain to you what it is.

[A sannyasin says: I feel like I’ve been in a dark tunnel for so long now. And when I come out and it’s light I feel... I feel afraid. But I still want to be here, working.]

Mm, work here. No problem is worthwhile. We unnecessarily become concerned about small things.

And when you become too much concerned about small things, it becomes too big... it appears too big out of all proportion. Just you are focused on it, you magnify it; otherwise it is nothing. If you see the world in its total perspective, what are our problems?

There is a story of Bertrand Rrussell’s.... A catholic priest dreams one night that he has died. He has reached paradise and he is very happy. He has been waiting for many years, he has been praying and praying and fasting and doing a thousand and one things. Now he has arrived.

So he knocks on the door, but day in, day out, he knocks and knocks. The door is so big that by and by he becomes suspicious that his knock will never be heard, because he cannot see the other end of the door. But after a few days knocking, a window opens in the door and somebody looks at him.

The priest thinks he is god because he has one thousand eyes.

So he simply falls down on his head, he bows down, and he says, ’My god, I am happy to see you!’

But the man laughs and says, ’I am not god – I am just the doorkeeper! And as far as god is concerned, I have never seen him. I am the lowest doorkeeper here, and god is far away. But what do you want?’

The priest becomes very much afraid, because he feels like an ant and those one thousand eyes are so penetrating and the man is so big and he is just a doorkeeper... and the lowest! But still the priest gathers courage. For the whole life he has been a public speaker and has been sermonising to thousands of people. So he gathers courage, and he says, ’Okay. Then tell god, send a message, that I have come from such-and-such a great city. I am a great priest, and my name must be known there.’

The man with one thousand eyes says, ’We have never heard about this city and this church. And what do you mean by catholicism? Never heard of it before! First you tell us from what planet you are coming.’

So he says, ’From earth!’

The doorkeeper says, ’There are millions of earths! From what earth? You have to give the index number.’

Now the priest is at a loss – what is the index number of the earth? – because he has known only one earth! Seeing that he is very puzzled, the doorkeeper tries to help him. He says, ’At least you can tell me to which sun your earth belongs – the index number of the sun, because there are millions and millions of suns.’

Now it is very difficult... so what to say about christianity and what to say about catholicism, and what to say about a town and a church, and the priest of that church, mm? Now the priest is so insignificant. But he says, ’Try to find out some way.’

So the doorkeeper says, ’Wait. I will go to the library and we will enquire.’

It takes many years, and the priest is waiting and waiting and waiting. He becomes hopeless – by and by he feels there is no possibility. After years the man comes, and he says, ’We have been able to find out the number of your sun, and now we can figure out from where you are coming, but what do you want? For what have you come here?’

Now the priest has forgotten all – all the ideas that he used to dream about: that he will be received by god in paradise and angels will dance and play on their harps. God is impossible – because even this gatekeeper has not seen him!

But the gatekeeper said, ’The librarian is interested. He wants to see you because he has never seen a man. In fact, we have never seen one – you are the first man who somehow managed to come here!’

So the librarian comes. He has ten thousand eyes and so much light pouring from them that the poor priest simply closes his eyes and shrinks into a corner... is shivering and trembling. He says,

’Let me go. I don’t want to come in! This is only the librarian?’ (laughter) And in that trembling, his dream is broken. He was just dreaming it!

He is perspiring – it is a cold night, but he is perspiring all over, and his whole body is trembling.

.... This is a beautiful story.

Our problems are so insignificant – they are almost non-existential. Once you see this vastness, this infinity, this timelessness, what are your problems?

In the east this has been our basic framework. Whenever a person has a problem, rather than solving his problem we tell him to look at the infinity of existence, so in the proportion his problem comes to its right size. But then you cannot even see it. It becomes so small – you start laughing. It is so ridiculous to be worried about it... it is simply meaningless.

So whenever you have a problem, look at the stars, look at the vast sky, look at the ocean, look at the Himalayas! And then just figure out how important your problem is. Then you will be able to laugh, and if a person can laugh at his own problem, it is solved.

I have never come across a problem which is of any worth – and every day I deal in problems. But I have never come across any problem which was really a problem. There is no problem – we have just lost the perspective.

When things are so big and we are so small, so tiny, and our life – a life of seventy years – is almost just like a split second... just listen to the vastness, and suddenly there is no problem – you have transcended. This is what meditation is.

[A participant in the Encounter groups says: I just don’t want to fight, and the groupleader tells me I’m in a cloud of anger and should get it out. But I don’t want to get it out by fighting.]

I understand. It is painful to get rid of the poison from the system but there is no way, no other way; otherwise you will repress it and you will carry it. You can carry it – it is your decision – but some day or other you will have to settle accounts with this anger, and the sooner done, the better.

Understand that because you have too much anger, you become afraid. You can murder somebody

– so you become afraid. You want not to fight any more and you start trembling and deep down a fear arises that you may do something that you don’t want to do.

[She replies: Also that somebody does something to me.]

Yes, that too is there... that too is a reflection of your own possibility. We only imagine things being done to us that we can do to others, otherwise we don’t even imagine. A man who can murder always thinks that somebody may murder him – otherwise that idea never arises. That idea is a projected idea reflected back. understand – it is very painful, your plight is understandable – but this is the only way to get rid of it... and it will not take long. I think only one more group and you will be out of it. It will not take long and there is not much of a problem in it.

And that’s why you don’t want to fight – because you are not basically an aggressive person; you are not! That’s why you don’t want to fight. Because there are people who love fighting. In fact they go to an encounter group just to fight, to have a beautiful fight! So there they can explode and do things which they cannot do outside because the police are there and the court is there. In the encounter group these things are allowed.

You are basically a soft person – you are not aggressive, not violent – but some aggression has been repressed in your childhood, and that is there in the corner of your unconscious. Allow it. Once it is gone you will become very very beautiful. Otherwise it will always remain there and you will always remain afraid of it. It is good to get rid of it. Once it is gone the fear will also be gone. When the anger is gone fear is also gone.

And it is very bad to carry this fear – that you can become angry. It is hard work, but all growth is hard.

My feeling is that your upbringing has been such that you have never been allowed to be angry, ..to be aggressive, mm? but always to be soft and polite, and feminine... that’s why. But the other part is there!

Carl Gustav Jung has the right classification – he calls the classification ’anima’ and the ’animus’.

’Anima’ means the feminine, ’animus’ means the male.

It is exactly the same as the taoist

classification of yin and yang, or the indian parable of Shakti and Shiva.

If a man is not allowed to be woman, by and by he loses contact with his woman part, with his anima. Once a man loses his contact with his anima, he becomes homosexual. If he cannot meet the woman within, he starts hating the woman outside; then he can love only man. If a woman cannot love the man within herself and cannot respect the man within herself, has become condemnatory, she becomes a lesbian. She can love only a woman; she cannot love a man.

If you cannot accept the inner man, how can you accept the outer? The outer and the inner go together. So this happens in the military, in the army, the navy – people become homosexuals, because they are all-male groups. In the army they are taught to be men, so they become homosexuals. Monks become homosexuals and nuns in the nunneries become lesbians. It has to be so, otherwise where will their love flow? The love needs to flow somewhere.

This has happened all over the world and it has to be changed, totally changed. One has to find how to make a balance between the anima and the animus, between yin and yang – how to make a harmony out of these two polarities, how to meet the inner other, the inner opposite, how to get married in your inner being and become one whole. Then a man is both. He is as feminine and graceful as a woman. He can fight as a man and he can love as a woman... he can be as strong as a sword, and as soft as a roseflower.

In Japan there exists a statue of Buddha in which he is holding a sword in one hand and in another hand a small earthen lamp. This statue is really beautiful. On the side where he is holding a sword, if you look at his face, half of his face is that of a warrior – sharp, ready to fight. On the side where he is holding the earthen lamp, the light is falling – it is so soft and feminine.... And this is the whole man!

You must have come across some picture of Ardhanarishvar. In India we have a symbol that Shiva is half man and half woman; there are statues of Shiva in which half of his body is that of a man, and half of his body is that of a woman. He has a breast on one side and is feminine – another part is male. That is the meeting of yin and yang, anima and animus.

Allow your animus – that will make you more balanced. You can repress it but that repression will become a hindrance in your growth. My suggestion is not to be afraid. There is nothing to be worried about – I am protecting you – just go ahead.

[Another group member says: I see that I want to cling to my misery.

The group leader comments that she gets stuck in a tantrum and shuts off instead of breaking through.]

It will go. Everybody clings – because we have nothing else to cling to. The question is not really that it is misery you are clinging to – you want to cling to something and you have nothing else, so you cling to misery.

The basic thing is that one wants to cling to something, otherwise one will be left in emptiness and one will start falling into the abyss; so one clings to anything!

There is a buddhist story.... A lion is chasing a man and the man is running away. And of course he is afraid and death is following... the lion is very ferocious. The man goes on running and then he comes to a point that there is no way ahead – he has come to a precipice.

The lion is coming closer and closer and the man starts feeling that he is just breathing on his neck, so he takes hold of a root of a tree and hangs in the abyss.

Now, the tree is very small and the root is very fragile and he knows that he is in a dangerous position, but what to do? It is better at least than the lion! He will take him in one gulp and he will be gone! At least for a few minutes more he can be alive. The abyss is very very big – if he falls he is gone!

Then he looks at the tree, and the lion comes and stands and roars on top of it – he trembles. The root is very fragile and just near it two mice are cutting the tree. One is white and one is black –

the symbol of day and night. They are working fast, and within half an hour the root is going to be broken and he will fall.

Then he looks down – it is such a big abyss that there is no possibility of survival. Then he becomes aware that two lions are standing there too! If somehow – by chance, by accident – he is saved, those two lions will eat him. Now what to do?

And then he sees that some bees are collecting honey on the tree. Just a drop of the honey falls and he takes it on his tongue. The honey is really sweet. For one moment he forgets everything in the sweetness of the honey!

It is a buddhist parable, mm? Buddha says,’Every moment death is coming closer – you cannot escape! There is no escape! This side – the lion; that side – two lions. And day and night – time –

is cutting the very roots of your life, but still man is so foolish that if he gets a single drop of honey, he is very happy. For that moment at least, he forgets everything.

One has to cling to something, otherwise this vast emptiness... and you will not know where you will fall. You don’t have anything else other than the misery, so you cling to misery. Not that you want to cling to misery – you want to cling, that’s all, and misery is all that’s available.

Soon, your meditations will grow and you will have something better to cling to. Then one starts dropping never before it! The positive has first to grow, only then is the negative thrown away never before. You have to have a little happiness, then you will start moving. Your focus will change – you will have something better. Right now you don’t have anything, so it is natural. Don’t get worried about it – it is human and humanly natural... naturally human.

