The No Book (No Buddha, No Teaching, No

Discipline)

Talks given from 1/8/77 to 31/8/77

Darshan Diary

CHAPTER 1

1 August 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Anand means bliss, blissfulness, and buddha means the awakened state of consciousness – the utterly awakened state when there is no more any unconscious desire, when there is no dark corner left, when all is consciousness within... when the conscious goes on spreading, spreading, and takes over the whole territory of the unconscious.

Just a very minute part is conscious now, just a small potential; it is small, but it is very potential. It is like a small lamp, but it is more potential than the whole darkness of the whole universe because the darkness is impotent, the darkness cannot win over it. Howsoever long it takes for the light to win, the final victory is with the light, because light is and darkness is not. Darkness is just the absence of light; it does not exist in its own right. It has no positive being, it is just the absence.

Absence cannot win, only the presence can win – but darkness is vast. It is big, it is huge, its very hugeness creates fear; and the still, small voice of the conscious is just a small ray in the dark night of the soul. But it has the possibility of a seed. Yes, the seed is small, but it carries tremendous possibilities. Once it starts exploding its being then nothing can prevent it.

And darkness is impotent, I say, because it cannot prevent light; it cannot even fight with light. The moment you bring a lamp into the dark room the darkness simply disappears. It never even gives a single fight; it is very cowardly. It cannot face light so how can it fight light? It is there, enormously there, when the light is not there. It looks big when the light is not present, but when the light is there it is simply not.

So a very small part of human beings is conscious – and that is the misery, because the human mind is the onl mind on the earth

hich is in conflict The animals arc not in conflict the trees peace is not worth much.

When man becomes peaceful like a tree, it is similar in a way and not similar at all. When man becomes peaceful it means he becomes totally conscious, the unconsciousness disappears; again a new unity has arisen on a higher plane. The tree exists as a unity on a lower plane: all is dark and there is unity. Buddha exists on the highest plane: all is light and there is unity. And between those two is man – the major part of his being being pulled by the unconscious and just a small fragment being pulled by the conscious. That’s the conflict between god and devil. God and devil are just metaphors; the devil means the dark, the unconscious, the mechanical. And man is torn apart. Where to go?

There is only one possibility to go beyond it, and that is to become fully conscious... because we cannot go back. The path simply disappears, the bridge is no more there; you cannot go back. Man has tried in a thousand and one ways to go back.

That’s why alcohol is so important, that’s why drugs of all kinds from soma to LSD, have great appeal, because they give you a momentary feeling as if you have again become part of this nature They help you chemically to forget your small conscious island. Again you become the vast continent, one, and a certain unity and a certain organicness... and naturally there is joy!

But it is momentary. Sooner or later you come back and you are more frustrated than ever because now you have known a kind of unity; now you will be more frustrated in your ordinary life. That’s what happens to people who are drunkards: they are happy only when they are not, when they are unconscious; they are unhappy when they are.

And there is no way to drop it permanently – this consciousness. It has already happened, there is no way to unlearn it... and it is good that there is no way to unlearn it otherwise the major part of humanity would have unlearned it. Because there is no way to regress one can only go ahead. Yes, unity can be attained, but on a new plane, as a new being, as a totally new being, as a buddha... as an awakened soul.

That’s why all the religions have been against drugs. Not that they are against drugs: they are against drugs because drugs give you an illusion of unity. It is just illusory, like a dream, a chemical projection of the paradise lost. You have a feeling that it is regained through drugs but it is not really regained because you fall back again and again. It never becomes your very being, and unless paradise becomes your very being, it is meaningless.

Unless you become paradise, unless you become god, it is meaningless. Just through a drug trip the feeling that ’I am god’, is just megalomania. You are tricking yourself, you are befooling yourself and destroying a great opportunity. The same time and the same energy can be put to the only work, the only work that is worthwhile – that is, how to transform the whole being into consciousness.

If a small part has become transformed it is indicative that it is possible for the whole consciousness.

It is possible, that much is certain, because a small part has already become conscious – the tip of your energies towards only one thing, and that is how to become more aware, how to become more alert, how to live in a conscious way, deliberately conscious.

In the beginning you have to make an effort to be conscious. Once the effort penetrates and has transformed another chunk of your being, then you can forget about it. it remains conscious. Once it becomes conscious, it remains conscious; it cannot fall back – there is no way to fall back. Then you can work on another chunk of your being, and slowly, slowly, inch by inch one starts penetrating one’s own palace. And the deeper you go, the more blissful you become. The day your whole being is full of light is the day of rejoicing!

That’s what jesus means when he says, ’The kingdom of god is within you. But be awake,’ he repeats a thousand and one times. ’Be awake, remain awake!’

One time somebody asked ’What do you mean by it ?’ He said, ’It is like the man who went on a long journey. He told his servants, ”Remain awake because I can come back any time and I would not like you to be asleep when I come.” He did not tell them when he would be coming – tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, this month, next month, this year or the next year. The servants had to be continuously alert because the master could come any moment!’ Jesus said ’Like that, god can come any moment into you. Be alert!’ In fact, by being alert you send an invitation to god.

By ’god’ I simply mean all the energy that has already become conscious in existence. I don’t-mean the christian god, one who has created the world – no, all the energy all the buddhas. Christ is a buddha, so is mohammed. The energy of all the people who have become enlightened is there in existence... goes on increasing. Each enlightened person pours his being into it; that’s what god is.

The total consciousness that has already happened in existence – that’s what god is.

If you make efforts to become aware, that awareness starts flowing towards you because the same attracts the same. If you are unconscious then the unconscious flows towards you because the same attracts the same. So just a small effort to become conscious and you will find more is happening than you are making effort for... and that’s where you start feeling god’s help, never otherwise.

When you make a small effort and you see that the result is too much, more than the effort made, something plus, then for the first time you become aware that god is flowing towards you. Your effort brings something, but something more is happening for which you have not made any effort at all, that’s what is called grace. When the ultimate happens it is not mathematically proportionate to your efforts; your efforts are very tiny. You had asked only for a drop and the whole ocean pours into your being.

And one thing more about buddha that will be helpful to you.... Buddha is the only enlightened person in the world who has not given any outer structure to be followed. He has given total freedom. He is not like moses; he has no commandments. He never says, ’Do this, don’t do that.’ Those dos and don’ts may be good for school children but not for grown-up people. And the world has really grown up, hence moses is losing his hold, seems out of date. Buddha is gaining a hold... seems to be very very relevant to the modern mind.

for the modern consciousness, and the reason is that he has no outer character to impose. He simply says only one thing has to be learned, and that is awareness; everything will take care of itself. Be alert and nothing can go wrong. Be unconscious and go on following all the commandments and everything will go wrong.

An unconscious person cannot be expected to do right – that’s what Buddha’s message is –

so it is stupid to teach people to do this and to do that, because they are unconscious and in unconsciousness nothing right is possible. An unconscious man tends to do things wrong. Even if you give him gold he will turn it into mud; his very touch pollutes. His very unconsciousness is poisonous, so it is meaningless to teach man to become virtuous; he cannot. If he becomes virtuous without being conscious he will simply become righteous. That will be an ego trip and he will become more unconscious through it.

So Buddha does not want one to become virtuous – he wants one to become aware... and then virtue follows, but it has a totally different quality; you are not imposing it.

One great zen master, Rinzai, said to his disciples – this was his last message – ’If on your way you meet the buddha, kill him .... O you, disciples of the truth, make an effort to free yourselves from every object. O you, with the eyes of moles! I say to you: No Buddha, No Teaching, No Discipline!

’What are you ceaselessly looking for in your neighbour’s house ? What then is lacking to you in yourselves ? That which you have at this moment does not differ from that of which the buddha is made.’

Buddha is the greatest liberator. His own last message to his disciples was, ’Be a light unto yourself.

Buddhas can only point the way.’

I also don’t give any discipline to my disciples. I don’t initiate you into any kind of character, pattern, shoulds; I don’t give you any ideals. I simply give you one small thing that has to, be worked out within your heart – and that is to be more alert. Do whatsoever you want to do: do it with more consciousness.

Walking on the road, walk more consciously; keep alert that you are walking. Breathing, doing nothing, just breathe conscious that you are breathing. The breath is going in – be conscious of it; the breath is going out – be conscious of it.

Make every opportunity a device to become more conscious, and soon more and more consciousness will be flowing in you, will be flooding you... more than you were working for. Then you will see the hands of the divine helping you. And once those hands have been seen, trust arises.

Then you know that you are not alone.

All those who have ever become enlightened are behind you. Much is at stake in you. It is not only a question of your individual liberation: the whole existence is involved in you. If you become liberated the whole existence is going to become enriched. So it is not the question only of being selfish –

total quantity of awareness, increases in the world whenever a man becomes alert. The day the total quantity of awareness in the world is more than the total quantity of unawareness there will be a great universal change. Up to now only individuals have become enlightened. That day, the whole humanity will take a quantum leap.... And that day is coming closer. If people work hard, the day is coming closer. So, be a light into yourself! And I saw your letter....

[The new sannyasin has written to Osho about his job as a lecturer in microbiology, and whether he should drop it.]

Drop that – that’s my message: drop it! Follow yourself. It is risky but it is tremendously alive!

And never be afraid, because there is nothing to lose, and never compromise, because through compromise one goes on sel!ing one’s soul. The only way to be blissful is to be yourself. If you compromise, if you listen to everybody’s advice and every tom, harry and dick goes on manipulating you, and you allow it, you will be lost.

It is nobody’s business to interfere in your life. Just listen to your heart.

And my feeling is that if you drop others’ advice... and it will be easier now by becoming a sannyasin; it will become very very easy... my feeling is that you will start loving your job, because teaching can be a beautiful phenomenon. But don’t become a teacher; that can create a tension and a heaviness.

Teaching is good; don’t become a teacher. Enjoy it, explore it, go into it; at the most be a friend to your students, an elderly brother, but not a teacher, not infallible. That brings such a rock-like feeling on the heart, one is crushed. It is so psuedo and hypocritical and so false, pretentious: one goes on just pretending things which are not true.

Just be a true human being, with all the limitations, with all the fallibility. If you don’t know the answer of a certain question, you can say, ’I don’t know! Tomorrow I will find out. You also find out; you may find a better answer!’ Get down from the pedestal! I call that ’pedestalitis’. Get down from the pedestal and you will be unburdened. You also be a student!

And teaching is the best way to learn; one never learns in a better way.When you start teaching people and if you don’t become a teacher and still remain a learner, you learn more than you can ever learn in any other way. By making things clear to others they become clear to you; by teaching others you teach yourself... but great humbleness is needed.

My feeling about you is that you are not troubled by your job as such; you are troubled by some other things. You have become a teacher and that is crippling you. Forget about being a teacher; just be a friend! Enjoy the whole thing! Don’t pretend that you know all – nobody does. Don’t try to become the omnipotent or the omniscient; that’s what teachers down the ages have been doing.

That creates a barrier between you and the students, you are standing far away, and that creates a resistance also and a rebellion. Become less serious, bring in more humour, start laughing and be friendly... and fallible. There is no need to become the pope: there is no need to pretend that one is infallible.

And whenever there is a humble teacher it is a beauty It is very difficult to find a humble teacher pedestal. And become friendly. For a few days try friendship. It will be difficult in the beginning but once it starts flowing you will love it. There is no other joy as beautiful as being a teacher.

All the great people of the world, a socrates, a christ, a buddha, are all teachers! We have forgotten the fact that only teachers have given beautiful things to the world.

A painter works on a canvas, a dead thing, with dead colours. A teacher works on consciousness, on alive people: his canvas is life! And certainly whatsoever he creates has tremendous value. A scientist goes on working on objects; a doctor goes on working on dead limbs, dissecting bodies, treating illnesses.

A teacher goes on working on the conscious part, that small conscious part. And it is a great joy when you see the conscious part flaring up, when somebody blooms into a new understanding, when you have helped somebody to attain an insight. It is such a joy that I don’t see that there is any joy which can be compared to it.

So make it a joy, make it more artful. Mm ? I would like you to become a real teacher!

[The new sannyasin says he taught TM till he found EST.]

You found rightly! TM is ordinary... a mind trick. EST is far more profound.

[The sannyasin replies: Then I discovered you!]

Mm! if you go into EST sooner or later you will discover me! All that is really authentic and is happening anywhere will bring people to me, because once something real happens you hanker for more. When you have tasted something, even a small bite, you hanker for more; then unreal things cannot satisfy you. So EST is going to help many people to come to me. Werner was here a few days ago....

[Another sannyasin says: I have to learn much.]

That’s true! Everybody has to learn much... and it remains true always. You can learn as much as possible and still it will remain true that one has to learn much; it is never finished.

Life is such an inexhaustible energy that you can go on learning and learning and learning and still the infinite remains there to be known; it is never finished! And that’s why it is so beautiful – because the exploration can go on and on forever, one can remain in wonder forever. Yes, you have to learn much!

If one is ready to learn, one can learn much. In fact people create all kinds of obstacles against learning, because to learn one thing is needed very basically, and that is humbleness. And that is difficult; the ego goes on saying ’You know it already.’ The ego goes on saying that there is no need to be humble, there is no need to show that you don’t know. The ego goes on pretending in mysterious ways. Start meditating, do a few groups, mm ? And much is going to happen!

[A visitor said that when she first read Osho’s books in the west she fell in love with him, but since she has been here she feels further away – the ashram, groups, and sannyasins seems to come between her and Osho.]

I understand. In fact, reality never conforms to your imagination, and it has no obligation to, either.

When you arr far away from me and you have only heard about me, it is your imagination, your dream; I am not responsible for it. You visualise your own dream, you put in your own colours.

Those colours come from your desires; they have nothing to do with me. For example, if you have been missing a father-figure you will create a father-figure of me. If you have been missing a lover you will create a lover of me.

So those things that you were imagining were your desires.When you come here the reality is totally different and it may not fit with your desires. It cannot fit with everybody’s desires; so many people, thousands of people, come. If I try to fit with everybody’s desire it will be impossible... so I am myself.

And you have to learn to see the reality. When one drops one’s dreams it hurts, but those dreams are not going to help. I can help you! The Osho of your dreams cannot help you... and if you really want to be helped then it is better to drop all those dreams and encounter me as I am.

And this ashram and these people around me are managed by me. They are not hindrances, they are bridges. The day you understand, you will see that they bridge you with me. The groups and the groupleaders and everything that is happening around here is going to bridge you to me.

Right now, the way you are, you cannot be bridged. You will have to pass through a few groups.

Those groups will shatter many things in you; they will destroy many things which have to be destroyed; they will uproot many weeds. They will prepare the ground, then I can sow the seeds; otherwise it is difficult. You follow me ?