Just go on working – you have become aware of something important. Everybody is doing that –

more or less; everybody is doing that. So don’t think that you are doing something perverted... it is natural. The only thing that you are doing more is that you have become aware, and others are not aware. This awareness is good. This has hope in it... this is a great progress.

It will go. Continue to meditate, mm?

CHAPTER 28

My whole work is to push you into emptiness

28 January 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[Osho gives sannyas to a seeker.]

This will be your name... and not only a name but a radical change – a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. Less than that won’t do... Less than that never does anything. You can go on boiling water at ninety-nine degrees... you can go on boiling and boiling and it will never evaporate; it evaporates only at one hundred degrees.

And this is one of the human problems – that it is very difficult to know at what degree a person is going to evaporate. It is not so easy as with water because water has no personality. All water is alike – whether you boil it in India or in America it makes no difference – one hundred degrees and it evaporates; it is simple. Man is very complex – there are as many human natures as there are human beings.

In fact to use the word’human nature’ is not right. There is a certain thing like the nature of fire, the nature of water, but there is no such thing as human nature. There are as many human natures as there are human beings, so one never knows. That’s why religion can never become a science.

Man remains unpredictable. It is almost impossible to know beforehand what will be the right degree at which one will evaporate, so one has to go on working, go on working, until one evaporates. And sometimes it happens that it is just a degree away.

As the russian Christians used to say in the old days: God is just a prayer away. But one never knows what that prayer is, and in what moment it is going to happen... what the words in that prayer are... whether it will be silent or verbal... what to say or whether to be quiet; one does not know. But god is one prayer away and that prayer has to be found by everyone. One has to seek and search in one’s own being.

So sometimes it happens that a person is just on the verge – one step more and the thing will happen. But he may not take that one step and the thing may not happen. Another problem is that today it may be at fifty degrees that you can evaporate, tomorrow it may be one hundred degrees; the day after tomorrow it may be something else.

There are as many human natures as there are human beings, and even one single human has not a single human nature – a multiplicity – because each single human being is so much like a crowd.

One day something is possible; another day it may not be possible.

So never miss any opportunity. When it knocks on the door, never miss it. Don’t say, ’Come tomorrow.’.... Don’t say it... don’t say it! Because it may never come again. So whenever any opportunity knocks at the door, be available and do whatsoever you can do. Never be satisfied unless the ego evaporates... unless you evaporate. Just a little more effort is needed that’s why I say a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn; less than that won’t do.

This will be your name: ma prem sangeeto.

Prem means love and sangeeto means music: love music. It is difficult to explain it, because love is difficult to explain and so is music. But only that which cannot be explained is valuable – that which can be explained is just ordinary. That which is within explanation is not of much worth. Only that which remains inexplicable becomes the bridge between you and the reality.... It is always mysterious.

Love is mysterious, so is music. They have a certain similarity, some affinity, as if they belong to the same family, but they are not related in a way things are ordinarily related. So this is the first thing to be understood.

There are two types of relationship. One is the cause-effect relationship. If poison is given to you, you will die – that caused your death; it is a causal relationship. Science functions in the causal world. There is another type of relationship which is not causal, which is non-causal, ’acausal’, or what carl gustav jung has rightly called ’a relationship of synchronicity’. That word is tremendously significant.

There are a few things which are not caused by each other but always go together in a certain mysterious way. For example if a person is deep in love, he starts hearing the music of existence.

Not that it is caused by love, but if a person is deeply in love suddenly he becomes aware of some music all around that he was never aware of – the music of the spheres.

Ordinarily the same world has always surrounded him but there was no music, there was no magic, there was no poetry – everything was prosaic, ordinary, dusty, repetitive. When a person loves deeply, suddenly, as if a curtain has been removed, a screen has disappeared, he hears for the first time the wind blowing through the pines – and there is music. He hears for the first time the river rushing towards the ocean – and there is music. He sits silently... it is a dark night, and he hears.

The silence itself has a music to it. Everything suddenly becomes available as music.

So when a person is deep in love, music happens, but it is not caused; it is not a causal relationship.

The contrary is also true – if you are in a tremendous mood of music, harmony, you will feel loving.

Suddenly you would like to bless the whole world. When you are deeply drinking in music, you lose many things: anger, hatred; they simply become irrelevant. Even if your enemy comes in front of you, you would like to hug him.

A musical moment allows love to happen. Still I will insist, it is not causal – not that the music is creating it; they go together. They are in some mysterious way – which is not that of cause and effect – related. These are the two worlds.

The world of cause and effect is the world of science, and the world of the non-causal is the world of religion, poetry, art. All that is really valuable is non-causal... you cannot produce it on order.

If somebody says ’Love me’ you cannot produce it on order. If somebody says ’Produce music’ you cannot produce it on order; at the most you can pretend. Maybe you can deceive but you know it cannot be produced on order. The musician is not in control of the music – the music has to flow through the musician. The musician cannot control it – it comes from the beyond... as does love.

Both are inexplicables... but still something can be hinted about them. Nothing can be said about them but still one has to say something.

In one of his most famous books ludwig wittgenstein writes a very famous maxim – it is in his book’tractatus logico philosophicus’. He says,’Whereof a man cannot speak, he should be silent.

Whereof nothing can be said, one should keep silence.’ Looks very logical: if it cannot be said, why say it? His maxim looks very very rational but I would like to say, ’Whereof one cannot speak, one should try to speak. Whereof one cannot speak, one must speak – knowing well that the effort is doomed to fail, knowing well it cannot be said, knowing well that one is going to fail. But the failure is never complete, and that is the only hope....’

A Buddha spoke, a Lao Tzu spoke, Jesus spoke... and they knew that they were saying something which cannot be said, but they still said it. They tried hard their whole life to say it in so many ways.

They used a thousand and one devices and they knew that they were going to fail... but still the failure is never complete.

Yes, it cannot be said and yet something is being transferred. In the very effort of saying it, something is transferred.

I cannot say what love is, but my very concern – that I would like to relate to you – will show my love.

I cannot say what music is, but my very concern to convey it to you, will make you hear the music of my heart.

So I say, ’Whereof nothing can be said, one must say it, knowing well that one is going to fail – but the failure is never complete.’ And that small gap is the only hope... the beyond peeks through that hope.

And I give you this name to remember these two things: be more loving... and when I say be more loving, I’m not saying practise love, no; it cannot be practised. I’m not saying cultivate it – it cannot be cultivated. Just be available. When some opportunity knocks at your door, don’t close the door –

that’s all one needs.

When somebody holds your hand, don’t shrug yourself away, don’t shrink – remain available, because in so many ways, it is always god who is approaching. It does not matter through whom he has approached you. He may sometimes approach through the eyes of a dog – don’t reject!

Sometimes he may approach through a tree – don’t say no! Remain always in a yes-saying mood, and more and more will become possible – it will be flowing. Only ’no’ kills it – ’yes’ helps it. ’Yes’

means a cooperative mood.

And become more and more tuned to music – all sorts of music: natural, human... all sorts of music.

Whenever there is some music, sit silently – let that be your meditation. Listen to it, and listen so deeply that you are thrilled, stirred. Listen through the sentiment, the emotion, the heart, and both will help each other. They are non-causal, but they go together.

Love will help you to become more and more capable of hearing the music and music will help you to be more and more loving.

[The new sannyasin said she was upset because she still had tremendous love for C – , her former guru.]

That is not a problem at all. My love is not a jealous love. Love more! If you love me, you become capable of loving more. Love as many people as you can love. So there is no conflict at all. I will help you to love him more – that’s not the problem. Because the goal is love – not whom you love.

When I say sometimes god can look at you through the eyes of a dog, then why not from the eyes of C – ?

.... Your thinking is of a very feminine and jealous type. You don’t understand my love (a chuckle).

My love will make you able to love more – and that’s the real love: it makes you love more! If somewhere your love becomes a confinement exclusive, jealous, narrow avoid it like a plague; it is dangerous.

[The sannyasin then says: I didn’t want to take sannyas because it seemed like a closed-off, total commitment.]

No, no. Commitment is total but it is not closed – and a closed commitment cannot be total; they are contradictory terms. People use them together not knowing what they are saying. A closed commitment can never be total – it is ugly. There is fear... there is blindness. A total commitment is always an open commitment.

I am vast enough! You can include everybody in me and there is no trouble in it. Whomsoever you love, you will be loving me, so there is no problem in it.

You will understand by and by, mm? you will understand. Good!

Prem means love and prabhatri means a morning song. A special type of singing is done in india which is done only in the early morning when the sun is just rising. In indian villages, people go singing songs when the sun is rising, because the rising sun is the symbol of the inner rising consciousness. In india everything is symbolic, and each ordinary thing has become suffused with great significance. Down the centuries, for thousands of years, people have been searching for signs of god... and the early rising sun is one of the most beautiful.

In exactly the same way, one day in the inner consciousness, on the inner horizon, another sun rises – that’s what samadhi is... in exactly the same way. And then the inner darkness disappears.

The outer sun helps the outer darkness to disappear – the inner light helps the inner darkness to disappear. The outer light cannot help the inner darkness to disappear, that’s true. But for those to whom the inner has not happened, the outer is the sign that there is a possibility, there is hope.

And any sign becomes tremendously significant when you start looking deeper into it. Now many things become clear about it. The morning sun rises – you cannot do anything about it. Your doing is not needed: it rises when it rises. It rises on its own – at the most we can sing. Not that by our singing it is going to rise, no. See the difference....

In all other religions of the world it is thought that by prayer god comes closer – in india, not so. By singing in the morning, the sun does not rise. If you don’t sing, then too it will rise. By your singing you simply welcome the one that is already coming. You receive in gratitude that which was already coming. Then the sun becomes your guest.

In India prayer is not thought to be a means to god – no! There is no means, there is no method possible. All that can be created by any method will be mundane – cannot be of the infinite, of the immeasurable, of the ineffable; it is not possible.

God arises when he arises. One has to wait. But one can sing... he can be welcomed.

So prabhatri is a welcome-song. It is disappearing in the big cities, but in the small towns it still exists. In a small town near about five o’clock, the villagers go singing all around the town, shouting joyfully, ’Rise, the sun is rising! Why are you asleep? The sun is rising! Come out of your home and welcome it!’ And by and by the whole village gathers and everybody is awake and children are running and old people have come. The whole village is agog – the sun is rising! That is called prabhati.

So become a singing, welcome-song! Good!

Deva means divine, godly, and mahapatra means the great capacity; the great capacity to receive the divine – just like a great emptiness... Like a womb. Everybody is capable of receiving him, but people are not aware of their capacities.

The name is to remind you to be more feminine as far as the search for truth is concerned. It is not a male search. You cannot storm upon god, you cannot attack him – it is not an aggression. You have to receive him. All that we can do is to be in a let-go and let his energy flow.

If we don’t hinder him, he will be coming. He will be coming abundantly. He will be coming so much that you will not be able to absorb him. He will be showering all around you... he will start overflowing. But there is no way to bring him in. That very effort is of the ego, and because of that ego, one goes on missing. So become a great receptivity, an empty vehicle, an empty vessel.

This is a taoist attitude, and my whole attitude is taoist. Lao tzu says that a room is not valuable because of the walls – no! The room is valuable because of the inner roominess, the emptiness inside. You live in the emptiness of the room – you don’t live in the walls. Walls are not really the room. And that is the meaning of the english word ’room’: room means roominess, emptiness.

Ordinarily we think of the walls being the room – they are not. The room is inside the walls.... the insideness of it. A vessel is important not because it is made of gold, or made of silver, or made of earth; that doesn’t matter.... A vessel is important because of the inner emptiness.

And Lao Tsu says a very important thing. He says that whether the vessel is made of gold or is made of mud, the emptiness remains the same. The emptiness never becomes golden.

And the emptiness has to be used. So when you become empty it does not matter whether you are a great scholar, whether you are a very virtuous man respectable, black, white, indian, american, chinese; it doesn’t matter, because these are only the walls. It does not matter whether you are rich or poor. It does not matter who you are, because the inner emptiness is the same.

The emptiness is the same in the king as it is in the beggar – and only that is emptiness which has to be used for god to come and to be received.

Mahapatra means a great emptiness, a great receptivity. Become that, mm?

[A sannyasin says: I had the experience of just blackness around without thought, and I felt to go into it, but I just got afraid – afraid of possible entities or something in that space. I don’t know – it’s completely unknown, so I don’t know how to behave there. I know that’s ridiculous, but.... ]

No, not ridiculous – it is meaningful. I am there – you need not be worried. Just go. It is natural that when one enters into an empty space one becomes very much afraid – because anything can enter, anything can happen and you are no more in control, so you cannot prevent it. If something goes, it goes; you are helpless. If one starts feeling like going crazy, one cannot stop it – so fear arises.

But nothing to be worried about. That’s my whole work here, mm? to push you into that emptiness.

Because one has to cross that barrier where fear is.

The barrier functions as the last thing – it throws you back again and again. One has to cross it.

Once it is crossed, you will really laugh and you will say that it was ridiculous, because there was no fear, nothing. In fact all fear disappears once you cross that barrier.

That fear exists only on this side of the barrier. When there is emptiness there is no fear, but in the west, emptiness has never been understood rightly. They have always been thinking as if something evil can happen. They go on saying that the empty mind is the devil’s workshop.

[Osho said an active mind might be the devil’s workshop but never an empty mind, because it is only one’s thoughts that can lead one astray.... ]

But one is coming home after such a long journey that one does not recognise... one has completely forgotten that it is one’s home. One becomes afraid. It is natural, but go on.

Everything is going perfectly well! Mm – the right space to be in! Just go ahead! It is crazy, mm?

but it just looks crazy. Go in – don’t be worried. Good!

[Osho gives the meaning of the name for a centre.]

This will be the name, karuna: dhyana taru.

Dhyana means meditation, and taru means a tree: a tree of meditation. And I call it ’tree’ because it is a growing thing. It is not a ladder – a ladder is a dead thing. It is a tree – dynamic, always growing.

It is not a ladder because the juice of life still flows in it. It is a tree with sap, juice. And fruits come out of it and flowers and fragrance... it blooms. Through a ladder you can reach somewhere, but nothing blooms.

Dhyana is like a tree... the innermost tree of your being. You climb on it, but it is no ordinary climbing

– it is a constant growth. Everything is flowing and everything new is happening: the old leaves going and the new leaves coming, and soon there will be a blossoming.

In india we have always thought that the ultimate is like a flowering, hence we call the ultimate flowering ’sahasrar’: a one-thousand-petalled lotus. Ordinarily it is a closed bud and hanging downwards – that’s a beautiful metaphor. The energy is moving downwards so the bud is hanging downwards. There is a pull in the energy.

In the ancient indian scriptures they say that man is a tree upside-down: the branches are in the earth, and the roots are in the sky – upside-down. So the whole energy is moving downwards. Man has to stand upright. When the juices start flowing upwards and when the energy comes like a rush, the bud moves upwards.... And it can open only when it moves upwards....

CHAPTER 29

Thorns are as significant as roses

29 January 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Prem means love, and rajhansa means a royal swan.

It is a mythological metaphor. The ordinary swan can stay in any lake but the royal swan only stays at the purest lake in the himalayas; the lake is called mansorovhar. In the hindu mythology it is the purest lake in the world and it is the most beautiful. It is at the highest point in the would and very inaccessible. Rarely a man reaches – very difficult to reach. Nobody lives around there but beautiful swans.

The metaphor is that a royal swan will not be satisfied with an ordinary lake – it needs the ultimate lake. And that’s how the human soul is. The human soul is called rajhansa – a royal swan.

This world is a very ordinary, dirty lake.

It cannot satisfy the royal swan – hence so much

dissatisfaction, so much discontent.

Hence so much misery – because somehow we go on

feeling deep down that this is not the place we belong to; deep down this awareness persists.

In unhappiness it persists; even in happiness it persists. In failure it persists – even in success it persists: that here is not our home, that we are outsiders, that we belong to some other dimension, to some other shore, to some other world.

That feeling exists only in human beings. The trees are at home – they are not strangers; they belong to the earth. They are perfectly happy. The animals are at home. They don’t seek, they don’t search, there is no enquiry. They are not exploring – they are just wherever they are... in a way, contented.

Only human beings are discontented, and the discontent is so deep that even when you achieve everything of this world – all that this would can give you, you have – even then that discontent never leaves you. In fact, it becomes more prominent.

When you have everything of this world, suddenly you start feeling more and more discontented, because you have all and still nothing has happened. Deep down the desert continues, the thirst continues, the quest continues – you have not yet arrived.

So in Hindu mythology the soul is called the rajhansa. The body is the lake, the world is the lake

– an ordinary lake,and somewhere high in the himalayas.... Mm? that too is metaphorical. That simply means in some higher reaches of consciousness, in some higher peaks of consciousness, somewhere is mansorovhar – the ultimate lake – where this royal swan will be happy; his thirst will be quenched and he will feel at home.

Himalaya is just a metaphor. With the East, always remember that all is metaphoric – nothing is literal. This not being understood, the western mind goes on misinterpreting. The western mind is very literal, matter of fact, earthly. When it says two, it means two. In the western mind two plus two are always four – never so in the eastern mind. Everything is possible. Two plus two may be three sometimes, may be five sometimes. Nothing can be said. It is not literal – it is poetic.

And language is not representative of reality in the east – just symbolic. So one has to search deeply into the metaphors. Himalaya is again a metaphor, as is mansorovhar, as is rajhansa – all metaphors.

But there are higher peaks of consciousness – Himalayas of consciousness. When one comes to samadhi, one touches the highest peak. It is absolutely silent there, cool, calm... eternal. On the highest peak of the himaLayas, the snow is eternal – it has never melted. Until just a few years ago nobody had walked on it.

In fact Hindus were not very happy when Hillary climbed everest – they were not happy. You are destroying their beautiful metaphor – for nonsense. They have always thought it untouchable. No human feet have even trodden upon it – it is virgin, uncontaminated by the human touch. Hindus were not happy.

They could have climbed it thousands of years before but they never tried. They believe in the metaphor and not in the reality. The fact is not so important as the significance. They didn’t feel that it was good – it was a violation. But these metaphors, once understood, give tremendous insight.

... And remember, this is not the world where one can be really satisfied. Howsoever cleverly, cunningly, one befools oneself, one day or other one has to awake and one has to recognise the fact that one has to go into some other dimension to seek and search.

Sannyas is the beginning of that dimension – the road that leads to mansorovhar, the road that goes to the highest peak of the consciousness, of the himalayas of consciousness.

So remember it: be contented with the world but never be contented with yourself. Let there be a divine discontent, a burning fire, so you are consumed in that fire, reduced to ashes... nothing left behind, not a trace. And immediately you are transported to another plane of being. That plane of being is the search, is the goal.

[A centre leader from Germany says that many people come to the ashram: And I feel that the explosion is so fast that my explosion, my growth... it’s not big enough for that which will come now.]

Don’t be worried, mm? That’s my responsibility! And you will be big enough... whatsoever happens, you will be big enough. You will be capable enough of accepting all the challenges. They are going to happen.

Within a few years the whole world is going to explode – from everywhere thousands of sannyasins will be coming. So you have to get ready by and by – but there is no problem in it.

Once you know that you can leave it to me, there is no problem. Then you can do and rest and there is no worry. The worry arises when you are the doer. When you are just a vehicle there is no worry.

And as a doer, you will be tired soon. You will go mad if too much pressure comes. As a non-doer nobody can exhaust you. A non-doer can never be exhausted – he is infinite – because a non-doer is joined with the infinite.

In the very moment you decide to be a non-doer and only an instrument in that very moment of surrender – you are joined with the source; then there is no problem. You will do many things –

you will do and you will forget. You will not carry the past and the ego will not arise. The ego is the crushing thing, the poison... so just leave it to me.

That’s why I am teaching so much about surrender. People who are around me right now are not aware of what is going to happen. I am preparing them for many things of which they are not even aware. And surrender is going to be the key, because when things start happening and they explode, they will not be able to cope with it – they will go crazy. The pressure will be too much – it will kill them.

If they know surrender, there is no trouble. Then they can float... whatsoever happens, they can float. Even if the whole world goes chaotic – only my people will be silent and calm and quiet and collected and centred. They will remain unaffected. So you don’t be worried, mm?

[A sannyasin says: I’m questioning my relationship... I’m receiving a lot of violence... very unloving....

I can’t find my centre.]

So the problem is finding the centre or the relationship? – because these are two different things.

One can find the centre without any relationship. So what exactly is the problem? Do you want to find your centre or do you want to make this relationship work?

[She replies: The relationship is very important to me and I think I’ve become very attached.]

Then from where does the problem arise? If it is as important as you say, then you have to sacrifice for that important thing. We go on saying something is important and we never sacrifice anything for it. Then it is meaningless – saying so is not relevant. If you think it is important, then sacrifice, because we have to pay for everything! If you think it is something beautiful that has to be protected, helped, you will have to drop a few things which come as a hindrance: jealousy, indifference, conflict, anger. One has to choose!

If you are in love with your indifference, sadness, unhappiness, closedness, drop the relationship and love these things. Or if one is in love with the relationship, in love with love, then one is ready to drop every thing – then it doesn’t matter.

So when you say ’important’, mean it too... otherwise we go on using words without any significance.

The words in themselves are insignificant. The significance is not in the words – it is in us; we use the words. If we put significance into it, it is there. Then an ordinary word can become tremendously luminous... an ordinary sign can have a significance. Otherwise even a very beautiful word just becomes ugly.