And these sannyasins are creating a certain milieu. You can grow only in that milieu: it is an atmosphere, a climate. You don’t know how you can grow, you don’t know the ways of growth. If you are alone here with me it may be impossible for you to have any contact with me.

It is just like [the interpreter]: she is interpreting. If she is not here there will be no bridge. You speak one language, I speak another language; somebody is needed to interpret. And the same is true about many things: I speak a totally different kind of language. Many people are needed to interpret it in many ways so it can reach you.

Of course in the beginning you will feel ’Why are so many people standing in between ? Why not give me way so I can go direct ?’ I can understand your desire but that desire is not going to help you. If you have really come it is better to settle with the reality... and you will be benefited. Once they feel difficulties. They come here and they want to be with me for twenty-four hours, but there is the appointment and Laxmi and the secretary and the office. Then there is Maneesha sniffing (at the gate before darshan) and she will throw you out and will not allow you. So you have to pass through all kinds of difficulties; it is an obstacle course!

But it is good! It tests you – your patience, your love, your longing, how long you can wait. How much you love me will depend on how long you can wait. That will show your love, and your love will grow. The day you are ready there is nobody hindering your path, nobody. These people are hindering you only till you are ready.

So what about your sannyas now ?

[She says she doesn’t know yet because she felt rejected... not right now but in these situations.]

Mm mm, so wait, mm? and do a few groups and go through these people. What can they do ? Don’t be afraid of them!

Do a few groups and soon you will feel that you are coming closer to me, closer to my reality rather than to your dreams. And remain available. You have come; try to be open and try to see what is really happening here. If you carry too many ideas of how it should happen you will not be able to learn anything and if you miss you miss at your own risk.

For example if you come with the idea that the door will be of gold, then you enter the temple and find the door is of wood.... Are you concerned with the temple or with the door ? Even the temple is irrelevant! Are you concerned with the deity inside the temple or with the temple ?

Remain concerned with the essential and remain open, mm ? The sannyas is going to happen: you cannot escape!

[A sannyasin who is leaving says he is the only sannyasin in the state where he lives... he was teaching yoga and introduced Osho’s meditations to his class.]

So you start helping people to become sannyasins! If I have one sannyasin that is enough, mm ?

then many more will be coming.

You introduce more methods and help people, mm ? One sannyasin is enough to convert the whole state! A small spark is enough to burn the whole forest, mm ?... and these orange people are fire!

CHAPTER 2

2 August 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[Osho gives someone sannyas.]

Just drop the control over the body, and if the body starts leaning backwards, forwards, or sideways, allow it. If it falls, allow it to fall like a lump. Just relax into death... because death is exactly like meditation.

[The new sannyasin closes his eyes and then opens them.]

Why did you open your eyes? Dead people don’t open their eyes! Try again. It will be very good to contact death right now, then sannyas will have a right beginning, because unless you die you cannot become a sannyasin. Just relax and don’t be worried. If the body falls, nothing to be worried about: allow it to fall.

Good! Come back.... You are very afraid of death, the fear of death is very deep in you, and that is one of the barriers to entering into life. One who is afraid of death . remains afraid of life too, because they are both together. Death is not against life, it is the very culmination of it, it is the ultimate orgasm of life. The sexual orgasm is nothing compared to it; the sexual orgasm is very small, tiny. The orgasm that comes through death is cosmic. In sexual orgasm for a single moment you forget your body, you forget your mind. For a single moment time disappears and you become part of eternity, but it is a very very fleeting moment. The moment you are aware, it is already gone.

The peak comes fast and you cannot stay at the peak. Before the peak there is tension it is coming, it is coming, and one gets tense. When it has come there is not even a second moment to chew it, to cherish it, to celebrate it. It remains for a single moment, and by the time you are aware it is no more You are receding you arc coming back to the world into the body into the mind into contact with the divine... the biological approach to god, the biological bridge. But it is nothing to be compared with death, because in death the body is completely lost, and with the body, the mind, because the mind and body are together. In fact they are not two, they are one – two functions of one phenomenon. On one side it functions as body, on another side it functions as mind; it is a psychosomatic unity.

But if you are afraid of death you will miss it. And if you are afraid of death you will miss sexual orgasm too; you will not allow it to take possession of you. And if you are afraid of sexual orgasm....

Millions of people are afraid. They hanker and yet they are afraid, because they are afraid of death and this is a tiny death, a small death.

A man who is afraid of death will be afraid of sex too; and a man who is afraid of sex will be afraid of sleep too; this is a logical sequence. Because sleep is also a tiny death: there are moments in sleep when dream stops and you are again in eternity. You are no more here; you disappear into the unknown, into the abysmal.

If you are afraid of sleep and you are afraid of love and you are afraid of death, how can you enjoy life ? All these things are involved in life! So people have become so afraid of death that they have become naturally afraid of life too. And they think that they are afraid of death because they love life; that is simply stupid. If you love life you will love death too because it comes as a culmination, as the ultimate growth of life. Life brings it, it is the final flowering. But you have a deep fear.

You may not be alert about it, you may not have encountered it, but it is there... and I wanted to see because with that many things can be known. You have to drop a few fears – and they are all basically based in the fear of death. Life is to enjoy, to enjoy intensely, totally. When a man enjoys life totally he is in god.

And each sense can become a door. If you enjoy beauty then your eyes become doors to god; if you enjoy . sound, music, then your ears become your doors to god. Every sense can become a door and all five senses are doors to god.

So you drop your fear. First try to understand that it is there; then I will give you a few groups in which the fear can be brought out and slowly dropped, mm ? But be alert – that is your basic problem.

Anand means bliss and munindra means the silent one. Muni means silent. It comes from a root

’mouna’; mouna means silence. And when you are silent there is bliss, when the mind is utterly silent there is immense bliss. All misery is because the mind goes on being noisy – chattering, chattering. It never allows anything to grow, to flower, to bloom. The song is through silence, the song is soundless.

So become more and more silent; that is my message to you. Talk less. Unless it is absolutely necessary, don’t talk, and say only a few words. In the time you are here you will start having a few glimpses of silence. Go to the riverside or sit alone with the trees, with the birds, with the river, and just watch and just be silent.

are connected; if the birth problem is solved, the death problem is solved. The fear of death starts exactly the moment the child is passing through the birth canal, coming out of the womb; there is the beginning of the fear of death. Because the child has lived for nine months in a beautiful world, in a paradise – no anxiety, no responsibility, nothing to do, just enjoying, just being – and then suddenly one day he is being thrown out of his home. The home has been so beautiful: never again will he find any home so beautiful, so comfortable, so warm; never again will he be so carefree. Unless he attains enlightenment he is not going to be so carefree again. Never again will his mind be at rest, never again will joy be so pure. So naturally the child starts becoming very afraid – and that fear is the beginning of the fear of death.

The child feels as if he is going to die. I am not saying that he actually thinks in these words, he cannot, but when you uproot a tree, the tree also starts trembling: death!

He doesn’t actually say the word ’death’, but he feels it in the guts; it is a gut feeling. The child cannot think of death, that’s obvious, but the child can feel that he is being uprooted. It is not a thought, it is a feeling that he is being thrown out, expelled.

In fact, the christian parable that adam was expelled from heaven has its roots in birth. That is the paradise from where every adam has been expelled. So that story, the expulsion of adam, has tremendous significance. This birth canal is a very very small passage and the child feels suffocated.

He is being thrown into a dark tunnel, and a thousand and one fears enter into his being, unknown fears. He cannot even label them; he has never known them before. Then suddenly he is thrown out of the womb into a very strange world.

When man walked on the moon he was not walking in such a strange world because after all the moon is just like the earth; it is not very different. Maybe trees are not there, maybe lakes are not there; it is a desert. You will find many places on the earth exactly like the moon; it is nothing new, it is not strange.

But when a child comes out of the womb, when he opens his eyes for the first time and sees the light, the colours, hears the sounds... and his senses are so sensitive, so alive that everything seems to be mad! This is ’the beginning of the world’, what the zen people call ’the beginning of a thousand and one things’. The child cannot figure out what it is! He cannot even breathe because for nine months he was not breathing himself; he was breathing through the mother. Now he has to breathe on his own – the beginning of the anxiety of whether he is going to arrive or not.

[For a few moments he’s between death and life, Osho says. That pause is the first experience of death, and from there the fear enters the nervous system and then it goes on accumulating.

Osho reiterates that primal will be particularly helpful and that he should follow it up with bioenergetics and then encounter later on.]

Anand means bliss, vimoksha means the ultimate state of freedom – bliss, freedom. But vimoksha does not mean any other kind of freedom – neither political, nor economical, nor even psychological.

self remains. The self becomes free, it is no more in bondage. The body disappears, the mind disappears, all kinds of bondages disappear. Freedom comes, but the self remains.

In the east we have taken the ultimate jump – from the self to no-self. Buddha has said that if the self remains then you are still in bondage because the self is the very root of bondage. To be is to be in bondage. Being is bondage so being cannot be free; that is a contradiction.

It is not the house, not the family, not the wife, not the children, not your job that is making you a slave. It is just the idea that you are that creates the slavery. When the ’I’ disappears, then there is utter freedom – so much so that there is only freedom and nobody who is free. The agent himself has disappeared. It is utter void, emptiness. That is the meaning of ’vimoksha’ – when not only the prison disappears but the prisoner too.

[The new sannyasin says: I’m a teacher and a therapist.]

Mm mm, both ? That’s very good, both are lovely things. And I am going to make you a great therapist! Much is going to happen; your energy is so ready. You need just a little push and you will be gone forever!

That can happen right now but I will not do it right now – you have to do many more things before it... but it can happen! Very few people are so ready. You must have worked in your past lives very much. You are near about ninety-nine degrees; just one degree more and one is gone, evaporates.

... Do a few groups here; you will find a totally new quality in these groups. In the west where you are doing groups, the whole milieu is different. Here it is totally different.

[Osho says that in the West one may only go so far in therapy; the therapist takes you only to your maximum limit and not beyond the boundary from where you might not come back. At least that’s something because people usually live at the minimum, but here people can cross even that boundary in the knowledge that Osho is with them. Through trust you can go deeper, and the fear of going deeper, the fear of madness, disappears. Osho suggests some groups for him, concluding, you have come home... just be happy!]

[A sannyasin, who is leaving, says he will return, but he was upset while he was here because he did not find other sannyasins as loving as his friends in France.]

There are a few things to be understood.... The people who are here can give you love, but if you ask they will not give, because my whole approach is that when somebody begs for love it is going to be a pathological love. Love should be a sharing between two independent people. It should not be a need it should be a celebration; that’s my whole teaching. And you have great desire, that’s why you missed; otherwise you cannot find more loving people anywhere. In France you will find the love that you are seeking but that love is not going to help.

You have been in France; it has not helped. Back there again you will be in the same rut. This kind in need. So first I prepare people to drop their need. Then love has a totally different quality to it; then you share as a fun and you never become dependent.

The whole world is suffering because of this dependence on love. If you are in need and somebody loves you, you will start clinging because he is like food to you: if he goes away you will be starved.

You will not allow that person to love anybody else because that is uneconomical: you will not be having as much love as you could have had; he will be sharing it. So you will cling. You will create all kinds of situations in which you make the other feel guilty if he shares his love or her love. And in this situation only somebody is going to fall in love with you who is also a clinger, otherwise not.

And I teach people to be non-clingers. Love as much as you want but never cling. And never allow anybody else to cling to you, because clingers function like leeches. They are dangerous people, they exploit.

So I know why it has not happened – because of your desire; the very desire has been the hindrance.

In France you will find that love because the whole country is ill. You can find it in India too. Just go outside these orange people: you will find many, many people who are ready to love, but once you are in love you are caught and trapped.

Then you start suffering: why did you get into it in the first place? Then that sweetness of the beginning is no more there. Every day it becomes more and more bitter because every day both try to dominate each other. All loves are beautiful in the beginning but the honeymoon is only one week, two weeks, three weeks, and by the time you settle, by the time you come to know the other person, you see that you are both beggars. Neither she has anything to give nor do you. She wants from you, you want from her – and both are beggars!

You want love and the other person also wants love. How can you give when you want and how can the other person give when he or she wants? You can only pretend to give. Your basic need is to get – to give is just a bargain – and you will always be alert that you should give less and get more.

Naturally it is a business, it is a bargain. That’s the conflict between lovers.

Here people are very very free. That’s my whole effort – to create a totally new community, an alternative world... small, but some day it can spread. It can become a great fire, it can burn the whole earth!

But my approach is to first be a master – not to beg. Give. It comes back a thousandfold but don’t ask for it. Not that it doesn’t come, it comes more than you could have ever asked, but you simply give... you enjoy giving. When you enjoy giving you will find somebody of the same quality because the same attracts the same: you will find somebody who also enjoys giving. And then you can both give to each other and still there will be no clinging. When you are interested in getting then there is clinging. There is possessiveness, jealousy, and all kinds of uglinesses enter from the background.

Go... and this time you will be able to see that that love is not going to satisfy you. I will haunt you!

That love is not going to satisfy you.

That is not only your problem It is the problem of the whole humanity because we have been you demand love, you don’t get it, Osho continues. He learns to be diplomatic, learns that if you don’t feel love you can pretend to and that is accepted; hence he is taught to be hypocritical and inauthentic. So everyone is demanding love and no one has any to give... but we pretend in order to get. A great unlearning has to happen, says Osho – of all one’s parental teachings; hence Buddha’s insistence that you kill your parents and Jesus’ that you ’hate’ your mother and father.

First you need to love yourself, to learn happiness, then you attract people and love.... ]

The english word ’magnetism’ comes from a root which is very meaningful; it comes from ’magi’. It comes from the same root from where ’magic’ comes and ’magistrate’ and ’meister’; it comes from

’magi’.

Magi means one who has attained to himself. It actually means an enlightened person, hence the word ’magic’. When somebody becomes a magi, he has a magic around himself, hence the word

’magnetism’. He becomes a magnet: people start being pulled... not that he tries to pull them.

So first you have to fall in love with yourself, first you have to become a happy person, and that is very simple. For a few months forget about love. If you really want to attain to love, forget about it.

You are in too much of a hurry. Next time you come, just be here and enjoy yourself and see how many people fall in love with you!

All are lovers here but with a different quality, with a distinction. They will not fall in love with a man who is in need, that is true. They will be afraid of such a man because that man is a trap: Avoid him!

Whenever they see that you are happy many people will start flowing towards you, they will share their energy, and that’s exactly what you need.

So when will it be possible to come back ?

[Osho explains the meaning of deva pashyo: divine vision... ]

You are divine vision. It is the capacity to see into things so deeply that matter disappears, that only god remains, to see so deeply that the solid disappears; only the subtle remains, the gross disappears. the visible is no more seen but the invisible is seen. And to see the visible is not to see much; to see only the visible is to be blind. To see the invisible is to have eyes. That’s what it means: divine vision.

[A visitor says he is a therapist in bio-energetics. Osho says that bio-energetics has a great future and can be further evolved for it is just in the beginning stages right now.... ]

It is just the beginning of a science; much can be done. And it is good to be associated with something that is in the beginning: then it is a challenge and one can help people to explore, one can explore.

All these small beginnings that are going on around the world are going to contribute tremendously.

a hundred years it will look simply silly. And all these people who are working – in encounter, psychodrama, bioenergetics, gestalt and others – they are all going to contribute. All these groups will disappear, they are not going to stay for long. Their work is to contribute, to pool all that is possible from every direction, and once the real psychology starts taking shape they will disappear.

They are tributaries: once the river is there, they will not be there.

And it is always good to be into something that is growing; then you can grow with it. When something is complete it is very unfortunate to be related to it; then it makes you dull, stale. But remember this point – that these are just fragmentary things. There is a fallacy that comes to everybody – that this is the whole, that this is complete.

That’s what is happening to Janov: he thinks the primal therapy is the last word, that he has arrived.

There is something in primal therapy that is beautiful – but it is just a departure, not an arrival! But this is how the human ego goes on functioning: you get a small fragment and you start thinking that this is the whole, that you have stumbled upon the master key that is going to open all the doors.

This has happened down the ages to so many people, yet it goes on happening. Every time something is found, people think, ’This is the panacea. Now there will be no problems in the world; now everything will be solved through it.’ This has failed a thousand times but the human fallacy persists.

Good that you have come.

[A sannyasin wrote to Osho saying she was feeling a lot of resistance coming up. Tonight she says it’s still there and she keeps fighting with it.... ]

I was expecting that it would come up some day or other. It needed only for your body to become a little weak and now that has happened, so it has come. What happens is that when your body is very strong you can go on repressing something. That’s why many religions have prescribed fasting; it is a great trick! If you fast, sooner or later the body becomes weak and the energy that was repressing something is no more there: the repressed explodes. So because of your illness your body has become a little weak. The resistance has always been there but now you are not capable of forcing it back into the unconscious. You are weaker than the resistance, that’s what is creating the trouble.

But this is a good situation in fact, because that resistance has to be faced; repression is not going to help. So don’t fight with it – rather express it, but express it in vacuum Don’t throw it on people because that creates new chains.

[Osho tells her to cathart on a pillow every night for an hour.... ]

This is basically your problem so you have to tackle it alone. Otherwise one thing leads to another, and when you are throwing things at people when they are not responsible at all, you feel guilty and you cannot throw totally. And when you cannot throw totally something goes on lingering, so it is better to be throwing in a vacuum.

have great strength to repress things. You are very much the type that can will things: you can manage, you can force, you can sit upon things for years; you have that energy. Right now it is missing, so this is a good opportunity. By chance you are weak and things are coming up. Don’t repress them now. Soon you will be again strong enough to!

Sometimes illness can be of great therapeutic help and illness should be used as a therapy. It can bring many things which are not ordinarily available, to the surface, and the curse can become a blessing... so don’t be worried.

Everything is perfectly good. Within a week it will be gone... but do it fast because soon you will become strong and then it will be difficult. Use this opportunity!

[A sannyasin, who has just completed the tantra group, said she did not have sexual feelings but her body felt the need to be touched.]

Mm mm, it is not only the body – your sound has no sex in it! It is asexual! Can you sing a song?...

Just close your eyes and sing a small song. I would like to hear you sing!...

And bring as much sexuality into it as possible. Just close your eyes!

[She sings a few lines of a song.]

Good... mm mm, very good! Something needs to be done with your throat centre; your sexuality is repressed there.

People think that sex is concerned with the genitals, it is not: it is controlled by the head. These three centres control... and this is the lowest of the higher centre – the throat. The second is the third eye centre. The throat is controlling your sexuality. So start singing, start dancing in the music group and sometimes just sitting, hum, but bring the quality of sexuality into the sound... and you will be surprised....

That’s why music affects sexuality so much. A certain kind of music can give you almost orgasmic joy; a certain kind of music can bring you to orgasm. So enjoy all kinds of music and avoid the eastern music for a few days. It is all non-sexual, it was created to repress sex. Anything western will be okay – nothing eastern, right now at least. Later on when your throat centre has relaxed you will be simply full of sex energy. It is blocking it.

So sing, hum, dance and hold people, touch people. If you want to be touched, touch, but when you touch bring great sensitivity: when you touch somebody, touch with great reverence, love. And it doesn’t matter whether you are touching a man or a woman or a tree or a rock; it doesn’t matter.

Anything that you touch, touch with great sensuality.

Tenderness is good, but tenderness can be of two kinds, two dimensional. One is tenderness that you don’t allow more than that. You only allow tenderness, only a small energy leaks through the tenderness. You don’t want to go into sex full-fledged; you are afraid of it.

So your tenderness is of repression. It is not a value; it is a disvalue. I would like you to become tender in the second sense but that comes only when one has lived life totally without fear.

You are carrying great sexuality in you, repressed, and the repression is through the throat.

Good! Mm mm. The whole problem is there, mm? It is simple: you hum, sing, sway, join the music group and dance in the sufi dancing. Just help your sound to become more sensuous, more sexual, more alive. And the day it is alive you will suddenly see that the sex energy is released. It will change.

[Another tantra group participant says: I didn’t have sex very freely. Every time I am with a woman I feel very tired and want to sleep.... The second thing is... I don’t know if I am really a sannyasin, because it is very easy for me to change clothes and names; I have always done this.]

[Osho says that the day one takes sannyas one may not actually become a sannyasin; it can happen days or weeks, months or years afterwards. The taking of sannyas is just a gesture of willingness for the inner sannyas to happen.... ]

And the second thing – that’s my feeling also: you are afraid of women, you want to avoid them.

That’s why I told you to go into the tantra group – to become alert about it. I was not thinking that this tantra group is going to give you great experiences of sexual ecstasy, no. I was just thinking that it would give you the experience, the awareness, that you avoid women, that you don’t really want to go into any relationship, that deep down you are against woman and you are against your body too.

Sleep is one of the ways to escape, but that is a very childish way; that too also shows something.

Children do that: when they want to escape from something they fall asleep. But this is very indicative that from your very childhood you have become afraid of sex; people have made you afraid. Maybe it was your mother who has made you very much afraid of it knowingly, unknowingly...

hence the fear of women that they are going to castrate you.

Man has always remained afraid of women for many reasons. One is the mother, because every man has been brought up by a woman. The mother was powerful, so powerful that every child knows that the father was nothing. So the fear – that if you are in the grip of a woman you know that you will become hen-pecked. How to avoid her ? You must have avoided your mother by falling asleep.

[The sannyasin says: She committed suicide.]

That may also be a reason to be afraid of women. I’m not saying what actually happened, but that may also be one of the reasons why you are afraid. That may be one of the reasons: the mother committed suicide and the child was left alone. You cannot trust women: they can betray, they can where your hang-ups are.

[Osho suggests that primal will be helpful... ]

These things are going to change. You are in a far better space as far as I can see, mm ? A great understanding has arisen about your sexuality, and that is one of the basics.

I will send you into tantra again after a few other groups and then things will happen. But this has been good – nothing to be worried about, mm?

CHAPTER 3

3 August 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin, leaving for the west, says: The whole thing about leaving does not come from within; it comes from without – conditions and situations... But to stay comes from within.]

I know... That too is true. And as far as the within is concerned, you are staying; only the without is going. No need to worry about it. Your heart will be here.

[The sannyasin asks: It’s possible to surrender without surrendering physically?]

Yes, it is possible, it is possible. The reverse is not possible. Physically you can surrender, but if you don’t surrender inwardly then surrender is not possible. But the vice versa is possible: you can surrender from the within, you may not surrender from without. That does not make any difference because the body is not very essential. The essential being is your consciousness. If from there surrender is happening, it has happened. then you can be anywhere in the world and you will be here.

But don’t take it seriously – that you are going or you have to go away. you are not going... and it will be a great experience that physically you can be far away and yet very close. It may have something to contribute to you.

Turn it into an opportunity to learn something – and that has to be remembered always: whatsoever the situation use if for growth. Even negative situations have to be used for positive growth.

Ordinarily people go on using even positive opportunities for self-destruction. Even where yes was very simple, it seems impossible for a few people.

Osho agrees that there is no need to make deadlines but if one just plants the seed of an idea in the unconscious, it goes deep and functions as a centre. Then if things come about according to that idea, you feel happy; if they don’t, you aren’t frustrated because you weren’t willing it anyway. Once something enters the unconscious the whole universe cooperates with it because the unconscious is universal while the conscious is individual.]

It is almost like a man making love to a woman and the woman becomes pregnant... Now nobody is doing anything, nobody is trying to do anything – nobody can do anything about it – but once the woman is pregnant the seed has taken root. Now, on its own, the seed will grow. That’s what lao tzu means when he says that man is like the conscious mind and woman is like the unconscious mind.

One of the most ancient books in china is The Secret of the Gold Flower. It says man is the conscious, the woman is the unconscious. Man can only trigger off the process and the woman can only receive. Once the man has triggered off the process he has nothing else to do. Once the woman has received the seed she has nothing to do; now things happen on their own. And exactly in the same way every idea becomes a reality.

So just keep it there. No need to make it an ego trip, that you have to do it – no need to do that.

And no need to move to the other opposite. If you can keep in the middle you will learn a great secret. It is not only about this; this is just a small thing.... When you are coming does not matter; Monday or Tuesday or Friday, this month or that, January or February, doesn’t matter, this year or the other year. I am just using this opportunity to say this to you so that in vital matters of life you can remember it.

[Osho gives him a box.] Keep this with you, and whenever you need me, just remember and meditate. Good!

[A sannyasin asks if she should visit the shrine of Meher Baba.]

You can go and see but there is nothing there. You can go and see but the light is gone and there is nothing left.

Once there was great light, but once a master is gone he is gone forever and then only very ordinary people surround the place. But if you have some idea to, you can go and see... but don’t be in a hurry. Go after one month; it is very close by – you can go and see it. There is no need to repress the idea. Go and see: you will also find that it is empty.

The shrine is there but the god of the shrine is no more... And that is one of the greatest miseries that happens always: by the time people come to hear about a master he is gone, and by the time people start coming the shrine is empty.

Christians came when christ was gone. Only very few people were with jesus; someone has counted and says that not more than five hundred people were ever impressed by him. Five hundred is not a number... and those five hundred also were only so-so. Only twelve were the real disciples, and is good to be with any master, but when the master is gone then it is like a lamp with no light. You can worship it but you will not be enlightened by it.

But for two months feel me so that you become aware what the presence of a master means, then go and see: the shrine is empty. But he. was a very very... one of the greatest men ever, so your love, affection, is perfectly good. But go after two months, mm ? Good.

[A sannyasin couple ask about their relationship. The man was always shy of approaching a woman he was attracted to, and envied other couples. Since they married the wife has been very jealous if the man looked at another woman, so he has repressed doing this. Since being in Poona he no longer wishes to suppress his feelings. When a woman seduced him recently, his wife had a big fight with him.]

Mm! things are really going nicely!

[Osho tells him that his feelings are perfectly okay and he should not feel guilty, but he needs to help his wife because women have been conditioned to think that they are monogamous and men are polygamous. Both are polygamous, both like to move with others.

She should feel free to move with other men and not cling to just him, Osho says. The more you experience other people, the richer your love will become. If you lose interest in other men, you will lose interest in your husband – because he is a man! Osho says to the wife that this is a future society here. If she were at the Vatican her feelings of jealousy would be supported and the husband condemned as immoral. But this is not the Vatican and here the support will be for freedom to move.

]

[A primal group member says: There is a saying in Lao Tzu’s teaching that anyone who is disturbed by the five colours, five tastes, five sounds, cannot reach truth. But I wanted to eat something delicious and I felt like listening to really good music or singing a song... and then I felt like starting to paint.]

Very good! Lao tzu is not your master. I am your master! You can enjoy; there is no problem.

Being in a joyous relationship with one’s senses is not a disturbance. If you repress then disturbance comes in. If you want to eat delicious food, eat. Just remember one thing – the taste of the food should become the taste of god. Eating food, remember you are eating god. Be respectful: eat with reverence and awe. Listening to music, you are listening to god; all sounds are his sounds. All forms are his forms, all beauty is his, all bodies are his. So you forget that old man, lao tzu!

It is good, perfectly good... enjoy as much as you can! Never make a distinction between the world and god, never divide: it is all one. And my teaching is not for fasting, my teaching is for feasting! I am not for celibacy. I am for celebration!

CHAPTER 4

4 August 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[Osho explains the meaning of deva maneeshi, divine wisdom, explaining the difference between the western and eastern ideas of a wise man.... ]

Wisdom has nothing to do with thinking or knowledge. In fact just the contrary is the case: when thinking disappears there is wisdom. It is not the ultimate in thinking but the absence... when the knower is no more, when the self cannot be found, when suddenly there is a state of no-self and the mind is spinning no more, no more weaving its old patterns. All has become utterly silent, still; there is no noise of any kind. of course there is no knowledge and no not-knowing; it is really utter silence. that utter silence we call maneesha... that utter silence is wisdom.

Man is like an onion: you can go on peeling layer upon layer, layer upon layer, and finally nothing is left. That nothing is god, and to come to that nothing is maneesha.

[The new sannyasin says:... my being is here to absorb from you and that hopefully my ego will refrain from questioning you... ]

First: don’t make an effort to do that – the very effort will be self-defeating. If you try not to question you start repressing questions. the more you repress, the more they become vital; the more you repress, the deeper they go in you. Where are you going to repress them? Repression is very suicidal. When you repress something you start sitting upon it, you put your whole weight on it. You force it deep into the unconscious and then it becomes more dangerous.

Yes, it is good to get rid of it but the way is not to deny it; the way is to accept it....

even if you don ’t want to believe, you have to believe. Trust is when you cannot do anything about it except believe it.

You believe in god because you don’t know. Belief is out of ignorance and it creates a kind of knowledge. It gives you a feeling as if you know because you believe!

I don’t require any belief; in fact I am against all belief systems. So you are not to believe in me and you are not to disbelieve in me either. Remain open. That’s what the meaning of being a sannyasin is: to remain open.

Belief is belief, so is disbelief. Disbelief is anti-belief, a negative belief, a belief from the other extreme, but it is a belief. When somebody says ’I believe in god’, he believes in god and when somebody says ’I don’t believe in god’, he believes, he still believes; he believes in the non-existential god. a communist is as much a believer as a catholic.