If you feel this relationship is something important, sacrifice and make a conscious decision about it; then you will not be a mess. You are in a mess because you are being pulled in different directions, and you go on allowing those different directions. One has to choose and one has to be very certain.

One cannot have both the things together.

For example, people cannot have jealousy and love together; you cannot have both together. If you want to protect jealousy, love will disappear. If you want to protect love, jealousy has to disappear.

Love and ego cannot exist together.

These are the problems to be understood – once understood there is nothing of a complexity in them. Once you see clear-cut-ly, distinctly, that the ego will not allow you to love.... You go on talking about relationship, but how can the ego relate? The ego cannot relate – the ego separates. With the ego there is no marriage. It isolates, it alienates... it throws you away from people... it makes you like an island.

There is no relationship with the ego. Relationship is possible only when the ego has been dropped

– then you can relate, commune.

So first just watch. Mm? there is no hurry to choose. Because you may not choose this love. I’m not saying to choose it – I’m saying that if you really are in love with your love, you have to choose. You may not be really – you may be just saying for saying’s sake. You may be just using a cliche. You may have said that it is very important, just to impress me, or to impress the people who are around here; or you may not have used the word with any consciousness at all.

So first watch it: if you are really in love and you think it is important, be ready to sacrifice. And I’m not asking you to sacrifice any beautiful thing. Jealousy, sadness, closedness, possessiveness –

these are not very beautiful things that one should be afraid to sacrifice... but people are afraid to sacrifice these things! They are ready to sacrifice happiness very easily, they are ready to sacrifice even love – but they are not ready to sacrifice their ego. They are ready to sacrifice joy, delight –

anything – but not jealousy; they cling with these diseases.

So for three, four days, meditate over it very quietly. And don’t go with a prejudice that you have to do this – nothing! For three days you simply meditate to have a clear perspective as to what the case is. And be very very impartial. Mm? don’t try to deceive yourself. Just be impartial... to see clearly.

Once something is seen with clarity, steps can be taken – they are not difficult. In fact the most difficult thing is the clarity. And people never bother about clarity – they are immediately interested in doing something. Doing is not the point – be clear. Doing comes out of clarity, out of understanding.

So for three days simply meditate on the whole situation.

First, see what is the case, what is happening, why that which you want to happen is not happening, what the hindrances are. Just have the whole perspective, and after three days write a letter to me.

Be very clear.

This won’t do – this saying that you are in a mess. Sometimes this is a trick. You don’t want to sort it out – you want to remain in a mess so that the whole thing remains as it is and there is no problem of decision, of change, of moving in a new direction. People go on as if something will happen and things will settle. They think ’tomorrow’ – as if just time will do. You will still be yourself.

Tomorrow things will become even more complicated, because you will have lived twenty-four hours more and in those twenty-four hours you will have created more mess – so don’t wait for tomorrow.

Whatsoever is to be done, look into it immediately. And time can do nothing if you are not going to do anything. Time itself has no creativity in it. One has to take one’s life into one’s own hands.

So for three days just see, try to see what the situation is. And many times you will come across certain things which you would not like to see in yourself – still see them.

For example, you may come to see that you don’t really love – so don’t hide it, because it is not a question of hiding! You have to be completely clear about the picture of your own being. If you don’t love, you don’t love. Then it has to be reckoned with. Note down that you don’t love. It hurts and the very idea that you don’t love hurts... but this is my understanding – that rarely, out of one hundred people, do one or two persons love. Ninety-eight think they love and suffer! Their suffering is fictitious – in the first place they don’t love!

Those two persons who love, their suffering is not suffering – their suffering is a sacrifice. And when I use the word ’sacrifice’, I mean its original meaning – it is sacred. They are happy doing it – they are not unhappy. They will be unhappy if this situation of sacrifice is taken away from them. No, they are happy. They are called forth... they are ready. They are ready to stake their whole life for it.

Ninety-eight percent of people don’t love but they go on thinking they love. They go on creating problems and it is difficult to sort them out because from the very foundation things are missing. You go on creating a structure and the foundation is not there so the building is never made. Or even if you sometimes succeed in making it, it is very dangerous to live in it.

That’s why when two persons succeed in love, getting married, they are getting into hell. They have created a building which is very dangerous – it can collapse any moment. It is ready to collapse!

Once they are in it, it will collapse. It is going to kill them’

So for three days be very very clear about it – what the case is – and sort things out. And after three days, write a letter to me. But don’t say’I am in a mess’, because I see that you are not. You want that – it would have been good that you were in a mess – then things are clouded. One doesn’t need any decision; what can one do? All over there is fog and one cannot see the road... but I know that you see the road.

My feeling is that deep down you are alert about what is the case, but you are not allowing it – allow it to surface. And after a few days I will see. Mm? Good!

[A sannyasin couple ask about their relationship of ten months. It has been very good, like a honeymoon, until the woman began doing groups, and the hostility, aggression, coming up for her affected their relationship, especially since she began learning karate.]

And you are learning karate? Very good!

No, it is just a passing phase – it will go. And it is good, mm? It is good; it is not bad. Every couple has to pass through it. And if you cannot pass through it, the relationship was not worthwhile.

A relationship is not all roses. You enjoyed the honeymoon too long – now the other part has to be experienced. And the other part is as significant as the honeymoon... the thorns are as significant as the roses.

Some things can be learned only through suffering. A few things can be learned through being happy, a few things can be learned only through being unhappy, sad. A few things are learned through compassion, love, and a few things are learned through anger, hostility.

If a person does not know what hostility is, he will miss something. He will be too sweet, he will not have any salt and he will become tasteless. These opposites make life rich.

As you pass through the first phase of being happy together, make it a point that whatsoever happens, you are going to pass this second phase also. One point should be remembered – that if you want to separate, never separate in a negative mood. When the honeymoon comes again, you can separate. Let that be the point, the decision, and then it will be a conscious work on your being, a deliberate work.

It is very easy to be happy when one is happy. The real work starts when the situation goes against you. Then too, if you can remain calm and quiet at least, if not happy, soon you will see a new quality of happiness arising in you which can face storms and still remain unperturbed. And certainly this is deeper than the ordinary honeymoon-type of happiness – that is very shallow.

So make a decision – that if you decide some day to depart you will have to wait up to when you start feeling happy and the honeymoon starts; then you can separate. And you have to achieve that point again.

It is a wheel – it will come again; as this point has come, the other will come again. And this time it will come in a deeper state, on a higher altitude. Then you will have understood one thing – that each time the wheel goes down and you are unhappy, it will touch a new layer, a deeper layer of your being. Then you can wait – the wheel will go up again, and this time it will be a higher ecstasy. In fact there are seven layers and there are seven honeymoons and seven hells with each honeymoon.

Because of this seven, in India they have made it a ritual that when a person is married, a couple is married, they have to move seven times around the fire. It is very symbolic, very psychological.

Fire is the symbol of life and fire is the symbol of death too. That’s why in india we have chosen fire to dispose of the human body – because life was fire, let death also be fire; there is a subtle harmony. That which was life, let that be death too. In fact life and death are the same, so they must arise out of the same thing. Man arises out of the fire element.

If you ask the scientists they will say it is oxygen, but oxygen is the fire element. Fire is nothing but oxidization. The East says that man has arisen, life has arisen out of fire. Whatever has arisen out of fire has to be thrown back to the original source, so they dispose of the dead body in the fire.

Around the fire the new couple has to move seven times. And those seven times, those seven circumlocutions, are symbolic of seven layers. Seven times you will feel life and seven times you will feel death. Seven times fire – happiness – will become your life and you will be aglow, and seven times your life will be a hell and you will burn. If a couple can pass all these seven layers, then marriage really happens – never before it.

The West has not known what marriage is. Marriage is not such a temporary phenomenon – it takes time to get roots. Two persons are not two ordinary things... great possibilities, infinities. The merger of two persons, of two consciousnesses, into each other, is the greatest chemical change in the whole world. To meet with the other and to meet in rhythm, to meet in a deep inner harmony, is not easy.

So the first honeymoon is nothing. The second will be higher, the third will be still higher, but between each honeymoon there will be a great hell. Nothing to be worried about....

[To the man] And it is good that she is learning karate – that’s very good! Every woman should learn it so that a man cannot dominate physically. Man has dominated too much physically. Because of that domination the woman cannot really feel freedom, and unless the woman feels freedom there cannot be a real harmony. Only two freedoms can meet. Between a master and a slave there is no possibility of meeting. What type of meeting is this going to be? One is a slave and one is a master

– there can be no meeting. They have to exist equally – on equal footing.

So women have to learn karate, aikido, judo – they have to learn all sorts of such subtle techniques

– which are feminine techniques but which can make women tremendously strong. Women are not as tall as men, they are not as hard as men, but there is no need – there are softer and tremendously powerful ways. So let her learn karate!

(to the woman) And sometimes try karate on [him], mm? That is good practice... where will you practice otherwise?

(to both) But pass through this phase – this will go, mm? In fact from this very moment the climate will change! Good!

CHAPTER 30

If you know one secret – to be happy right now – you have learned it all

30 January 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Anand means bliss, and sangeetam means music: bliss music. They have something in common.

Bliss is a music – can be expressed only by music – and music has a blissfulness in it. Hence whenever somebody is lost in music, a glimpse of bliss, like a whip, comes into one’s being. More over, music has no intellectual content in it; it is non-intellectual. You cannot explain music. You can enjoy, but you cannot explain. You may not enjoy, but then too you cannot explain. Either you enjoy or you don’t, but there is no explanation. It is tremendously mysterious. Nobody can say why they enjoy music – the ’why’ remains unanswered.

Music has no expressed intellectual content in it – it is non-rational – hence it is closest to existence, because existence also is non-intellectual. And music is universal – no language is needed to understand it. You need not know indian languages to understand indian music; you need not understand chinese to understand chinese music.

Because music is not something that you

understand by the head – it is something that goes through the heart. You fall en rapport with it.

So deep down there is nothing like indian music, chinese music, western, eastern – these categories are just superficial. Deep down there is only one music – these are all different expressions of that one music. And bliss is also just like music....

One cannot philosophise about it, one cannot speculate about it – either it is or it is not. When it is not, the only thing that can be done is to remain available to it. When you listen to music you will have an insight that you will miss if you listen too attentively. If you are concentrated too much you will become tense and you will miss, because the rhythm will not enter into your being. You have to be porous, relaxed. You have to be just in a deep rest – then music enters you. You are not to search for it. When you are available it seeks you, it comes on its own.

So these two words – one is concentration, and another is centering – have to be understood.

Concentration is on something outside you, centering is something within you. Concentration is extroverted, centering is introverted. Concentration is objective and centering is subjective. You concentrate on something – you centre on yourself... In yourself, rather.

If you want to understand mathematics you will have to concentrate. If you want to understand music you will have to centre. Centering happens only when you are relaxed. Concentration happens only when you are very very tense. That is the meaning of the word’attention’; it means ’tension’.

When you attend to something you become very closed, narrow; you don’t attend to anything else.

If you attend to me and to what I am saying, you will not listen to the birds and this silence of the night or to somebody playing the drum. You will exclude all that – you will bracket it off – and you will concentrate on me. But then you will only understand my words – you will miss my music.

To understand music one has to be relaxed – no narrowing is needed. You are just open – open to everything.... open to me, open to these insects, open to the drummer, open to the trees and the birds, and everything – open to the whole. Then you are centred at your very core. That is the way to listen to music.

And whenever you can listen to music you will feel happy, tremendously happy for no reason at all. From some unknown source a river of bliss flows in, drowns you completely, overfloods you, overwhelms you, starts flowing over you. In those moments if somebody comes close to you, you will feel that something of tremendous significance is flowing through you. He will feel your vibe... it will touch others too.

Centering is such a grace....

Anand means bliss and sangeetam means music; bliss music. So become more and more blissful, centred, and start listening to the music. It is all over... the whole existence is full of music! It is a great harmony, a great orchestra. It is not a chaos – it is a cosmos. Everything fits with everything else. Except for man, nothing is out of rhythm, out of step. Only man is out of step.

So feel blissful and feel more and more musical, mm?

[A sannyasin who is leaving says: I’m feeling very happy right now. I think maybe it’s because I’m escaping.

When I came here I felt miserable – the day that I came – and then when I saw you I felt very happy.

And now I feel happy again, and I don’t know.... ]

That’s very good. Don’t think about it, because thinking can create misery any moment. Thinking is the root cause of all misery. If you think, only then can you be miserable – if you don’t think you are happy.

A non-thinking mind cannot be miserable – that’s why animals are not miserable.... And buddhas are not miserable. Animals are below mind and buddhas are above mind, but one thing is common between both: they don’t have any mind. Animals cannot think and buddhas have dropped thinking

– they don’t think – but one thing is common: thinking is absent.

So whenever you feel that you are becoming miserable, know well that the root cause is somewhere in thinking. If you start thinking about happiness – about why you are happy – even that will do it; even that will destroy happiness. If you start thinking about whether you will be happy tomorrow or not, whether you will be happy in the west or about what is going to happen, you will create many ripples of misery. And not that you will be unhappy tomorrow – you will become unhappy right now!

Once this trick is understood, once this mechanism of the mind has been looked into, there is no need to be miserable unless you really want to be. If one wants one can be miserable, but if one doesn’t want then there is no need.

It is such a simple thing – to be happy should be the most simple thing – because happiness is natural, unhappiness is unnatural. To be miserable needs great effort. To be miserable needs much cleverness, cunningness. To be miserable means you have to earn it. It is not cheap – it is very costly.

To be happy is very simple. You need not earn it, you need not be clever, you need not be very educated, you need not be on a high post, you need not be rich. You need not be anything: because to be happy is simply natural. You have brought it with you – it is in-built. It is as natural as fire is hot... it is as natural as ice is cool. Nothing else is needed to be done about it.

With doing comes misery – with non-doing there is happiness. And that’s my whole teaching: don’t do anything. Let things happen – don’t be the doer. Don’t think much of the past, of the future. Don’t think much – be in the present.

Buddha has a special word for that state. He calls it’chittakshana’ – a moment of consciousness, a conscious moment.

For consciousness, one moment is enough – for thinking one moment is not enough. It needs the whole past, it needs the whole future. The present is not enough for thinking.

To spread thinking you need a very big canvas of the past and the future. In fact the present is so small for thinking that thinking cannot exist in it. Hence – just as a corollary – misery never exists in the present because thinking never exists in the present. To think, you have to go back or you have to go ahead. To be miserable, you have to go back or you have to go ahead.

In this moment it is sheer delight! It cannot be otherwise because in the present only bliss and consciousness can exist. That’s what Buddha calls ’chittakshana’ – a consciousness moment. And once you have learned that there is no need to be afraid, because it is always only a single moment that comes into your hand. Life never gives you two moments. There is no provision for it. Nobody is given two moments together. Only one is given – when that one is taken then another comes, but you always have one moment.

So buddha says,’If you can transform one moment you have known the very peak – you can transform the whole eternity. Nothing else is needed.’

Sometimes people come to me and they say, ’Right now I am feeling very happy, but what will happen to me?’ right now is the only thing there is. Tomorrow again it will be right now. Tomorrow exists not – it is always right now. If you are happy right now, finished – the samsara is finished.

You have gone beyond it, because each moment that ever comes will come as right now. And if you know one secret – to be happy right now – you have learned all! There is nothing else... there is nothing more to it.

Religion is so simple... but man is very complicated. So be alert, and happiness will follow you like a shadow....

[A sannyasin says: It seems to me that the names that we have deal with the missing link. That’s what I’m thinking about.]

I play with names! I have to play with something so I play with names!

.... And don’t give too much importance to the name, otherwise that can become a obsession. It is just a game! Don’t become esoteric about it, and don’t start finding ways and means to discover what it means and what it should mean and what can be the hidden secret meaning of it. There is nothing!

In fact you are nameless... the reality is nameless. The rose is not aware at all that he is a rose...

but the rose is a rose! What you call it makes no difference – what you call it is irrelevant. It has no relationship with the reality of the rose.

Names are irrelevant. What you are called is a utilitarian thing. It is needed, certainly needed, otherwise it will be difficult – so many nameless people, it will be difficult. If somebody wants to call you, he will be at a loss what to do, mm? how to call you, how to talk to you; so it is a utilitarian device.

Remember – you are nameless.

I talk about the meaning of the name to help you drop the old name. I sell the new name... there is a reason for it! The reason is not that names are very important. The reason is that if I can sell the new name rightly you will be able to drop the old easily. I want to make the old appear meaningless.

The new is as meaningless as the old – but that will be a later understanding.

Right now the whole effort is so that you can drop the past. It is as if you are holding in your hand many stones to which you cling, so I talk about diamonds and jewels and pearls and emeralds and precious stones. I talk so much about these diamonds and pearls and emeralds that you lose interest in the pebbles that you are carrying. Once you drop them I’m not going to give you any diamond, any pearl – nothing! Because all that you need is an empty hand.

But once you have dropped them you will have the taste of the emptiness and you will know that that emptiness is the real diamond. You will not complain; you will not say,’You deceived me.’ You will feel thankful, you will feel grateful, because if I had not talked about the diamonds – and those diamonds are just fictitious – you would not have been able to drop your ugly stones. You would have continued to cling to them, because your mind says,’Unless there is something better, why drop it?’

To console your mind I talk about the new name and I make it appear as if it is tremendously significant. In that greed you drop the old. Once the old is dropped, I am going to tell you sooner or later that the new is as useless as the old. Use it – it is needed. It is arbitrary... it is just a label on you. It does not say anything about you – it cannot say anything about you; it has nothing to do with you. You are vast... you are immense! The name is just a small thing.... But then you will be able to understand.

So sometimes I have to lie – I have to tell lies. But that’s what buddhas have been doing down the centuries. There is no other way, because man lives in so many lies that only through lies can he be taken out of it – the mess that he is in. Man only understands the language of the lie.

For example, you understand the language of a beautiful name.

It feels good to the ego, it enhances the ego. Such a great name you have, such great possibility, potentiality; that all buttresses the ego. That is the language you understand – and I have to speak the same language.

Once you have started moving with me there is no problem. The first problem is how to make you move. You are stuck, so if you can move even through a dream I will create a dream for you. And not only names, but all spiritual powers and kundalini and inner lights and chakras and lotuses that bloom inside, are all dreams, allurements, so that you can start moving. You will not move otherwise.

You can move only when there is a dream and that dream motivates you to move.

Once you have started moving you will know that the real thing is movement – not the goal. The real thing is dynamism... the real thing is the streaming energy, the pulsating energy. Not that you are reaching somewhere. The goal is not the goal at all – the journey is the goal.

Once you have started moving and you know the beauty of the journey and you have become a real vagabond – a wanderer of the soul – you will forget about the goal. You will say ’The journey is so beautiful, who bothers about the goal?’

Then you are not going anywhere. wherever you are, you are there, and you are tremendously delighted there. Then each moment is an experience of the eternal, the timeless, the immeasurable.

So remember that names don’t mean anything, mm? You mean much, but the names don’t mean anything.

CHAPTER 31

Theology becomes alive only when a person is alive who knows God by existential experience

31 January 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Dharma means the ultimate law, tao, or what Christians and Jews call god. But in the East the word’god’ is not thought to be so supreme, because it becomes personalised; it becomes more anthropomorphic. So in the east we conceive of the ultimate reality more as an impersonal law than a person.

Dharma means the ultimate law according to which the whole cosmos runs – the very substratum of the whole. And shastra means the science, the science of the ultimate law. In the west the term that can come closest to it is theology. It consists of two words: theo and logy. Theo means god and logy means science: the science of god. But when I say ’theology’ I’m not using it in the ordinary way that it has been used.

Ordinarily theology has become an ugly word, but the root word is beautiful. Three things are the basic constitutes of a theology: god – theos – and rational speculation about god, a rational approach about the irrational. It is accepted that god cannot be explained but still effort has to be made to explain, because there is no other way to convey it. So the intellectual discourse about god is logy, science. There is a third element in it which is invisible, known as ’charos’.

’Charos’ means a living, alive experience of god in somebody’s being. Theology becomes alive only when somebody has experienced god. Then he has three elements in him: the experience of god – not just guesswork, not just philosophy – and the rational approach to explain it to others, to those who don’t know what it is; to bring the indefinable into the world of the definition; to bring the absolutely wordless into the world of language. But the whole thing depends on charos – the experience of the person.

So these three elements are the basic elements of dharma shastra, theology. But there are possibilities... there may be a religion in which one element is missing.

For example a religion can be of theos and logy, and no personal experience. Then it is a dead tradition... it is just convention; it is formal. Christianity, Islam, Judaism, are formal dead traditions because charos is missing. Charos was there when Jesus was alive then it existed in Jesus. Once Jesus is gone that alive element has disappeared – then it is a dead tradition. All organised religions are dead traditions. So one can go on searching in an organised religion but one will not find. One will find much logic-chopping, many words, many speculations, but nothing alive – as if one is dissecting a dead corpse.

There are other possibilities, like zen. A religion is possible where theos is, where charos is, but logy is missing. Then a religion becomes just mysticism – it has no rational approach. It is ecstatic but it is nonsense. Zen is the best representative of this second possibility. The experience is there, the experience is there, but there is no way to convey that experience into language, there is no effort to make a doctrine out of it – the logy is missing. Charos is there, theos is there, but logy is missing

– there is no science. That too is a missing element.