Once a man came to Sri Aurobindo and asked him, ’Do you believe in god?’ And aurobindo said a flat ’no’. He said ’I don’t believe in god!’

The man was puzzled. He had come from far away, thinking that this man was a man of god – and he said he didn’t even believe in god. For a moment he was shocked and then he said, ’I cannot believe my ears! What are you saying? – you don’t believe in god? I have come in search for a man of god, I have been waiting and been thirsting for you for so long.’

And aurobindo said, ’Yes, I don’t believe in god because I know that god is... but that is not my belief!

I cannot believe... because god is!’

Nobody believes in the sun, in the moon, because they are. People believe in god and angels and devils and this and that, because they are not. You are simply creating belief systems to cling to.

So my whole approach is very very scientific. And I know that one has to go beyond science but one has to go through it. My approach is absolutely logical: although I lead people towards the illogical, it is through the logic; it is not against logic. The illogical is not against the logical, it is not anti-logic.

It is beyond the logical, it is super-logical. But logic has to be used, has to be used very very artfully.

So one has not to believe in me. There is no need to believe, no need to disbelieve. Simply remain open, simply be available to me, that’s all. And availability does not require any belief. In fact when you believe, you are no more available; you have already become closed. You have concluded that this man is right. Now there is no need to explore.

[The sannyasin asks: It’s an intellectual thing rather than a feeling thing; is that what you’re saying?]

Now there is no need to explore; you become closed. You know that.... In fact you will be afraid to explore. If exploration proves to be something else, if exploration brings you something which disturbs your belief, then ?

into me, to be with me. He will say ’I don’t believe in you so why should I come?’ And the same is the case with the believer. He says, ’I already believe in you so what is the point of exploring you ?

Why should I ? Why should I take this trouble? I am already your follower, I believe in you.’ Both are closed people.

Just in the middle, when there is no belief and no disbelief, one is ready.

[The sannyasin asks: Is that the feeling stage?]

Yes, in fact, only then are you as a total being available. It is not only the feeling state, it is your totality. Your mind is there, your feeling is there, your body is there. Your body, heart, mind – all are there, because you are ready to go for a journey. The feeling only cannot go for a journey, the thinking only cannot go for a journey, the body only cannot go for a journey. Only you will have to go totally, as an organic unity.

So I will not say that it is feeling, because again the same problem arises. People think that feeling is better than thinking. The total is better than a part... and that is a totally different thing. I want to take you totally with me: if your feeling goes then your thinking will lag behind and sooner or later will be back. If only your body is with me then your heart will feel repressed; your heart will feel rejected and it will give trouble to you. When you come with me totally nothing is left behind – and that’s what openness is!

So no need to believe, no need to drop any questions. If they arise, they are perfectly good, welcome... all questions are welcome. One has to go through them. When you have really gone through them they disappear; when they disappear there is trust.

[The sannyasin replies: I didn’t have any questions.]

No, no, if sometimes they arise that is another thing; if they don’t come that is perfectly good, that is beautiful. But if they come, don’t push them aside; that’s what I am saying. I am not saying to create them, I am not saying that you have to ask – there is no need – but what I am trying to make clear to you is that all is accepted here. Even your doubt is accepted and welcomed. It is your doubt! I don’t deny anything.

Even if sometimes you feel rebellious, resistant, rejecting of me, that is accepted; that is perfectly okay... that is human! You cannot love me for twenty-four hours a day. I don’t demand any inhuman thing from anybody because inhuman goals are destructive; then guilt arises and guilt is poison.

If I demand of you that you love me for twenty-four hours a day and you cannot, it is just not possible right now... One day it becomes possible, but that has nothing to do with you. You cannot do it, you cannot manage it; one day it starts happening. Then it is a totally different thing. But you cannot manage it: if you try to manage, more difficulties will be there.

So sometimes when you feel negative, it is perfectly okay....

natural! By the morning again you will be thirsty. By and by you will learn that both are meaningful; it is a rhythm: the positive and the negative polarity.

And I don’t say cling to the positive, because that will be half, and I don’t say cling to the negative; that will be again half. What I am saying is: if you watch the polarity – the positive, and the negative, the day and the night, and the summer and winter – if you go on watching, watching, one day suddenly something clicks: you are separate, you are the watcher. You are neither belief nor disbelief.

That is the point of transcendence, that is the point of freedom... that’s the goal.

That’s wisdom too! That’s the whole of theosophy.

Anand means bliss, anu means atom – a small atom of bliss... and that’s all that is needed: if one can become a small atom of bliss then all is achieved. We are atoms in the body of god, very tiny atoms. If our tiny atoms can learn how to dance and sing and be blissful – that’s what makes us part of the divine bliss – then we become part of the great harmony.

When we are miserable we are out of god because god is bliss; by being miserable we separate ourselves from him. When we are angry we are out of him; when we are full of jealousy we are out of him. Not that he expels us... we expel ourselves. The moment we are again in harmony, in love, in joy, we become part of the greater harmony.

All that one needs is to learn how to be joyful. And that is one of the calamities that has happened to humanity: religions have made people more sad rather than making them more joyful. They have made people feel guilty. They have made the whole life a serious affair.

Christians say that Jesus never laughed; I cannot believe that Jesus never laughed. A man of that quality must have carried laughter with him the whole of his life, but the way that christians have painted Jesus is sad. This is not possible. How can one who knows god be sad ?

Hindus are far better in their depiction: Krishna is with a flute, arrayed in a dancing robe, with a crown of peacock feathers and surrounded by beautiful women... and dancing! That seems to be truer... it makes more sense because it makes more celebration possible.

To be religious is to be in celebration; that’s what I teach. Long faces should disappear. More dancing, more singing, more joy, should enter the soul because that is the only door from where we again become one with god; again we contact the divine. And it is so all over....

The stars go on dancing and moving and the trees and the birds and the oceans, the sun and the moon. Except for man the whole of nature is full of bliss, ecstatic. Except for man the whole of nature is psychedelic... and primitive man was also psychedelic. The primitive societies knew no other religion than dancing. Dance was their religion and dance was their prayer and dance was their door to god. The more sophisticated man became, the more civilised. The churches started looking like very gloomy places. Laughter died... smiles disappeared.

’individual’.

Now this indivisible atom of consciousness can exist in two ways: it can exist in sadness – then it is in the world – it can exist in bliss; then it is in god. These are just two styles possible, and the same energy is needed for both. The same energy not allowed to move becomes stagnant, stale, creates sadness. The same energy allowed, expressed, flowering, overflowing, becomes bliss.

So one can forget religion, one can forget all religious dogmas if one can remember only one thing: how to live joyously, cheerfully, how to live a life of laughter. Then all else follows on its own.

God comes one day and takes you unawares, but he comes only when there is absolute joy. In that absolute joy you are in tune, bridged. That is the orgasm that hindus have called samadhi: the drop has fallen back into the ocean.

[The new sannyasin says she has been in psychoanalysis for seven years.]

Very good! That’s great – that you survived!... It is a good exercise in absurdity, it is a good exercise!

If one can afford, it is fun... but meaningless.

But that has become the religion in the West.... Mm, many people are addicted to it now....

It is because you just go on throwing your rubbish. How long can you do it? Unless you are very creative and very inventive you get fed up sooner or later! Mm ? one cannot go on and on.

But good – one can learn a few things from it. A quality of detached observation arises. One starts feeling a little more distant from one’s own mind, and one starts looking at the mechanism of how the mind functions. Many things change just by this looking – not that psychoanalysis changes anything: just by looking at the mind it happens... and that looking is meditation.

It is futile to go so long; what they do in years can be done very easily within months and sometimes not even in years.

[A sannyasin says he did a group with a sannyasin therapist in the West and felt he was going more and more crazy.... ]

It is good sometimes to go crazy. It gives you a different taste of life and it helps you remain sane.

People who never go crazy arc in danger. Sometimes they can go and then they will never be back. They will accumulate so much craziness in them that when it explodes it will be like an atomic explosion: it will kill them or at least will kill their sanity forever.

It is very good sometimes to go for a holiday. Craziness is the greatest holiday possible; it is the real holiday. You drop the whole world of sanity for a few hours or for a few days and you enter a different kind of reality, a separate reality. It is very good to enjoy that and come back. Then this world seems new, fresh, again an adventure and again you can be in a honeymoon with the world.

Once you learn how to get out of it and into it you can do it every day for a few minutes or a few very absurd, a world of fantasy with no logic, with no mathematics. The sanest people are those who have the craziest dreams. By the morning they are back into the world, relaxed, refreshed, and all the tensions that ordinarily one accumulates in life are relaxed in the world of dream.

It was thought before that if somebody was forced not to go into sleep for a few days he would go mad, but the latest research says it is not lack of sleep that drives people mad, it is lack of dreaming.

If you disturb people’s dream within a few days they will start having fantasies with open eyes; that’s what happens to mad people.

If we can teach mad people to dream in a better way, they will never go mad. There are a few communities in the world, small primitive communities, where not a single man has ever gone mad.

Down the centuries, at least for three thousand years, they have kept records: not a single man has gone mad, not a single man has committed suicide. And the whole trick is that they have immense control of their dreams. They can create dreams, they can stop dreaming, they can re-live dreams...

and they are taught from their very childhood the secrets of dreaming. They take dreams really seriously, as seriously as they take daily life. In fact that’s how it should be, because if you live sixty years, for twenty years of that you will be sleeping; it is not a small part. In fact to no other activity will you be giving so much time; no other activity is comparable to sleep.

From the very childhood they are taught how to dream and how to take dream messages, how to interpret, how to find out clues, what to do about their dreams. And they enact their dreams in their actual life. By and by there happens a merger between the day and the night. There is no fast, clear-cut demarcation: everything is mingling and meeting with each other. That helps them to remain sane.

And all these therapy groups are a kind of holiday in madness. It is good... but one should learn how to get back into the world easily.

[A nine-year-old sannyasin has frequently asked Osho to assign him groups.]

I have found the group for you; you have to do it, mm?... So book for centering. You have been always asking for a group – now I have found one!... Now you have got the group; now you are being treated as a grown-up!

[The child explains to Osho he is supposed to write a letter to his teacher in Germany, but does not want to.]

You can write a great spiritual letter to your teacher! Don’t be worried. Give her some good teaching, mm ? really good! You can show me your letter first and then you can send it... But write a really good thing to her!...

You are a sannyasin and you have to spread my word to people – don’t miss any opportunity! Write a really great thing. And you can write perfectly well.

CHAPTER 5

5 August 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva Viyog. It means separation from god. That’s where we are... that’s why there is so much anguish; and once we consciously understand it union becomes possible. Right now we are separate, we are like islands – have lost contact with the continent. We have forgotten that we are rooted in god: god seems to be just a fantasy, not a reality.

Even if we talk about god, we know that god doesn’t exist. Even if we believe, deep down we doubt.

Doubt is deeper than belief; belief is just superficial. So we say one thing and we live just the opposite, and the way we live shows our real attitude.

So people are different in belief – one is christian, one is hindu, another is mohammedan – but if you look into their lives, into their behaviour, they are all the same. Even people who think they are atheists and those who think they are theists, if you look deep down into them they are almost similar; their beliefs make not difference.

Those beliefs are just so-so – they are not flames that burn and change. They are just lukewarm things, formal: one is born in a christian family so one is a christian. But one has not contacted christ, one has not staked all for christ. One is born into a hindu family so one believes in Krishna but one has not heard the flute of that madman, one has not heard the song yet; that song remains unheard.

So it is a kind of conditioning. We have been brought up in certain way, we have learned a certain language, we have learned a certain behaviour and we have learned a certain religion too, in the same way, but it has not grown into our being.

So whether we talk about god or not we remain in separation This has to be very very consciously is the same word as it is in the english word ’yoke’. The viyoga, the separation, has to be transformed into yoga, into union... and I am giving you this name so that it goes on piercing your heart....

[Whenever you remember you are separate from god... ]

By and by you will start crying and your heart will start melting into tears because you are separate and you have to find the way back home.

If a person becomes thirsty, if a person becomes alert and aware, then all other desires disappear.

All other desires disappear and become one desire, and that desire is how to meet god, how to become one with the beloved. Once that desire becomes a flame in one’s being, the impossible becomes possible. But before that desire all other desires should melt into one as all small rivers melt into a big river. Small rivers cannot reach the ocean: rivulets, small tributaries cannot reach to the ocean; it is far away. They have to become part of a ganges; then they will be taken to the ocean.

The desire to know god, the desire to see god, is to create a ganges of all the desires. Then they all fall into one torrent, and that has tremendous energy. It is the same energy that people put into power politics, that people put into the search for money, in search for a name, fame; it is the same energy that people divide into so many desires. The same energy is concentrated in one desire –

the desire for god.

And that [can be] your path: you have to create that desire. And lukewarm desires won’t help. You have to burn, you have to become a fire, so much so that you are completely consumed by the fire; nothing of you remains behind. That very moment god enters.

[Osho suggests groups to the new sannyasin, who is a therapist, telling her to put her mind aside otherwise knowledge can act as a barrier.]

And I am the group leader, whosoever is leading is irrelevant – you remember me. Just put your mind aside. Those people are functioning as my media: whosoever is leading the group is just instrumental to me, he is just a vehicle. He may himself not know where he is taking people and what is happening, but he has done one thing: he has allowed me to permeate his being and he has put his hand in mine. If you see his hand there will be difficulty; start seeing my hand.

And that is the beauty of sannyas: whatsoever is going on here, you don’t look at the person who is doing it; you go on remembering me.

So people who participate in groups as non-sannyasins miss much. They can get only that much which the groupleader can make available. People who participate as sannyasins gain much, sometimes even more than the groupleader is aware of. And you have great potential....

[Osho gives a new sannyasin a special meditation connected with her name – deva vibha: divine light.... ]

will take just two, three minutes at the most. And in the morning when you again feel that sleep has left and you are awake, don’t open your eyes immediately. First see the blue flame again for two, three minutes, then open your eyes.

So every night before you go to sleep, lying down on the bed, wait: when you feel that now sleep is coming, that now it is just on the verge, then imagine the light and fall into sleep. The important thing is that it should be imagined only when you are on the verge; then it is significant. Then it simply moves into the unconscious and the unconscious retains it the whole night. Again in the morning, first thing, you are again very close to the unconscious: just see that blue flame. Within a few days it will become so natural and so clear.

First it is your imagination but the imagination helps you to locate the real flame. The real flame is there. Imagination simply helps you to locate it; it does not create anything. Once the real has been located imagination can be dropped, and then whenever you close your eyes you will be able to see the flame. That flame will make you very very silent, quiet and calm.