There is one other possibility: the theos may be missing – there may be logy and there may be charos. Jainism, buddhism, are the representatives of the third possibility – god is not talked about at all. There is great science and there is great experience but they don’t talk about what, of what it is. Then there is a religion which is more like a moral teaching than like a religion, more like a moral system, a moral discipline... more like a philosophy of religion than religion itself.

These are the three possibilities and in all the three possibilities one element is missing. The fourth possibility – when all the three elements are together – happens only when a person like Christ or a Buddha or a Mahavira or a Moses or a Mohammed is alive.

Theology becomes alive only when a person is alive who knows god – not by thinking but by existential experience – and who is not satisfied only by knowing it but who tries to convey his experience to others who have not known it, who starts a scientific approach towards it. Theology exists only in such a person.

This is the meaning of ’dharma shastra’. So try three things, remember three things: one has to become deeply involved so that one can experience and taste religion on one’s own, but one has not to lose one’s reason completely – otherwise there will be ecstasy but then you will not be of any use to others. You will enjoy it but you will be dumb... you will not be able to convey.

So don’t lose the reason completely. That’s what I was trying to tell you to keep quiet, be silent –

because I can see the possibility that you can lose the reason very easily. You can become ecstatic very easily and You can experience also, but then you will lose all rational possibility – and something will be missed. So remember it!

... But keep your reason alert... you can lose it! You are a potential madman! So you keep alert about it. It has not to be lost, mm? When people cannot lose, I help them to lose; when they can lose easily I help them not to lose. Right?

[Osho speaks about the Nadabrahma meditation.]

It is a mantra meditation, and mantra is one of the most potential ways. It is very simple yet tremendously effective, because when you chant a mantra or you chant a sound your body starts vibrating; your brain cells particularly start vibrating.

If rightly done your whole brain becomes tremendously vibrant, and the whole body also. Once the body starts vibrating and your mind is already chanting, they both fall in a tune. A harmony – which is ordinarily never there – between the two. Your mind goes on its way, your body continues on its own. The body goes on eating, the mind goes on thinking.’the body goes on walking on the road the mind is moving far away in the stars. They never meet – they both go on separate pathways, and that creates a split.

The basic schizophrenia is created because the body goes in one direction, the mind goes in another direction. And you are the third element – you are neither the body nor the mind, so you are pulled apart by these two. Half of your being is pulled by the body and half of your being is pulled by your mind. So there is great anguish – one feels torn apart.

In a mantra meditation – nadabrahma or any chanting – this is how the mechanism works: when you start chanting a sound – and any sound will do; even abracadabra – if you start resounding inside, the body starts responding. Sooner or later a moment comes when the body and the mind are both together in one direction for the first time. When body and mind are both together, you are free from the body and the mind – you are not tom apart. Then the third element which you are in reality – call it soul, spirit,’atma’, anything – that third element is at ease because it is not being pulled in different directions.

The body and the mind are so much engrossed in chanting that the soul can slip out of them very easily, unobserved, and can become a witness – can stand out and look at the whole game that is going on between the mind and the body. It is such a beautiful rhythm that the mind and body never become aware that the soul has slipped out... because they don’t allow so easily, mm? they keep their possession. Nobody wants to lose his possession. The body wants to dominate the soul, the mind wants to dominate the soul.

This is a very sly way to get out of their hold. They become drunk with the chanting, and you slip out.

So in nadabrahma, remember this: let the body and mind be totally together, but remember that you have to become a witness. Get out of them, easily, slowly, from the back door, with no fight, with no struggle. Mm? they are drinking – you get out, and watch from the outside....

This is the meaning of the english word ’ecstasy’ – to stand out. Stand out and watch from there...

and it is tremendously peaceful. It is silence, it is bliss, it is benediction.

This is the whole secret of chanting – that’s why chanting has prevailed down the centuries. There has never been a religion that has not used chanting and mantra. But there is a danger also! If you don’t get out, if you don’t become a witness, there is a danger – then you have missed the whole point. If you become drunk with the body and the mind and your soul also becomes drunk, then chanting is an intoxicant. Then it is like a tranquiliser – it will give you a good sleep, that’s all. It is a lullaby. Good – nothing wrong in it – but not of any real value either.

So this is the pitfall to be remembered: chanting is so beautiful that one wants to get lost. If you are lost, then good, you enjoyed a rhythm, an inner rhythm, and it was beautiful and you liked it, but it was like a drug – it is an acid trip. By chanting, by the sound, you created certain drugs in your body.

Chanting creates chemical changes in the body, and those changes are no different than marijuana or LSD. Some day, when research goes deeper into meditation, they are going to find that chanting creates chemical changes – just as fasting also creates chemical changes.

After the seventh or eighth day of fasting, one feels tremendously jubilant, weightless, very glad for no reason, delighted – as if all burden has disappeared. Your body is creating a certain chemical change.

I am as much against LSD as I am against fasting. And if chanting is used as a drug, I am against it. So the point to be remembered is that you have to use the sound, the chanting, the mantra, not as an intoxicant for your being. Let it be an intoxicant for the body and the mind but you slip out of it before you become intoxicated; you stand out and you watch. You see the body swaying and you see the mind feeling very very peaceful and calm and quiet. Watch from the outside and be alert like a flame.

If this is not done you will have a good sleep but nothing more. Then it is a good thing for health but nothing for the ultimate growth.

Good – pay attention to nadabrahma, mm? And sometimes sitting silently, start chanting anything,

’aum’, will do, or choose anything, any word, and get in tune with it. Meaning is not important: it can be meaningless – it can be meaningful. ’Aum’ has no meaning. Or you can create your own mantra and chant it. But remember to slip out of it.

Let the body get drunk, let the mind get drunk, let them fall into a deep love-affair with each other, and you slip out of it. Don’t stay there longer – otherwise you will fall asleep. And if one falls asleep, it is not meditation. Meditation means awareness. So remember it!

[A sannyasin who is leaving for the West is concerned about her boyfriend being open to Osho.]

No, No, he will come one day. Just don’t harrass him in any way and don’t try to convert him. Never try to convert anybody; conversion is a violation of the other’s freedom. Let him be himself, and if he feels like coming some day, help him, otherwise never!

Even by gesture, never try to be a missionary. That is the dirtiest profession in the world. Even prostitutes are better, because the prostitute may corrupt somebody’s body but they don’t corrupt their souls. Missionaries try to corrupt their soul – and the soul needs absolute freedom.

And when you love a person, never try. Mm? just forget all about me when you are with him.

Be happy, be loving, be meditative, let him feel your energy. If that converts, that’s okay. If your meditative quality becomes a challenge to him, that’s okay. If your love brings him here, that’s okay

– but not logic, not argument.

People become defensive when you argue with them – they defend themselves. Sometimes they can start becoming too defensive and then that will become their barrier. So just don’t create any barrier – he is bound to come. He will feel more and more how much you are changing. That is going to bring him. One day he will come like a shadow, following you!

[A sannyasin says: I did the gestalt and the centering group and when I finished the centering I felt I wanted to ask you a question about the different experiences I had in the two groups and the different approaches, but now I sense they just come out of my own confusion. Sitting in the lecture I’m looking at you and I feel a huge fog in front of me. I’m sort of screaming at myself saying, ’Wake up, wake up! This could be jesus or buddha in front of me and I can’t see it.’

So maybe you could speak to me about my confusion or about the fog that I feel that I’m trying to see through, to see the reality of the being in front of me.]

Don’t make too much effort.... And that is very natural – when one feels the fog around one, the confusion, one tries to make hard effort to see through it. But the very effort to see through it creates the fog, because when you are really too intent on seeing, your consciousness becomes narrowed.

It is not wide, it is not expanding – it becomes like a small tunnel. And when the consciousness is like a very narrow tunnel there will be more and more confusion, because you will not be able to see the whole – you will be able to see only parts, and then those parts seem to be very contradictory.

It is very difficult to figure out what is what and how to connect them.

The whole confusion of the human mind is that it is a very narrow slit, just a small hole, and from that hole we are trying to see the reality – and the reality is vast! When we see one part, other parts are missing. When we see other parts, the first thing is missing and we can never see the whole.

Later on when we try to figure it out, we are in exactly the same situation as the five blind men who went to see the elephant. They had all touched the elephant but they all missed because their perception was very narrow.

Somebody touched the legs and he felt that the elephant was like a pillar – and he was right in a way! But the other touched the ear – how could he believe that the elephant was like a pillar? He said ’Have you gone mad? I have been there!’ And then all five of them started arguing. It was impossible to convince the others – nobody was able to – and they all became confused. They even started becoming suspicious about what they had experienced – whether they had exper-ienced it or whether it was just imagination .. . because four persons were against it! How could one be right when these four persons were giving such absurd statements that there seemed to be no consistency at all?

That is the situation of the mind. The story of the five blind men and the elephant is the story of the mind itself. It is a sufi parable.

When you look through the mind you see only a part – and the part is not the whole. The whole is vast and the whole contains many parts which may not be like this part – sometimes may be just the opposite of it. And when you come across those parts you will be confused.

So my suggestion is: there is a way to look at reality without looking at reality. There is a way to relax and let the consciousness expand; don’t narrow it down.

It always happens.... Somebody asks you something and you know that you know it – you say, ’It is just on the tip of my tongue but I can’t remember.’ Now, what is happening? You are giving a very absurd statement – you say, ’It is on the tip of my tongue.’ Then why don’t you produce it? You say,

’But I cannot’ – and the more you try, the more intent you are, the more difficult it becomes. It is not coming – it can drive you almost crazy, because you know you know, and you know it is there... and still you are missing it. Then in a desperate hopelessness you drop the whole project.

You start smoking a cigarette or you go into the garden and you start looking at the birds and the trees and suddenly it is there – it surfaces. Now, what happened?

When you were too intent on it and looking for it you became too narrow – you shrank. The hole was so small – almost not there – so the thing wanted to come up but it could not; there was no space for it. Then you started smoking a cigarette or went into the garden or started reading a newspaper. You forgot about it, the mind relaxed, the narrowness disappeared, you became a little wider – suddenly it bubbled, it came up.

So my suggestion is: please don’t try to look at reality – don’t strain, don’t stare. That is not the way – that is the way to miss. You will become more and more confused and more and more tense and tired and desperate. You will start feeling that you are going crazy and that the whole reality becomes a jigsaw puzzle and nothing fits with anything else. It seems as if there are so many realities, not one reality. It seems as if the universe is not a ’uni-verse’ but a ’multi verse’ – plural realities, contradictory to each other, paradoxical, inconsistent. You will go crazy! Don’t do it... relax.

The fog is there because you are very tense. Your tenseness is creating the fog. Relax! With your relaxation the fog will lift, and with the fog the confusion. When you see the reality as it is – without any effort on your part to see it – suddenly everything fits together. There is nothing inconsistent, cannot be. It is a universe – everything is fitting together with every thing else. There is no conflict in existence.

The problem is of the mind, and it cannot be solved with the mind. Hence meditation becomes so important, so significant. Meditation is nothing but looking at reality without looking at it... Looking at reality but not really hankering to look. You understand what I mean?

Sometimes you can look without looking at. Mm? then your eyes are unfocused, empty. Sometimes mad people have that quality in their eyes. If you look at a madman’s eyes you will feel that he is unfocused. You are standing there but he is not focused on you. He may be even looking at you, but he is not looking at you. It doesn’t matter whether you are there or not; if you move, you move

– he will not move his eyes. He is not looking at you in particular – he is simply looking. It is just coincidental that you are standing there – that’s just a coincidence; if you go, you go. The madman goes on looking the same way.

To feel it.... For example right now I am looking at you. Now my eyes are focused on you: you are the object and my eyes are narrowed down on you. Now watch....

[Osho looked at a point somewhere above the sannyasin’s head, but in such a way that he was still within his vision.... ]

I am still looking at you but not looking at you. You are just in the way of my vision, that’s all. You follow me? Just in the way of the vision – not that I am looking at you; you are simply there.

Become more unfocused, and relax. This confusion is going to disappear....

[Osho had previously (see ’Blessed are the Ignorant’ December 4th) suggested the formation of a boredom group. He talked about boredom as a device to help the mind drop. The group would be called the ’hell group’. Tonight the first group are present.

The leader said: They were just waiting for one person to leave then they would have all gone out.

It also seemed that the women experienced it as more hellish than the men. Also, people said that if I made it more hellish, they feel that everybody would leave.]

Mm, let me talk to them first.

There is a difference between the male mind and the female mind. They need a different type of torture, then they will feel different.

And secondly: people don’t know how much they can endure. Man has an infinite capacity to endure. And that too is right: if one left, others might have left – not because it was impossible to endure – just because the person may have given them the idea of following. And in such situations people become very very vulnerable, imitative.

These methods are being used in China and Russia; they were used in Adolf Hitler’s Germany, in Mussolini’s Italy, in Toshu’s Japan. They make people very very vulnerable and then they make people very imitative.

What they used to do in Germany or in Russia, they are still doing in China. Ten persons who are against communism are to pass through a very hellish experience. They will put among them a spy

– they will make it eleven. That one is a bogus person – he is an agent. All start suffering and that person also pretends that he is suffering very much. Then after three, four days, the agent

’confesses’, he surrenders, and then the ten surrender immediately. That man is there to surrender in the right moment – when people become vulnerable! They start watching: ’If one surrenders, we will surrender.’

Nobody wants to take the risk himself, nobody wants to be so low and mean himself, but if one person surrenders it is too much. So they put a spy among them. The spy surrenders after three, four days when he feels that now the time is ripe, people are boiling, they want to get out of it and they will do anything. So he surrenders and he says, ’I was wrong and communism is right. I withdraw whatsoever I said before. I commit myself to communism.’ And immediately another surrenders, and another. Within hours all the ten are gone.

So that is right: if one had left, the others would have left – not because they are not capable of endurance but because the human mind is very imitative, and in these soft moments when one is feeling very very sad, bored, tortured, one is reduced to being a small child again. Like children they will follow anybody.

Down the centuries these torture methods have been used to convert people. In fact the whole idea of hell is a psychological idea so that people become afraid and don’t do things which the priests don’t want to be done. It is just a psychological fear. Hell is the fear and heaven is the reward.

The priest is playing with the idea of hell so whatsoever he wants, or the ideology he represents wants.... He will say, ’If you do this you will go to heaven and you will be awarded, and if you don’t do this you will go to hell.’

And people are afraid of being tortured. Just the very idea is enough. Then, out of fear, imitation.

Out of fear so many christians and so many hindus and so many mohammedans – it is all out of fear. There is rarely a real religious person. Ninety-nine percent of people are imitating out of fear.

That is right, but this point has to be remembered – that nobody left. That shows that human consciousness is capable of great endurance – it is not made of ordinary metal. Once a person decides, one can endure anything – any hell! And that is the dignity of human beings.

I would like this group to continue for so many reasons. First, a person who passes through it will feel a certain dignity – that he could endure. His self-confidence will grow tremendously. He will be able to see that he is not impotent, that he has something in him; he has a certain integration. Of course he was afraid, and many times he wavered, and many times he thought, but still he persisted.

Against all those waverings he persisted.

This persistence will give a centering. This will be a great pay-off. And this is a voluntary group –

he can leave it. In fact he has paid for it! Nobody is forcing it on him – he has chosen it on his own.

And sometimes to choose pain on your own is a great experience, because pain ordinarily happens

– you don’t choose it. When it happens, it happens – you cannot do anything about it.

If you are caught in communist china they will torture you but you cannot do anything about it. Here it was your own choice – you were the centre; you had chosen it that way. When pain is chosen consciously, you overcome pain, you become victorious.

My feeling is that such types of groups have to be repeated all over the world so that the human mind is trained and no dictatorship can destroy human dignity.

For example, if those people who are being tortured in china had passed through such experiences on their own, then nobody could convert them. It would be impossible to violate their integrity...

impossible! They would come out of the whole experience stronger than before.

So don’t be worried about it. Continue it, and slowly slowly make it more and more of a hell, more hellish... slowly, go slowly. The people who go through it may not understand the meaning of it immediately, but when they go through other groups they will see that this group has prepared them, has given them a stamina, and that now they can face many more things they were never able to face before.

For example, people are very much afraid of encounter, very much afraid of primal, very much afraid of this and that. Once they have passed through this group they will not be afraid of anything. Then everything will feel like a reward!

It is good sometimes to consciously choose pain. Mm? that’s the whole secret of austerities. The austerities are not masochistic. I am not saying that all austere people are not masochistic, but the root of the idea of asceticism is not masochistic – it is a conscious choice. A person chooses to stand in the hot sun the whole day, whatsoever happens. He stands in the hot – starts being crazy, feels crazy, but he stands there. It is difficult, arduous, but by the evening he will feel tremendously happy that he could go through it, that he was strong enough to go through it.

A person fasts for twenty days – the first three, four days are very difficult, great torture, great hunger arises; one becomes obsessed. But if you can pass the first three, four days, things relax and then you feel tremendously happy. You feel a certain freedom from the body because now you are capable of not eating. Even if you want not to eat, you are capable – you are free from the body.

The body is no more your master – a subtle freedom has been achieved.

So people who go through ascetic methods are really creating their own hell, and through pain they become more aware. This too has to be understood: when you are happy, it is very rare to be aware

– very difficult – because in happiness the natural tendency is to be drowned in it. Who bothers to be aware7 If you are happy and if you try to be aware, that awareness will destroy happiness. One wants to be completely lost in it.

In pain it is very easy to be aware – and helpful too, because the more aware you become, the less is the pain. If you really become aware the pain is completely nil. So that has to be remembered

– you have to teach the people who participate that when there is tremendous pain they just have to be alert and aware. They should watch it as if it doesn’t belong to them, as if they are passing through a nightmare – it is a dream – or they are seeing a very hellish movie, but they should remain aloof, a witness.

And whenever somebody feels that he is getting too bogged down by the torture, by the boredom that is going on, tell him to remain alert and suddenly he will feel a freedom.

In awareness pain is so far away, so distant, that it doesn’t affect you. So by and by develop methods, but the insistence should be that they should remain alert. Then they will feel tremendously joyful after the experience is over. And sometimes in the middle of the experience also, they will feel great glimpses of awareness... because there is nothing like pain. Pain can simply give you such a shock that it can destroy your whole sleep. It can throw you into awareness like an electro-shock.

But my feeling is that they could not participate in the celebration, the last part.

.... Ask everybody, so that you can develop the group, mm? You ask everybody their experiences personally, talk to everybody, so you can gain out of their experience and your method becomes more and more sharp. You will be able to know what has to be added and what they have to be told... how they have to be aware, how they have to watch.

That is one thing they have to be aware of. Another thing: they are to be in the present. Otherwise what happens is that when somebody is suffering he starts hoping that after three days it will end

– it is only a question of three days... two days have passed, now it is only a question of two days; tomorrow it will end. So he starts hoping in the future and he misses the whole point, because the pain is here! To avoid the pain he starts moving into the future, or somebody may start moving into his memories, into the past – the home and the family and the love-affair and childhood, mm? – to avoid what is happening here.

So tell them not to avoid. Don’t go into the past and don’t go into the future. Be in this moment!

If it is a painful moment, it is a painful moment – be in it; just be alert. If they can be alert and in the moment, they will be surprised – then the pain disappears. Because nobody can suffer in the present – that is impossible. In the present it is always happiness, always blissful. The present is heaven. But if you avoid it, problems arise.

[One group member said he found it exciting and felt close to Osho. Another said he didn’t think it was hellish enough, till the very last afternoon. He would have walked out but did not want to be the first – he was waiting for one of the women to go first.

Osho addressed the leader again:]

Even if somebody escapes you are not to tell the others. Nobody will escape because nobody wants to be the first one, because that will be very cowardly – but sometimes a coward may be there, may escape. But then too you need not tell them that he has escaped. Because people are very imitative

– they don’t know what they are doing.

When I was entering the university, it was a coincidence, but a rare coincidence.... When I went to the office and I was filling my form for the subjects, a boy was standing there and he had no fountain-pen so he asked for my pen. Then he asked, ’What subjects are you taking?’

I told him, ’These subjects.... ’ So he said, ’Okay, I will take these!’

So I said, ’This is nonsense! You can take my fountain pen...(much laughter) but why these subjects?’

He said, ’Well, I have not decided yet, so that will do.’ So he filled in those.

It was a rare coincidence, but... this was for the BA. When I was filling out my form for the MA in another university... the same boy! When I saw him I said ’What is the matter? Have you your fountain pen or not? ’

He said ’No!’

I said ’What about subjects?’

He said, ’As you are here I will do the same, because it worked well! It was fortunate’ he said, ’that I followed you. I have got a first class in my BA because of those subjects, so whatsoever you say I am going to fill in for – I was waiting for you! For two days I have been here and I have not filled in my form – I have been waiting. When you came, then I would fill in the form.’

People are very imitative – so that has to be remembered. Ordinarily nobody is going to escape, because that is the problem – who is going to be the first?

But if sometimes somebody is idiotic, foolish, or really a coward and escapes, there is no need....

And remember and always repeat it – that whenever somebody escapes I am going to send him back again. He has to complete the hell group, only then will I send him to other groups, otherwise not.

[To the participant] But I think you could manage it – you are not aware of how – because you were not taking it seriously.

[To the leader] So let that be a key. Tell people not to take it seriously, then they will be able to endure it very easily; then it is not irritating. You know it is a game, fun. If in the real hell you think it is fun, you will not be tortured.