After one month tell me about the flame. For one month just keep it inside, mm?

The english word ’tree’ comes from the sanskrit root ’taru’.

Feel more and more in communion with trees; they will help you much. Whenever you are sitting alone by the side of the trees, think of yourself as a tree and meditation will come very easily without any effort.

To remain a man and to become a meditator is very difficult, because man is basically mind so the very idea of being a man helps the mind. The english word ’man’ comes from the sanskrit root for mind ’manu’.

Man implies mind, so when you think of yourself as a man, as a woman, or as a human being, the mind persists. The easiest way to drop it is to start having a different kind of reality: become a river or a tree or a star. You change your identity and you slip out of your so-called human mind. And when you are a tree, the mind is at a loss what to do; the tree cannot think.

It will be very easy for you, that’s why I am giving you this name: Start making friends with the trees around here, mm? – they are your companions.

Sometimes dance with the trees, sing with the trees and sometimes be silent with the trees.

Communicate more with trees than man, and if you have learned how to communicate with trees, then you will be able to communicate with human beings. They are difficult people and trees are very innocent people – very saintly!

[The new sannyasin says she has to leave soon, but may be able to extend her stay.]

In this one month you will come to many experiences, but for them to settle into your being it takes a you find that half the book is missing; it will be like that! So it is better you extend your time. Good!

[A participant of the vipassana group says: During the ten days of vipassana I was just watching the devil inside me, she says.... I felt that I myself was too much. I came to wish to have the power to take myself over.]

That’s a wrong attitude! The devil is there, but the watcher is not the devil. You are the watcher. If you start thinking in terms of doing something with the devil – to possess or to take over or to be powerful or to control – you will be in trouble. One has simply to know that one is separate from it, and then in one’s being aware of that very distance, it dies. The devil dies only when we witness it.

That is the whole methodology of vipassana. Vipassana means a deep look into things, an insight into things. It has been very good.

The problem was not because of the devil; the problem was with the idea that you had to do something with it. The devil is perfectly okay; drop this idea of doing anything with it. But it has been good.

[A sannyasin says she can’t stop laughing – it is a kind of cackle which goes on for hours.]

It is perfectly good, nothing is wrong. It is just that something is changing in your energy... and it is good. It will disappear on its own; you need not force it to stop.

It is very good. You are getting ready for some satori! Good!

[Osho talked about her a few days later in the morning discourse.... ]

Something is stirring in her. She is not the laughing type; she is the crying type. When she first came here, when she came to me, she would start crying; tears were easier for her. Now suddenly tears have disappeared and laughter has arisen:... and such a mad laughter that she goes on laughing for hours. It has become almost painful to her.

For her whole life she repressed laughter, unknowingly; now the repression has disappeared. The lid has been taken off. The whole life’s laughter is coming up with a vengeance, it is almost hysterical.

But it is a beautiful space because it is an indication of a great change, an alchemical change. Tears are becoming laughter.

Soon laughter will also disappear; as tears have disappeared laughter will disappear. Then she will come to the exact middle; then there will be a great balance, equilibrium. That equilibrium is the goal – neither the negative nor the positive, because both are half.

If there is only one choice – tears or laughter – laugh, but if there is a choice of being silent, then tears and laughter both have to be dropped; one becomes silent. She will soon come to that silence.

After this storm of laughter there will be a great silence as it always comes after the storm...

CHAPTER 6

6 August 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[Osho gives someone sannyas.]

Raise your hands and close your eyes, and just feel as if you are being born from the mother’s womb, right now this moment, and whatsoever body posture comes, allow it. If you start crying, weeping, it’s okay. Just think of birth. If your body falls and starts rolling or anything, just allow it. I would like to contact you there. Just think, visualise, that you are coming out of the womb. Let it be a primal moment... and if you feel that the body starts taking a certain posture, allow it.

Anand means bliss and haritama means greenery – blissful greenery. And many things have to be understood about the colour green; it will be helpful for you. Get more in tune with green, look more at the green trees and feel in tune with the green trees. By that falling in tune with the greenery, you will fall in tune with your own self.

Watching anything growing, fresh, young, is of tremendous value. We grow through watching growth, and we become green through watching the tress. Green is the colour of freshness, of aliveness, of vitality, of nature. And whenever man is natural he is blissful; whenever we ar unnatural, we become miserable. Misery is an unnatural phenomenon, it is an accident, and the accidental has become our whole life. By and by we have lost contact with the natural.

It is not only that we have destroyed nature on the outside; even before that we have destroyed nature inside. The outer ecology has been disturbed just within a hundred years, but the inner ecology has been disturbed for at least five thousand years. Man has completely lost contact with his own source.

face, you don’t touch with your hand; there is a glove, so the glove touches the mask. You remain hidden and the person remains hidden and real people never come in contact with each other.

It is not accidental that in the west people are becoming more and more interested in animals; it is not just accidental. A great urge is there to see the real face – at least of your dog or your cat, because the wife is never real and the husband is never real. Even small children start learning diplomacy and the moment the child starts speaking, he becomes false. So feel in tune with animals, they are yet uncorrupted. Feel in tune with trees, in tune with rivers, oceans, clouds, and that is the way you will fall in tune with yourself. Whenever you are sitting silently, just visualise the colour green: close your eyes and see the green spreading all over. Sufis have done great meditations on green, and I am giving you that particular meditation because my feeling is that you have been in contact with some sufis in your past lives – not in this life. Once you start meditating on green, all that which you have done in your past lives will be revived.

Much has to be done and much is going to flower in you. You can wait for it with all hope. It is almost certain to happen; there is no problem... Good!

Deva means divine, vinya means discipline. There is a discipline that we can force upon ourselves, but that is repression. We can give it a good name but basically it remains repression, and all repression leads into pathology, into some kind of neurosis, hence is dangerous.

There is another kind of discipline that flowers. We don’t enforce it: we just look into things as they are and allow that understanding to become a discipline.

For example you look into anger: one time, ten times, a hundred times you look into it. Now, the ordinary decision is to decide that because anger brings misery to you and to others, it is horrible, nightmarish, creates anguish, guilt, disturbs you, is of no use, you will force yourself not to be angry.

Next time it comes. you will force it into the stomach, repress it. You will breathe in a shallow way and control yourself... will contract yourself so that you can control yourself. This is the ordinary way of disciplining oneself – whether it concerns anger or greed or whatsoever. This is a dangerous thing to do. This is how the whole humanity has become a madhouse.

The second kind, the real kind of discipline, is to look into anger, to look into all that it brings – the misery, the anguish, the anxiety, the frustration, the guilt. Just go on looking into anger, at what it brings. That very look, again and again and again, culminates in an understanding. You start seeing the futility of it.

In that very seeing it disappears. Not that you control it: you simply wait, watch and wait. One day suddenly, it flowers. It can’t be otherwise, it has to be so, because if you see again and again that this is a wall and again and again you are hit and your head hurts, how long can you go on persisting

? How long can you be stupid ?

I have not come across a single human being who can be that stupid! Stupidity also has limits.

One hundred times, one thousand times, ten thousand times, it happens, but one day or other this understanding that this is a wall is bound to dawn on you In that very seeing that this is a wall and One needs to be flowing, not contracted. One needs to be expanding: only through expansion does one come close to god.

The sanskrit term for god is ’brahma’. It means the one who remains extended, always and always.

It means extension, infinite extension... one who goes on extending.

It is just within fifty years that western physics has come to the idea that the universe expands and goes on expanding: continuously, every moment, it is becoming bigger and bigger and bigger. But in the East, the word for god is ’expansion’.

And whenever you are in that mood of expansion you are close to god, you fall in tune with god.

When you shrink, then you fall apart. You are no more in tune with this expanding universe, you have become a private thing; a small, tiny, mediocre, human being. Then the part starts thinking it is the whole. The part has to disappear, and that disappearance comes only through understanding, never through control.

That’s what I mean by deva vinya – divine discipline. It is not discipline at all because you are not doing anything. Or you can call it discipline using the exact meaning of the word. The word comes from the same root as ’disciple’. The original root means ’the capacity to learn’. A disciple is one who is capable of learning, and a man of discipline is one who is capable of learning from his life, that’s all – not that he forces any pattern or creates a character around himself.

All characters are bondages and all characters are armours, defences. All characters create walls around you and naturally, when there are so many walls around you, you start living alone because there are no longer any bridges with people. We create walls, that’s why we are alone. Rather than creating bridges we create walls, hence everybody is suffering in loneliness. Even when people are together, they are together but they are alone because those walls are there. They are very subtle walls, not very visible, very invisible, but everybody is carrying his own imprisonment around himself.

Wherever you go, you carry your prison around you; it is an invisible thing. That’s what people have been taught as discipline: behave yourself... shoulds and should nots.

The word ’vinya’ does not mean shoulds and should nots. It simply means a deep understanding about things, and then whatsoever that understanding brings, one trusts and one goes with it.

[Osho gives someone sannyas.]

Raise your hands and close your eyes, and be a tree. Forget that you have a human body; become the body of a tree. It is raining and the tree is really celebrating. These hands are no more hands: these are your branches in the sky. It is windy and the tree starts swaying and dancing. Feel like the tree and be the tree.

This will be your new name... Forget the old one and drop the idea of your past. Sometimes it is of tremendous help to drop the past and not to choose anything from it. There have been good things, there have been bad things, and one wants to choose: one would like to have the good things and drop the bad things That’s what we go on doing: we always go on choosing the beautiful We go on carrying the beautiful in the conscious and go on throwing the ugly into the unconscious.

That’s why the unconscious becomes almost like a junkyard... and that is the place from where we live! The conscious is impotent. We live from the unconscious, our real life arises from the unconscious. But because we go on throwing things into the unconscious it becomes cluttered and our whole life becomes ugly.

The conscious has no power really, it is a very tiny part. It can pretend to be powerful but whenever a real crisis arises it proves of no help and then immediately the unconscious has to rush to help.

It is good when there is no problem, the conscious, good when there is no challenge. You can lie down on a chair and you can think beautiful thoughts. It is good as far as speculation is concerned but as far as existence is concerned it is impotent.

So we have to live from our innermost core but that innermost core becomes very much cluttered with the ugly, and because of those ugly things in the basement the unconscious starts becoming distorted. That is the unconscious that freud talks about – the distorted unconscious; it is not the true unconscious. The Freudian unconscious is only a parody.

Buddha also talks about the unconscious, but that unconscious is god.

Then it is not really

unconscious: it is only not self-conscious, that’s all. It is unselfconscious; that will be the right term for it.

So sometimes it is of tremendous value to drop the whole past – good and bad both... so the conscious becomes free and the unconscious becomes uncluttered; that is the significance of changing the name in sannyas.

Sadhananda means always blissful. Sadha means always, and anand means blissful... and let that seed sink deep into your being. Bliss should be taken as natural. We have become accustomed to take misery as natural. Whenever people are miserable they think it is how things should be.

Whenever they are happy they feel a little guilty: they feel as if they are cheating somebody or they are doing something which should not be done.

This has happened because of conditioning in one’s childhood, Osho explains. Parents don’t like children being happy because then they become mischievous and unruly. We learn the trick of looking miserable. Sannyas is about reclaiming your childhood, free of all conditioning, so that you start doing things you like and dropping things you don’t like.... ]

Once this has happened, life takes on a totally different colour; it becomes a song. Never do a thing that you don’t enjoy – whatsoever it is. Even if the whole world says it is very very useful, don’t do it. because that is going to kill you and destroy you. And do only that which you enjoy. Maybe it is not going to pay, maybe nobody will respect you for it, maybe nobody will ever thank you for it, but that is not the point. If you enjoy it, that is enough of a criterion that this is the thing to do. The day a man starts enjoying things and doing things that he enjoys, to me that day is the day he has become mature. And it is very difficult to find mature people. They are all grown-up children, still being dominated by the parents who may be no more, who may not be visibly dominating at all.....

rebellion: it is an individual rebellion. It is not revolution....

.... Sometimes it happens that a person comes but it is not the right moment. Sometimes a person comes when the right moment has gone. But sometimes it happens that people come in exactly the right moment. You are in the right moment, so much is going to happen! Don’t be afraid, because when it really starts happening great fear arises.

Although we have been desiring it, when it starts happening fear arises because it is a kind of dissolution: one dissolves into something unknown, one melts into something absolutely unknown.

And in that moment great trust is needed, faith is needed; that’s why sannyas... It helps only in that moment when trust is needed, when you cannot see ahead.

You cannot see because you are not going to be. You cannot see because you are melting, you are dissolving. All that you can do is cling to the past because that is all there is. In that moment if you start clinging to the past you miss the opportunity.

In the eastern scriptures faith is described as a bird which sings, which starts singing while it is still dark, when the sun has not risen. Other birds will sing when the sun has risen but faith is the bird which starts singing while it is still dark. It starts welcoming the sun which has not yet arisen.

So just fall more and more in love with me and with the people here... and much is going to happen here!

[A sannyasin newly returned, says It’s been a difficult year since I took sannyas. I feel split – between good and bad. That’s because you don’t accept the bad, Osho replies. You don’t allow the higher synthesis to arise where the saint and the sinner meet, where the transcendence happens.

Only in the transcendence is there unity; then there is no possibility of a split.

The sannyasin then says he once had a teacher who was a kind of a magician, a black magician, and he feels he still has a power over him.

No, nobody is controlling anybody, murmurs Osho, He must have made a great impact on you... but you need not be worried: now you are under a white magician!]

CHAPTER 7

7 August 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[Osho gives sannyas.]

Close your eyes, and just feel as if you are dying; just relax the body. If the body falls, don’t be worried: allow it, cooperate. Go on feeling as if you are dying, dying, dying. At the very moment when you are almost dying it is very simple for me to make a contact with you. Just allow it....

It is very difficult for you to leave yourself in uncontrol, and that is going to be your basic problem to be solved. You have a subtle control system within you. Maybe you are not even conscious of it –

that you don’t allow yourself totally into anything. A part of you goes into it but the remaining part, the major part of you, remains outside. Then there will always be conflict, you will never be at peace with yourself. A part will be going to the north, another part will be going to the south; there will be tension. That’s what anxiety is. Man is the only anxious animal because man is the only animal who is never total: he goes so far and then stops.

Either go in totally or don’t go at all, both are good, but remain total, remain whole. If you love then love totally, put everything at stake. Be a gambler; don’t be a business man. Otherwise don’t love, remain a monk, but put everything into your monkhood; again be a gambler. Only gamblers reach somewhere. Business people never arrive; they are lukewarm people, just in the middle.