There is another way to avoid torture even if it is real! The first way is to take it as fun. Start enjoying it, find out ways to enjoy it – and there are always possibilities to enjoy everything, just as there are always possibilities to suffer in anything. You can always find ways to suffer in everything that happens to you – and the vice versa too. This is one way.

The second way – for which now american soldiers are being trained after the chinese and korean experience – is not to resist, not to fight. Whatsoever happens, go with it. If you go with it totally, you will not be tired and you will start enjoying it, because then it is a game – then there is no problem.

For example, now it is being said to the american soldiers that if they are caught in a chinese camp, then from the very first day, from the very first moment, if they are asked if they are against communism, they say ’No’. If they are asked to confess – confess. If secrets about their government are wanted, whatsoever they know, they should tell. They are going to be forced, so why be tortured?

They should say everything, cooperate.

At least by this cooperation the enemy will not be able to destroy their minds – and then there is nothing to be done to them. The whole effort was that they confess – now they have confessed, and they have remained intact. Their mind has remained untouched.

But that is useful only when you are forced into a torture – this is a voluntary group. If you take it as fun you will not feel the torture. So tell the participants next time to try to enjoy it!

Even if the same line is repeated again and again and again and again.... It is an irritant because you don’t want it to be so. The repetition is not an irritant in itself – it is your idea that it should not be so that makes it an irritant. Start enjoying it – find out the music in it, the repetition, the rhythm of it. Enjoy it, get into the rhythm of it. Even start desiring it – that it is so beautiful you would like it to continue forever and forever (laughter).

And suddenly you will see a change of quality. Then you are not fighting, not resisting. Something of beauty can be found there too.

[To the participant who had peeped through his blindfold in one of the structures:] But don’t cheat, because you are not cheating anybody – you are cheating yourself. That way you miss something...

don’t cheat.

Do all that you can do consciously, to get over it, to be above it, to float over it – not to be distracted by it, not to be destroyed by it – but don’t cheat, because that cheating goes against yourself; that is not going to help your consciousness. But once or twice, it is understandable. It is human to err –

nothing to be worried about.

So you peeked through your blindfold once? Only once, or many times?... Many times! (chuckling) Don’t do that next time, because that is.... Sometimes it is very good to be voluntarily in a certain situation, howsoever painful. It gives sharpness to your being, a crispness – it makes you more vital.

But, good!

[Another participant says: In the last two days I felt my resistance growing against the system. I felt that I got stronger in resisting the system.]

Resisting the system your ego gets stronger – you don’t get stronger. And these are two different things – you are not your ego. Your ego is the problem. If you resist, your ego becomes strong. If you relax, you become strong. And to make the ego strong is dangerous. That will make you more miserable in life because that will make you false.

Certainly the ego can give you a feeling of great strength – that’s why the ego is so appealing – but it is a false strength, pseudo, and ultimately suicidal. It kills your inner being, your real being. The real being comes up only when you can relax. Greater courage is needed to relax than to resist. To resist is very ordinary – everybody can do it, more or less. To relax is some-thing extraordinary.

So just watch it. Good, a good experience that something has come up into consciousness, that you tried to resist and you felt strong – but this strength is of the ego; this has to be understood now.

It would have been difficult to understand it before, but now you can understand it more easily. Now next time try to relax, and then watch. Then again a different quality of strength will come to you.

You will be able to compare and then you will know what is real and what is false.

This is a false coin that you are carrying. It looks like the real coin and sometimes it may also deceive somebody, but it is false. And you can deceive the world but you cannot deceive god. In the ultimate analysis it will be found to be false... and you wasted your whole life for it.

Resistance is very easy.... To relax, to surrender, is rare, very rare. Next time, try that.

[Osho suggests that in her next group, satori, she should relax completely. She replies that she doesn’t know how.]

Just the opposite of resistance. If you know resistance you will know relaxation. Just don’t resist, and you will find relaxation. Don’t fight against the system – go with the system.

Resistance is like a person trying to swim against the current, upstream, and relaxation is like flowing with the stream, not trying to go upstream, just going downstream.

If you know resistance, there is no problem – just the opposite!

Just this evening I was reading an anecdote about a man who goes to the psychoanalyst for the first time. He tells the doctor he is suffering from a recurrent and frightening dream: ”Night after night I dream I am in a rowboat, at fist close to shore. Then I row out – farther, farther. Suddenly the oars break and I am alone and helpless on the wide ocean. At that moment I wake up, sweating and frightened. What does that mean?”

”Very simple,” says the analyst. ”It is a symbol of castration anxiety. Your dream means that you are afraid of being castrated.”

At which, the session for the day being over, the man departs. He does not come back, and the doctor, puzzled at first, finally forgets him until a few months later they chance to meet at a party.

”Why didn’t you come back to see me?” says the analyst. ”We could have discussed your dream.”

”Oh, doctor, that was unnecessary. You explained to me its meaning.” Then, after a pause: ”But you know, I’ve taken to dreaming again. I’m awakened almost every night by a dream that I’m being castrated.”

The doctor now becomes all solicitude. ”Why not come in so that we can discuss it?”

”Really, doctor, it’s not necessary. I know what this dream means.”

”??”

”Yes, doctor. It means that I am in a rowboat, I row far from shore, the oars break, and.... ” (laughter) If you know what resistance is then relaxation is just the reverse.

[Another participant said: It showed me how many mind games I play to avoid being herenow. On the last day when it became hellish in the afternoon, I was frightened at times so much that I could see it more all the time. I wanted to scream or get out but I waited for another woman to leave first.]

... This is the whole point – that one has to become aware of how one goes on playing games and avoiding the reality. And only in painful situations can we become aware, otherwise we will not become aware. We have to be hit upon the head, only then do we become aware, otherwise not.

These groups are just like hitting on the head – you have to become aware of the mind games. But if you become a little alert, by and by you will see that those mind games change – you cannot play as efficiently as before. Again and again you catch hold of yourself red-handed, and the moment you catch hold of it, it becomes meaningless – then it is pointless to play it; you have to drop it.

Many times you will catch hold of yourself again playing, again playing, and then in the middle it stops. By and by, your awareness will go still deeper. Then you will be able to catch hold of yourself before you start playing. And then you have become the master – then there is no problem.

Right now people are not aware of what they are doing; they are not aware at all whether they are playing games or not.

This is good that you have become a little alert. Bring that alertness in more and more. Not only in the group but outside the group also, try to find out when you are playing games. And whenever you catch hold of yourself, stop that game immediately, because it is games which don’t allow you to be in contact with reality, which don’t allow you to be in contact with yourself. These games take your whole energy, and they are meaningless! They are just insane games and the whole life energy is being sucked by them.

[Another group member said at first she felt centred, but especially the last day was torture. She let her resistance inward, and afterwards, when everyone was laughing, it took her a long time to come out of it.]

It will be different for everybody... it will be different. If a person is an introvert – as you are – it is will happen. The introvert person will go on absorbing – that is his way of tackling a situation. That is the feminine way, the passive way, the introvert way.

The extrovert will start laughing – laughter is throwing out. He is also doing the same thing that you are doing. One has to manage – the situation is too much: either you take in or you throw out, but you have to do something about it. These are the two ways ordinarily available. So one person will absorb it – the one who is absorbing may start crying and tears may start coming. He may start feeling very sad – not in relation to himself or herself, but because of the very situation. One may feel sad for the whole world – a deep compassion – and may start crying.

The extrovert will start laughing at the whole ridiculousness of it, at the whole absurdity of it; he is throwing out. These are the two ways: throwing in, throwing out.

There is a third possibility which comes only when you become very very alert and you are neither extrovert nor introvert. You simply watch – you neither take it in nor throw it out; you simply watch. There is nothing to take in and there is nothing to take out. You simply remain a witness

– unperturbed, undistracted, not doing anything whatsoever, in or out. That witnessing has to be learned.

The extrovert is half, the introvert is half. The introvert will be shocked by the extrovert and the extrovert will not be able to believe why the introvert is crying – why doesn’t he laugh? He will be shocked at his tears – because both are completely antagonistic to each other.

Only the third type of consciousness will be able to understand – and that third type of consciousness has to grow in everyone.

Carl Gustav Jung has divided the possibility into two – the extrovert and the introvert – but he has not talked about the third, which is the real, because he himself was never aware of meditation, samadhi. In fact he was a little against yoga and meditation. So his psychology misses the basic point. The periphery he categorised well, very well! Mm? there are two types of persons – introvert and the extrovert – and he divided it very very logically. But it is just a classification of the waves –

the ocean is left behind; the ocean is not even accounted for.

There is a third state, the real, which is neither extrovert nor introvert but just in between, or beyond the both, transcendental. Then you will be able to understand both the extrovert and the introvert, and you will feel compassion for both. You will have understanding for both... otherwise there is going to be shock.

But this was your way to tackle the situation – somebody did it the other way. Both are half and both are shocking to each other – that is true – because both are inconceivable to each other... two totally different languages.

One will see the whole situation as very sad – a great sorrow and compassion will arise – and the other will see the ridiculousness, the absurdity, and he will have a belly laughter. But both have to go and the third has to come.

So next time become more alert – neither take in nor throw out. But the experience has been good.

[Another participant said that he had wanted to leave the group but then at the end he had a glimpse of its being a blissful stage. He asks: how can it be so easy sometimes?]

It can be – in fact it is easy. We make it difficult by fighting with it. It is not difficult. We make it difficult because we don’t know how to relax in it – and the whole point is to learn to relax in it. If you can relax in such a torturous group, in life nothing will be able to make you suffer. In any situation you will be able to relax, and that will become a great key in your hand; you can unlock many doors.

Good, that you continued.

[Another participant said: I noticed that my mind was like an enemy and I don’t know how to stop it from coming up.]

The mind is the enemy, because you are not the mind. The mind is all your past, all the experiences, all the conditioning – not of this life, but of all the lives of the past. Your consciousness is caged in that mind and that cage has to be broken. The mind resists – it does not give way easily. The consciousness has to get out of the imprisonment, so there is a conflict – that’s why it looks like the enemy.

If you start meditating you will always find that the mind is the enemy. If you never meditate you never become aware that the mind is the enemy. Then you think that you are the mind. But once the idea of meditation arises, then you start feeling that the mind is the enemy and you are separate.

But this is a good glimpse... a beginning, the first ray....

That’s what I’m saying – ’I see.’ I go on saying the same thing again and again – that I see. The day you hear it in deep awareness, you will also be capable of seeing. There is nothing else to say. I see – you can also see, and that seeing is the goal. In the east we call philosophy not philosophy –

we call it ’darshana’.

Darshana means the capacity to see. When you come to see me it is called darshan. It means you have come to be with me, to see through me, with me, through my eyes. I am not conveying any message to you. I am simply shouting one thing – that I have seen and I am seeing and you are blind.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31