All revolutions happen from the extremes, all transformations happen from the extremes. From the extreme is the jump. You are a middle-of-the-way walker. Everybody has been trained for that; it is not that something is especially wrong with you. Everybody has been trained to remain in control.

We are so much afraid of nature hence the control but if you are afraid of nature you are afraid of not lukewarm. From there you evaporate; from there you jump into some new reality, into some new dimension.

And you are very young so it is not going to be difficult to unlearn the control. When a person becomes very old then the control becomes as strong, sometimes even stronger than nature itself.

People say habit is second nature, but if the habit is very long, it becomes the first nature and nature becomes just a secondary habit. Then things are very difficult. It is very difficult to bend an old structure; you are still flexible. You are still only on the way to becoming stagnant. You have come in the right moment to me: things can be easily changed and spontaneity can arise in you, and with spontaneity is sannyas.

My sannyas means nothing but spontaneity: living moment to moment with courage, with utter trust, and going into everything totally, whatsoever it is... going into it without any judgement.

So let this be my message for you on this, your new birthday – to start relaxing. It is not yet difficult; it has not yet settled but it is there around you. Mm ? sooner or later it will close upon you and then it will become more difficult; every day it will become more difficult.

Right now it can be dropped, it can be dropped easily. So while meditating, while moving around here, while listening to me, remember one thing: to uncontrol, relax, be... but don’t manipulate yourself. Do things the way you feel; if you don’t feel, don’t do. There is no need to do everything in the world; only a few things are enough to make a person ecstatic, and those are the things that you would like to do. Do them but do them totally.

Put your whole energy into a few things, don’t scatter it. Scattered, you will be lost in the sands. Put your whole energy into a few things. The best way is to put your whole energy into one thing, one target: then you become a river, a great river. Then the ocean is absolutely your destiny. It can be predicted: you will reach to the ocean. But even if a big river becomes many small streams it will be lost in the desert, in the sands; it will never reach anywhere.

That’s what happens to many people: they fizzle out. They start with great gusto and sooner or later are lost in the world – one fragment going this way and another fragment going that way, one part moving fast with jet speed, another part just Lying there like a rock, not moving at all. Naturally, life becomes very very ugly, a hell....

So drop control – learn uncontrol. Uncontrol means to be natural, to be spontaneous. Uncontrol means to remain unafraid. There is nothing to fear! It is god’s world and he is everywhere. We are part of him; there is no need to be afraid. We are like fish in the ocean of god; there is no need to be afraid. But fear has been taught, fear has been given; almost from the first day that a child is born the system is being poisoned. Out of fear arises control.

When you control yourself, naturally you will be controlled by others too. You become a slave; then you hanker for somebody to control you. If you find a situation where nobody is to control you, you will all control you.

Once you learn the trick, you will be controlled your whole life. Then your wife will control you, your children, even your children, will control you. Once you are in a rut you know only one way of being, and that is being controlled. And whenever you are free, you will be at a loss; you will not know what to do now, where to go. You will always need somebody to direct you, somebody to tell you to do this, to go there. This is a great slavery – and sannyas is a rebellion against all kinds of slaveries.

Deva means divine and siddhanta means principle. This name is a declaration that you are a divine principle, that you need not be afraid... that you can go with your total trust into life... that the enemy exists not, that the universe is friendly.

[Osho gives sannyas to someone, instructing her to close her eyes.... She closes her eyes for a few moments and opens them again.]

In such a hurry to open your eyes!...

But learn to close your eyes a little bit more! Whenever you have time, just sit silently with closed eyes. It will help, it will help you to be more at ease with yourself.

But I can understand: your trouble is not only yours, it is the trouble of the whole west. People have forgotten how to close their eyes because they have forgotten how to go inwards. Our whole interest is outside. It is really a wonder how people manage to sleep with closed eyes! Sooner or later they will start sleeping with open eyes... and they will have their glasses on! Our eyes have become very fixed on the outside... almost paralysed. They cannot move inwards, and that is the most essential thing in life to learn, because we go on missing our real treasure. In the cast that real treasure is called, ’dharma’. We don’t call the church religion, we don’t call ritual religion; we call the inner experience of one’s being religion.

[A new sannyasin says that she has been travelling for the past three years. If you travel too much you land up with me! chuckles Osho. There is no need to go; you have travelled enough. Now start a new journey inwards – that’s the real pilgrimage! He suggests the two newest groups for her.]

The first group is anatta; it means no-self, mm ? That is the beginning of the inner journey that one has to drop the idea of the ego. Because the ego functions as a barrier; it blocks. When you feel too much of the ’I’, you become solid; when you feel a little less of the ’I’, you become liquid. When you don’t feel ’I’ at all, you start evaporating. Then you are free and the whole sky is yours.

So the first is anatta, and the second is urja.

Urja means energy, so learn something about the energy – how it functions, what it is exactly –

because you arc that energy. The whole universe is also that energy, and if we know exactly what energy is we can start making friends with existence. We can start moving in tune with existence...

we can start embracing existence, we can fall in love with the total – because we are small parts of to separate from the whole is misery. To fall into union again is joy. The word ’yoga’ means union and that is exactly the meaning of the english word ’religio’ it means to relate again, it means to join again, to become one with the whole.

[To a new sannyasin Osho says:]

Relax and start enjoying things here; don’t remain in the head. You come closer to me if you come into your heart; you remain far away if you remain in the head. Two heads can be very close? but they can never be really close. Physically they can be close but spiritually they are worlds apart.

Two hearts can be far away, but can be very close. The heart knows how to be close and the head knows how to be away. So listen to me from the heart, contact me from the heart.

... Tantra. It comes from two sanskrit roots, ’tan’ and ’tra’.

’Tan’ means expansion, and ’tra’ means explosion. Tantra means explosion by expanding your consciousness. In the new hippie jargon they have a word which means exactly tantra – mind-blowing; that is what tantra is. And when you start expanding your consciousness it cannot be contained in the head. The head is a very small place, very crowded, already too crowded. A thousand thoughts and desires are clamouring, it is a marketplace. Even while you are asleep it goes on functioning, it goes on chattering.When you start expanding then naturally you have to find a bigger place for yourself, and that is the heart. Then you start slipping from the head into the heart.

The heart has great possibilities. It is an infinity.

So start slowly, slowly, relaxing into the heart... dance and sing. And this is your family. Meet people, be loving, create friends, mm ? This is a constantly on-going group. Much is possible; just remain available! Good!

[A visitor, who is leaving, asks Osho to recommend groups for him in the West. Osho replies, groups here have a totally different quality. In the West you cannot go very far or very deep because the danger is always there that you may not be able to come back; nobody is ready to take that responsibility. Here I am ready to take responsibility for you because you cannot go further than me, so wherever you are, you will be behind me! I can force you back to your original structure, to your original reality. Groupleaders can only take you so far. They have some expertise, perhaps a little more understanding than you, but basically they have the same problems as you.]

[A sannyasin says: I really want to be in a relationship. I don’t know what to do.]

But nothing happens?..

It is so difficult for women here to find men: all the men have become so afraid!

But sometimes you find a man so then what happens? The man escapes?...

and transform.

A few people start putting a heavy trip on the relationship; then here it is not going to happen because nobody is interested in heavy emotional relationships. People are ready to be loving but nobody is ready to be crippled by love; nobody is ready to be imprisoned by love.

People are ready to go into deeper freedom through love but not at the cost of freedom. Here people are really in search of freedom. They can use love to go towards freedom, they will be happy, but if they see that freedom is to be denied for love they will choose freedom, they will not choose love.

This is one of the basic things to understand.

So here around me if you really want to love a person you will have to be non-possessive and you will have to learn not to cling; you will have to learn how to give freedom to the other. You cannot find a husband here, that’s perfectly true, but you can find a great friend, and that is far more valuable. A husband is an ugly phenomenon. To live with a husband or a wife is to live in a hell.

Friendship has a fragrance. So learn one thing – not to try to possess anybody. Make it very clear to the person that he remains free and you remain free; then you will find many friendships growing.

[Osho reminds her that people enter into love, into relationship, to be happy. But the human mind has become conditioned to a certain pattern of misery: you start fighting for things that don’t matter; then love is destroyed for trivia. Always keep in mind, he says, that love is so valuable everything else can be lost for it.]

Can you say something about what you feel is the cause? – because if you can it will be very good.

That will show that you are becoming a little observant about your own personality.

[She replies: Jealousy, possessiveness.]

So that has to be dropped... Here, if you are jealous and possessive, then you cannot find any man.

These people are tired; that’s why they have come to me! They are tired of all such relationships and trips; they don’t want to get into any other trouble. If they just want to have a jealous wife, they can have one anywhere else. Why should they come here, so far away ? Here they come to grow in a new dimension, in a new freedom.

[Help the person you love to be free, says Osho. Every woman wants a real man but she turns him into a henpecked husband once she has got him! If you let the other remain free, you remain free.

A person will only get into your prison if you are ready to get into his. Osho says if she needs to she can cathart on a pillow but no need to take it out on the man – otherwise she will cripple him... ]

And... you are young: you can drop these things! If you were old, eighty years or something, I would not have bothered. I would have said, ’Okay, you just go on,’ but you have your whole life ahead!

Mm ? And you have fallen in love with me, so here jealousy won’t do!...

You will be able this time mm? Try!

she take sannyas. She replies: Please! I have many problems already without the mala and orange!]

That will help to drop all your problems! That will be a decision – a beginning of choosing something.

[She answers that she feels that sannyas for her is very serious, so she doesn’t know if going back to Italy she can keep the orange and the mala.]

I trust you: you will. At least look at me: one person trusts you! I trust you. You may not trust me, but I trust you.

This is going to help to break the ice. At least one thing – you will be taking a decision, and that very decision will help your meditations to go deep. Because here, if you are not a sannyasin, in your consciousness there will remain a barrier to going deep into meditation. If you go deeper in the meditation, you will have to go into sannyas. That is there in the mind; I can read it right now. You will not be able to participate in a group deeply because you will be continuously afraid and you will be ready to escape; you will remain on the boundary. To go deeper will be dangerous. You will have to become a sannyasin.

So that’s why I am saying first solve the problem: the problem is that you become a sannyasin!

[She says: Can I wait ?]

That is for you: if you want to remain in confusion, remain! I am not confused! Wait! For what are you going to wait ? What will you do by waiting ? You will think and think, and then you say, ’How to get out of thinking ?’ Just take a Jump! Ready ?

It is so simple to get out of the mind!

... Otherwise you remain with your mind; it is perfectly okay. Mm ? remain with your mind and you remain with your confusion. Then you are creating it; don’t say that it is a problem. You are clinging to it. You are feeding it, you want it to be there. You are not ready to drop it – because I suggest a thing which can help you to drop it. That will be the beginning of many more things.

[She still hesitates and asks for groups, which Osho gives her – and then asks her about sannyas again.]

I am ready right now! Because my whole approach is that it is better to do something without thinking. At least do one thing without thinking; that will be a new beginning. You have never done anything without thinking. In fact you have not done much because if you think, you cannot do; that opportunity passes by.

You can live your whole life thinking and thinking and you will die. You will never do anything because whenever you have to do something, thinking has to be put aside. You follow me?

the window you will jump.

Thinking never helps; thinking hinders. So my suggestion is that if you wait for seven days that will be doing your old pattern again.

[She refuses.]

Then you wait, mm? But next time when you come, I will also have to think – whether to give sannyas to you or not.

Wait. Because next time I will not be so much trusting; it will not be your decison...

CHAPTER 8

8 August 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva means divine, upeeksha literally means ’indifference’, but in english there is no exact word for it. Indifference feels like something negative; upeeksha is something very positive.

It means a centering of consciousness so that you are not wavered by anything. Success comes, it is okay; failure comes, it is okay. That is called upeeksha. Nothing disturbs you, nothing unhinges you from your centre; nothing is meaningful. One is so silent that nothing creates any stir; that is upeeksha. If life is there, good; if death comes, good. One has a total acceptance; whatsoever comes to pass is good. One has no denial, one never says no. One never rejects, one never resists; that is what upeeksha is.

But the literal meaning is indifference. The whole name will be ’divine indifference’ – and that is going to be your key. You have to work on it; this is your sadhana. So be watchful: whenever you see that something is disturbing you, become cool, calm, become grounded. Immediately escape withinwards... be centred. Yes, the cloud has come; it will go. No cloud is permanent: only the sky remains, the cloudless sky.

Anger arises, remain indifferent. Look at it – it is there; take note of it, but don’t make any judgement.

Greed arises; it’s okay but don’t decide in favour or against. By and by you will see that everything comes and passes by and you remain untouched. And in that untouchedness there is great joy.

One has overcome the world; that is what is known as being the conqueror. then one has a self...

otherwise people just talk about the self; they don’t have any self.

Self means a centre which remains unperturbed, unconditionally unperturbed.

Anand means blissful and islam means surrender

blissful surrender Anand is a sanskrit word and

one hand you disappear, on the other hand god appears. It is a curse from this side and a blessing from that side, because it is death and resurrection....

Anand means blissful, and sufi has many meanings but the most meaningful for you is, ’chosen friend of god’; that is one of the meanings of the term ’sufi’.

Sufis believe that it is always god who takes the initiative. Even when you become religious, even when you start searching for god, it is he who starts it first. Maybe you are not conscious about it, maybe you have heard him only in your deep sleep, maybe in your dreams he has entered, maybe not even that visible.... He may have stirred something in your deepest core of being; only then do you started searching.

This is a very beautiful understanding. It says only god searches; we respond. We are his echoes; we cannot act on our own; we only reflect. Hence the meaning: chosen friend of god, one who has been chosen by god already.

Before a man chooses god, god has chosen him already, but this is revealed only in the last moment of realisation.When the ego completely disappears it is realised – that this was not your search: it was god’s search for himself through you, via you. You were not more than a mirror: god was looking through the mirror at his own face. But that happens only in the last moment when the ego has completely been dropped. Suddenly one realises that one was nothing but an echo, a reflection. So how can the reflection search for the original? There is no possibility; only the original can search.

That is one of the deepest meanings of the word ’sufi’. There are many meanings but for you that is particularly relevant: you have already been chosen.

I would like you to remember it as much as possible: you have already been chosen, so now behave accordingly and many many things will start happening. You will not need to do much for their happening – they will be more of the quality of spontaneity; you have simply to be available.

You are a friend already... but don’t make it an ego trip otherwise one who has been chosen can be dropped too! Feel grateful but don’t feel egoistic about it; feel happy but don’t feel egoistic about it. In fact feel absolutely humble... humble in seeing the situation – that you are not worthy and you have been chosen. If one becomes more and more humble, one comes closer. The more humble one is, the more worthy, and the more worthy one thinks oneself, the less worthy he becomes. This is the inner arithmetic.

Jesus says ’Those who are first in the world will be the last in my kingdom of god, and those who are the last will be the first!’ So be poor in spirit....

[Osho tells a woman taking sannyas to feel as if she is being born again I would like to make contact with you in that moment, he says. There are three moments in which to make contact – birth, love, death; let us start from the beginning. ]

and that is the only law. All other laws are man-created. One law is not man-created – that is love.

That is given, that is god-given.

And torah is a beautiful word. It means exactly what ’tao’ means in chinese: the law... what ’dharma’

means in india – the law. It comes from an egyptian root.

There was an ancient goddess in egypt, ta-urt. She was the goddess who maintained order in existence; she was the goddess who maintained order in this immense chaos. The universe is a chaos, but there is an order in it also. From ta-urt the hebrew word ’torah’ came, and torah became very very significant to the jews; their scripture is called torah.

The word is really beautiful. We are chaos. Something is needed to function as a centre to hold this chaos otherwise one tends to disintegrate. And people are living disintegrated lives; they are many, not one. Everybody is a crowd, there is not unity inside.

Love gives that unity. Whenever you are in love the chaos disappears; there is order, there is harmony, accord. Whenever you are in love all those fragments fall into one unity – and that unity is not a dull unity. It is not that the variety disappears, variety remains: just the conflict disappears.

That’s why I call it a harmony: those different notes remain but they are no more in conflict with each other. They are in tune, it is an orchestra. It is not that it is a single note, because that will be ugly and boring.

One should become an orchestra. One should remain rich with many things, with many experiences, with many directions, dimensions, but all should be rooted in one centre. And I don’t see that that centre can be anything else than love: hence I call love the only law.

All other laws are needed because we are missing love. We have to substitute. Those ten commandments are just substitutes; all the great moral teachings are just substitutes. If you have loved, those commandments are not needed. Then love is enough; all those commandments will come automatically as shadows of love. But if love is not there all those commandments are needed, otherwise man will go mad and the society will go mad.

So become more and more loving. Let love be your prayer, let love be your religion. That’s my message in your name. And it is possible; one can hope for it. It is not a hopeless hope! It is almost there, ready as a seed, just waiting for your cooperation and support and nourishment so that it can start growing.

[Osho gives sannyas to an elderly man.]

Close your eyes, and if something starts happening in the body, allow it. If your hands start moving and then start making gestures, mudras, go into them. If your body starts moving backwards, forwards or sideways, allow it. I would like to see you moving with the body, in the body – not against the body... in cooperation.

use friction but they are unnecessarily long methods and unnecessarily torturous. The real thing, whenever it happens, happens through surrender. Even if one follows the path of effort, struggle; ultimately, finally, in the last step, one has to surrender. The devotee surrenders on the first step, the man of love surrenders on the first step, and the man of will surrenders at the last step. But without surrender nothing ever happens so why bother to wait for the last step ? And meanwhile the struggle is long and unnecessary.

If you don’t reach the last step you are caught up with a great strong ego; that is a very bad side effect. If one thousand persons start moving on the path of will there is only possibility of one reaching to the very end. And what about those nine hundred and ninety-nine? They will be somewhere on the way, stuck with their egos... and very strong egos! They cannot go back because there is no way to go back. They can only go ahead... and sometimes it takes many lives; that is the path of yoga.

That’s why yogis have tried to prolong their life span – because a hundred years are not enough!

There has been much effort down the ages to prolong the life so that one can finish the whole work in one life, otherwise who knows ? If one is caught somewhere in the middle, which is more possible, then again in the next life you will have to start from the middle. You will not be conscious of what you have done in the past life so everything will be disrupted.

The path of love is very simple, and because it is very simple it appeals to very few people. Simple things

don’t appeal because they don’t give any challenge to the ego. Hard, difficult things appeal: they become challenges.

When everest is there it becomes a challenge; somebody has to conquer it. The difficult attracts the ego; the simple does not attract the ego: the ego is not interested in the simple and the easy.

And this is my message for you – that the easy is right. Drop the ego and move through the easy.

This is the meaning of... prem nirvan, – that it is going to happen through love. Love means surrender.... Love means no more struggle. Love means god is not far away. He is just in front of you... he just surrounds you within and without. You have just to fall in love with him and things start happening.

I have a feeling, maybe in this life or in your past life, that you have been a struggler. Sometimes it happens that when you struggle and you fail you tend to forget it completely, because to remember it is so frustrating. That’s why we forget our past lives; otherwise there is no reason to forget. The memory continues, the same mind continues; only the body changes. There is no discontinuity from one life to another life but we forget about past lives, we become oblivious of them; there is a reason in it.

The reason is the failure, the whole failure of the past life. It is like a wound. If you remember it, it will hurt, it will make this life difficult, so one drops a curtain on it and starts doing the same things remember the past lives simply for this reason – because if we remember the past life we will not be committing the same mistakes again. It is very difficult to find a man so foolish as to repeat the same things again and again and again. But we think this is the only life so we are doing everything fresh, we are not repeating anything.

My feeling is that you have been doing many things, and soon you will remember. If you start remembering, just start keeping a diary. And don’t reject it – prima facie don’t reject it. Don’t just say that this is fiction or a dream or what is happening to you ? Are you going mad ? Simply write it down; soon things will become very very clear.

As I can see in you, you have been struggling in your past lives. You have followed the path of will.

You have tried hard and you failed... hence I want to change your whole style of being. Let it be of love, not of will. Let it be of surrender and trust. We are not enemies to god; there is no need to fight.

That is the basic meaning of why god has been called ’father’ or even more significantly ’mother’: he is not the enemy; we need not struggle. We are his and he is ours, and if the child goes astray it is as much his responsibility as the child’s... even more; his responsibility is more.

We are living in a family; this whole existence is our family – we are not alien or strangers. This is what I mean by love. And there is no need to struggle and fight. There is nobody to fight with. It is all ours just to claim; just for the asking it is ours.

Jesus says, ’Knock and the doors shall be opened unto you’ – just for the knocking! ’Ask and it shall be given’ – just for the asking! ’Seek, and you will find’ – just seek! It is enough to ask like a small child. It is enough for the child to cry and the mother rushes to him. And god is always ready to help. We just have to learn how to cry... how to cry in deep love, in deep trust. Something is going to happen; it is very imminent. Good.

CHAPTER 9

9 August 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyas brings her young son to take sannyas and says that she is afraid he may get sick here, so she is reluctant to do groups.]

No, no, he will not get sick; no need to be afraid. He will not get sick, mm? And if you are too much afraid your fear can create something. It is better never to think about the negative, because if you think about the negative you create a situation for it. Even the negative thought creates its own reality. If you think too much that he is going to get ill, then you are constantly giving out a vibration and you ate constantly looking for some illness. If you look long enough you will find one and if you think long enough, you will create one. Thought is a creative force; it is good not to think negatively.

The best thing is not to think at all, the next best thing is to think positively, but negatively, never.

There is no problem... there is no problem.

You will not be able to do any groups it seems? So you just enjoy... but drop this idea. He is not going to be ill – now he is my sannyasin!

[Osho explains the meaning of anand samvedo – bliss consciousness.

Our bliss grows with

consciousness and vice versa, they are two aspects of the same energy and one has to work on both ways.... ]

Somebody once asked me, ’How far away is god from man?’ And I said, ’Only a laughter away!’ A good laugh and god is not far away; he is within you. A really good laugh and he is laughing in your laughter. In a good laugh ego disappears. In a good laugh you disappear utterly, you are no more found There is only laughter

just energy exploding So become more happy: go to sleep in the but smiles she allows!

And the second thing is to be more aware, more alert. Do whatsoever you are doing but focus your whole being on it. It may be a small thing, cooking or taking a shower, but nothing is small, nothing is trivial, nothing is ordinary, because each moment is so diffused with god and each activity is so tremendously divine. To call anything ordinary is a sacrilege; to call anything profane is a sin.

Everything is divine... so do it as if you are doing prayer, and always remain alert. These two wings, alertness and cheerfulness, are enough; nothing else is needed. This is the whole religion that I teach....

[A sannyasin says: I’m having a hard time with money, money energy – putting monetary values on things or things that I do. I find that I feel very guilty taking money from people. I’m going to the west and this is what I’m going for – to get money together to come back to the ashram and... ]

You would like to stay here permanently ? (she nods) That’s very good!

Firstly, there is no need to feel any guilt about money and there is no need to put it as a summum bonum, as the highest goal or value. There is no need to deny all its value either. It has a certain value but only a certain value... and that is not the highest value. If there is a question between choosing love and money, choose love, but that is not always the alternative. Sometimes it is a question of choosing between money and poverty. Then why choose poverty? – poverty has no value. Sometimes it is a question of choosing between money and illness. Why choose illness? –

choose money.

I am very practical: I don’t make categorical statements. Money has neither the ultimate value that a few people – the money maniacs who go on madly after money – think it has. They think that if you have money you have everything; if you don’t have money you have nothing. This is foolish, this is stupid; this is going to the extreme, nonsense.

Then there are the other, the reverse type of maniacs, who say that money has no value; even to touch it is sin. They are also mad. Money is neither virtue nor sin. It is a utility and a great utility...

very useful. The whole civilisation has grown up because of money. It is tremendously useful but usefulness does not mean that one has to sacrifice one’s life for it.

It is for life, life is not for it; that much is enough to understand. One needs money because one needs to live, breathe, eat, clothes and shelter oneself. Many things can be purchased by money but only things; you cannot purchase anything more. You cannot purchase god by money and you cannot purchase joy by money, certainly. But money has never promised to give you those things. If you think it can you are a fool!

Firstly people expect that money is going to give them joy, truth, life, and when it is not coming they feel frustrated – but that is their own fault! When they feel frustrated they become enemies of money; in india there are many enemies of money. Just as there are mad people in america for money, there are mad people against money in india. But they are the same people standing on their heads – no have become very very practised at standing on their heads. They know how to do sirshasan, they know the headstand – but they are the same people. A few are for money but they are against money. But whether you are for or against, you make money very important in both ways.

Play with money. It is a utility: use it! When you have it use it; when you don’t have it, thank god!

But don’t be worried about it. It has no importance either way but it has utility, certainly.

So go and earn money and come back; that is not a problem. It will help you, and anything that helps one has to feel thankful for. But always use it, these things are to be used! One should not become a servant to money, that’s right: one should remain a master. It is your money: you can use it this way, that way. You should not allow yourself to be manipulated by monetary values so that money starts dominating in everything. Then whenever you take any step about anything, money becomes the first consideration; then it is pathological. And there is no need to feel any guilt, because you have a body: you will need food and you will need shelter and the money can provide that. Don’t steal, but you can earn money, so do; there is no problem.

So go on the twenty-fifth and come back! Good. Go happily and come back!

[A sannyasin who is leaving wants to know is how to keep Osho with him when he’s gone. Meditate regularly every day, Osho says. It is like food – food for the soul; then after meditating, remember me...

I try to think of you all day, the sannyasin replies.

That I know, says Osho, but when you remember me after meditating then it goes very deep. You can think the whole day but it remains more in the head; sometimes it goes into the heart. But after meditation it certainly goes into the heart. There are a few days when meditation has really happened and you are spaced out. Then your door is open; then I can enter you to your very core.

After meditation just feel me – as if you are sitting in front of me. And love knows no distance, so wherever you are you can be close to me... and then it is my responsibility. You do your work – I do mine!]

[Osho suggests some groups to a sannyasin, who says he has trouble remembering things and has already forgotten what groups Osho suggested. Osho checks his energy.]

You need not worry about it; it will come back. Sometimes it happens when meditation goes deep that one starts forgetting. Because ordinarily we are too much identified with the memory system, we are almost one with it; we are our memory. That is the ordinary situation. Meditation makes you loose: it loosens you and creates a little dis-identification with the memory system. You start becoming separate from the memory.

So for a few days or a few months you will be in a little hazy world. You hear and then you don’t remember; you read and then suddenly you recognise that you have read the whole page and you have not read a single word, you don’t remember a single word. This is just a loosening of an old, problem; you will come to know by and by. You will have to learn a new secret – that things can be remembered in fact far more efficiently than otherwise when you are no more identified with the memory.

There is no need for one to be identified with the memory. The memory system is like a bio-computer: it functions on its own.

You need not think that you are the memory and then

remembrance is easy, no. The mind can go on collecting information – you can remain aloof, and whenever you need something you can pick it out... but that will take a little longer. Right now you are in the state where mountains are no more mountains and rivers are no more rivers; things are hazy. This is an interval, a transitory state, but very good.

If you look backwards you will feel in difficulty. When I say ’very good’ I am looking into the future: I am looking at the new possibility where you will settle sooner or later. You have left the old house and you cannot see the new house towards which you are moving – but I can. Soon you will arrive at the new house....

It is like changing house: when you change the house everything becomes chaotic. You have to pack everything and then go on the lorry. And you are just on the lorry right now. The old is gone and the new you have not reached. You are just in the middle, sitting on your luggage and everything is packed: soon you will start flowing again.

It happens to everybody so no need to be troubled about it and no need to pay any attention to it.

Accept it. As it has come it will go.Within four to six weeks the memory will come. After six weeks remind me again, mm ? There is no need to do anything especially for it. Just do meditations, just enjoy. Enjoy this moment of haziness too because you may not have it again, so why not enjoy it? It is so good not to remember; then there is no trouble, no problem.

Just enjoy being here! It will be gone; nothing to be worried about. Good.

[A participant of the enlightenment intensive group says: In the group, when I was in front of someone who was happy, I felt happy; when I was in front of someone who was sad, I felt sad.

I could not feel by myself: I was feeling the reflections in front of me.]

This is a great experience! This is one of the rare experiences, it very rarely happens. It means you functioned like a mirror. Don’t take it negatively; it is very positive. It means you disappeared: you didn’t interfere at all so whatsoever was there you reflected. It was an experience of no-ego.

But I understand: you thought of it as being dependence. You thought then who are you? Somebody is sad and you are sad; somebody is happy and you are happy. You became worried because the ego became worried... but it was a great experience of no-ego. If you had accepted it joyfully and gone into it it would have become a breakthrough. Next time it happens don’t take it negatively.

This is one of the problems – that sometimes we can take something negatively that is very very meaningful. We can miss the opportunity because in a negative mood nothing is possible. The door satori.

[The sannyasin says he is doing the Hypnotherapy group next.]

Very good. If it comes in hypnotherapy, simply go to the other shore. Even if you disappear, don’t be worried; no need to come back!

Next time it happens, drop all negativity. Don’t think of it as dependence; it is not. You -were not there so how can you be dependent. For dependence to be you need to be there. You were not there so there was no independence and there was no dependence: you simply functioned like a mirror. You have missed a great opportunity, but for the first time everybody misses because, how to know ? Next time if you come across it, simply go headlong into it. Good!

[A sannyasin, who works in the ashram bakery says he can’t feel any love for Osho, for himself, but he knows love is there. With other people too, he just feels cold.

Osho checks his energy and says that there is a cold layer there but he should go through it and then he will come to real warmth. So far he has been just pretending warmth – as everyone else does.

But this is a good indication Osho says, that he is going really deeply into his being. Accept it, says Osho – no fighting with it. This is you right now: accept it totally. Rather than trying to love a woman or me or the world, love this ice block. Your very embrace will melt it. If you can do it a hot spring will come up and then for the first time you will know what love is. And I am happy with you, chuckles Osho. You may not feel love for me but right now I’m feeling much love for you!]

CHAPTER 10

10 August 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A new sannyasin agrees to do the groups Osho suggests, but says she would like to travel around india first.]

I think the better course will be that first you be here and then travel...

First groups. Then you will have a better vision to see the country; you will have a better attitude.

Otherwise you can go travelling....

Yes, you will see the same things – nothing much. In fact you will see a very, very poverty-stricken country, starving, and you will feel only miserable, nothing else.

First go a little inwards, explore the inner country first, have something settled there, and then go.

India has marly mysteries, but one needs eyes to see them. Otherwise you will see the buildings, and in the west better buildings exist. You will see the roads, and the west has better roads. Everything you see, the west has it better. And you will simply feel cheated: for what are you going here and there, travelling in crowded trains and suffering a thousand and one things unnecessarily ?

Once you have a meditative eye you will see something which does not exist in the west. Then you have come to this country.... It is disappearing from here too; the west is too overpowering. It is always so: the gross is more powerful than the subtle. If you clash a flower against a rock it is the flower who is going to lose, not the rock. And there is a clash between the spiritual values and the materialist values, and of course the spiritual values are going to suffer – they are suffering.

The East is no more east

only fragments here and there Somewhere you will find a few people the original than to see the reflection; the reflection is meaningless.

So first attain to a certain vision, a different kind of approach, a different way of looking at reality.

And then I will tell you to go; then I will tell you where to go, because just travelling anywhere is of no meaning.

And the tourists go on going to places wherever guides lead them; they will take you to the tourist places.

Mm mm, so just wait. Let me be your guide, and when you are ready I will tell you to go. You will be here for one year so there is no hurry, mm? First be here, get in tune with things here, get ready.

Learn the language, the language of the heart, the language of intuition – little glimpses. Then you will be able to go and I will tell you where to go.

Yes, hidden somewhere still, the undercurrent exists but it is no more apparent, it is no more on the surface. It has gone underground – it had to go underground. On the surface it will be killed and destroyed. It cannot survive there; it can survive only in hiding.

So I will send you to the places where it is hiding, the real India, and then something will be of meaning, significance, and it will help your transformation....

[A new sannyasin says he would very much like to find love. He feels that he was never loved and he could never love. Even though he is sixty-two years old he would like to know love before he dies.]

That will be possible. Age makes no difference....

If you become open it is always possible. You could not find love because you remained closed. You were hankering for it but you were too proud to say so... and love needs surrender. When you fall in love even with an ordinary woman she becomes a goddess. She has to be revered, only then does love flow. Because we are too proud love doesn’t happen. But it is possible, it is always possible.

Just relax here, and this sannyas will be a beginning. Relax amidst my people. They are all loving people – you cannot find a more loving atmosphere anywhere. And they have no taboos, no inhibitions; they are very, very primal and innocent people. They have not heard about moses and the ten commandments! Just relax! And don’t say to anybody that you are sixty-two – you don’t look it! Good.

[A new sannyasin says he is not sure he’s going to wear orange and the mala when he’s back home... but he felt a strong emotional push to take sannyas.]

If it is emotional, if it is from your heart, then what is the problem ? You can wear orange there.

Otherwise from the very beginning you are playing a cunning trick. The mind is divided from the very beginning... and nothing will happen out of it!...

No buts... sannyas knows no buts. It is better not to be a sannyasin. Just be here, enjoy, be free, do meditations, do the groups; there is no need to be a sannyasin. Because it is not only a question of you – I am taking a great responsibility with you, and if you are not totally in it then don’t waste my time.

You are not losing anything in it and I am taking a great responsibility. I am becoming responsible for you by giving you sannyas. Now I will be at stake with you: now your growth will be my problem and your need will be my need, and whenever you need me I have to rush to you.

But if you are from the very beginning in a deceptive mood, divided....

[The new sannyasin says: I think I am divided.]

Then drop it! There is no problem – just give it back... Yes, it is perfectly good. You give it back.

[The now ex-sannyasin gives the mala back.]

No, you are not ready – and nothing is wrong....

Just be here, enjoy here, and everything is available to you.... But sannyas has to be a commitment.

The day you become a sannyasin, you have to make a commitment – that this is the way: now you are going to listen to me and whatsoever I say, even if it looks insane, you have to follow.

There is nothing special in the orange colour. It is just an indication that you are ready to become mad for me, that’s all...

You are ready to become mad for me, you are ready to be called crazy by other people. That much you are ready to take for my love, that’s all. Otherwise nothing. Just wait, mm? If you feel that you can remain a sannyasin there, only then. It is good... and don’t feel any problem with it. It is not wrong; it is better you have given it back right now.

[A sannyasin says: I’ve been meditating on my stupidity and lack of common sense but I’ve been enjoying it!]

Enjoy it! There is nothing else to do. If you enjoy it it will start disappearing. There is nothing like humour about oneself. It certainly transforms – humour about oneself. If you can laugh about your own stupidities you start growing; you start becoming wiser.

The really stupid person is one who tries to hide his stupidity, tries to protect, rationalise, defend, fight for it; that is the really stupid person. The wise person is one who knows his stupidity, does not protect it, leaves it open in the light for everybody to see. And not only that: when others laugh, he joins with them! How long can this stupidity remain? It cannot remain: it is on the way to die. When you don’t pretend it cannot remain; your cooperation is a must.

psychodrama. And just watching, watching, one day suddenly the monkey has disappeared... and

[you are] left alone. When the monkey has disappeared, the world disappears!

[A visitor says: I used to follow guru Maharajji and I made a promise, I made a vow that I would follow him for the rest of my life. That promise still means something to me but I’d like to try your meditation.]

That vow will be standing as a barrier because with me either you are with me or not with me. You can try but it will be just so-so... it will not really be of much significance.

If you are feeling good with your vow and if you are growing, then there is no need to try. If you are feeling frustrated there, then one has to reconsider things, one has to have courage to reconsider things.

In fact the past binding, cannot be ultimately binding. If you find one day that you are not growing in a certain commitment – give it all that you can give but if you find that you are not growing, that something is missing, that you don’t fit or it does not fit with you – then one has to be courageous enough to come out of it.

Life is more valuable than your goal. And what does vow mean. It means that in a certain moment you felt that you were going to be this way for your whole life, but that is the feeling of a certain moment. It was true in that moment but who knows about the next moment?

It is just like falling in love with a woman: you say that you will be with her for your whole life or even if you have another life, you would like to have her as your beloved again. And these are not false words, you are not pretending: you are true, you are authentically so. This is your feeling.

Mm? Just now one man took sannyas but that was not authentic. He was taking sannyas and thinking to drop it; it is meaningless. And I don’t say that sannyas cannot be dropped, I don’t say that, but you should not carry that idea in the mind right now otherwise what is the point of taking it?

When you are taking it you will be totally in it and feeling that you are going to be with it for your whole life, but I don’t say that one day a situation cannot arise where you feel that you are no more growing. Then it has to be dropped! And there is no breach, no betrayal; it simply shows that in that moment you go very very emotionally into it. But you have not grown and now you are feeling like a prisoner: if you remain with it your growth suffers; if you get out of it, you feel guilty. But some decision has to be taken.

One day love happens, another day it disappears; what to do ? What is one supposed to do ? And of course you will remember your promises that you had given to the woman but what can you do now ? You were as helpless that time when you were in love as you are now to get out of it. You have to get out of it otherwise it will be an ugly relationship: you will carry on without love. You will go on pretending that you love this woman because in the past you have promised.

something, do it; we cannot help you. Medicine has failed’.

So just out of desperation the man called the rabbi and told him ’If you pray for me and if I survive, I am going to give you fifty thousand dollars for the new synagogue that you are going to build.’

The rabbi prayed continuously day and night for the three days. Fifty thousand dollars! – and this man has not even given a single pai to anybody ever! The man survived. One month passed and the rabbi tried diplomatically many times to remind him about those fifty thousand dollars, but he would not even listen! He would not even talk about it; he would avoid the subject.

Finally the rabbi was at a loss what to do. One day he said frankly, ’Have you completely forgotten?!

What about those fifty thousand dollars that you promised for the new synagogue? Now you are okay. The miracle happened – I prayed three days, day in, day out. I didn’t sleep.’

The old jew said, ’What fifty thousand dollars? What are you talking about? Did I promise you? That simply shows how ill I was, that’s all. That simply shows how ill I was!’

There are moments when one is so ill that one can say ’Fifty thousand dollars!’. There are moments when one gets too emotionally involved in a certain thing, and one can get into it. I am not saying that it is wrong to get into things: that’s how one lives life!

But this is meaningless. If you are being fulfilled I am the last person to take you out of it. Simply go into it, escape from here; these people may disturb you, you may get into some new thing. Just escape from here! If you are feeling fulfilled, if you are feeling you are growing, go and grow with all my blessings. But if you are feeling that nothing has happened and you have been just a victim, then get out of it! No past can be binding. Have the courage to get out of it. You have become wiser...

When did you promise? How many years ago?

[He answers: Must be four or five years ago.]

Four or five years? That means you must have become a little wiser, more understanding, more alert. Just think of it in this way: if you meet your so-called guru maharajji for the first time today, are you going to take the vow? Just think of it that way. If you think that still you will take the vow, then it’s okay; then the vow is still valid. But if you think that if you meet him now you are not going to be caught in it, then the vow is invalid. You follow me?

It is simple, very simple – and always let it be a criterion even with me: if you become a sannyasin and after five years you feel that now if you meet me you will not become a sannyasin, then drop it immediately! It is finished! Never carry anything that you have outgrown, but if you feel that yes, you would still like to become a sannyasin, it is still alive. Then something is still possible, it is potential.

Then go into it, go with it. Think about it ....

But if you really want to get into things here your vow will become a barrier. And I am not saying, take it back.

If you feel that you can grow here, that you would like to go into things here, then drop that. Yes, you will feel a little disturbed – that too is childish; that too is a kind of guilt that society creates in people.

The past is no more! Live in the present and don’t think too much of the past because nothing is more valuable than freedom. Meditate over it. Mm? after three days write a letter to me. Good...

good!

[Osho mentioned this sannyasin in a later discourse: Now he thinks he is being very religious because he goes on clinging to his promise. It is not religion – it is ego. Now he cannot accept the idea of dropping his promise because that hurts the ego. You are such a man of your word: once you have given your word you have to follow it! But this seems stupid!

That’s what I wanted to say to the young man who said he has promised to guru Maharajji. Why are you here? – there is no need. If you are really growing there, there is no need to be here. The very fact that you are here shows that you are searching. And now if you remain hooked with your so-called guru Maharajji, then there is no possibility; I cannot be of any help because you will not be able to take any help. Your heart will not be open, you will not become part of me... you will not come close.]

CHAPTER 11

11 August 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Prem Rahim. Prem means love, rahim means compassion. Love for those whom you can love....

And I don’t demand the impossible: I don’t say to love all because theat will not be possible.

Love is something you cannot manage. Sometimes it clicks and you feel love arising for a person; sometimes it doesn’t click. So love for those you can love and for the remaining, compassion....

If you cannot love a person, at least you can be compassionate. That’s possible, that is not demanding the impossible. and if you can be compassionate towards a person, sooner or later love will arise. Compassion creates the situation. If you love a person, compassion arises automatically; if you are compassionate towards a person love will arise one day. So it is only a question of from where to begin.

With a certain person you feel in tune, suddenly things fit together. You see the face of the person and you are in love – not that you have thought about it, calculated it. There has been no calculation, no thought... just the vibe. The person just passes by and you know somehow deep down in your heart that you love this person. The love has happened; it happens like a sudden lightning. It is not in the head, it happens in the heart. That’s why the head goes on saying that love is blind, because the head has nothing to do with it. The head thinks, ’Only I have eyes.’

So I don’t say to love all. When Jesus says, ’Love your enemies’, he is demanding the impossible, the super-human; it is too much to ask. People don’t love even their friends. What to say about friends? People don’t love even their lovers. What to say about lovers? People don’t even love themselves. Jesus says, ’Love your enemy as you love yourself,’ but people don’t love themselves!

It is a perfect maxim but will not be practical.

If it doesn’t happen, you can create the way for it: compassion is the way for it.

Compassion simply means you are a human being and other human beings are just like you – with all the limitations that you have, with all the imperfections that you have, with all the stupidities that you have; they are just like you.

Compassion means you understand yourself; don’t be to hard with people.

When a person

understands himself his hardness starts disappearing. If somebody is angry and you demand that he not be angry, you say that to be angry is bad, that simply shows that you have not understood your own anger yet. If somebody is full of sexuality and you are hard on him, you cannot forgive him, that simply shows that you have repressed your sexuality; you have not understood it. If you have really understood your sexuality you will be able to accept everybody’s sexuality . . . even those forms which are thought to be perverted. If you have understood your sexuality you will see that those perversions are also human. They exist in your dreams too; they have a certain grip on your unconscious also.

If somebody is too much against homosexuality that simply shows that somewhere deep down he is afraid of being a homosexual, otherwise there is no need to be against it. He will have compassion, he will understand. And somebody who has really gone beyond sex will have immense compassion... even for abnormalities, perversions, because they too are human, they happen. Man is helpless and when they happen, they happen; you cannot just condemn them outright.

This condemnatory attitude has done much wrong to humanity. It has created the saints and the sinners: the condemnors have become saints and the condemned have become sinners. In reality, one who condemns is the greatest sinner. A saint cannot be a condemnator. He will understand, he will forgive, he will have compassion. He will weep with you, he will cry with you, because he will know you; he has known himself. Because he has gone beyond, his understanding is more total He has the vantage point from where he can see the whole human being.

So love those for whom love happens spontaneously, and be compassionate to those for whom love is not happening....

I was talking about the sufi allegory of Majnu and Laila this morning... It is a sufi story. The seeker is Majnu the lover and Laila is god, the beloved. So Laila is the name for god. Literally it means the night; that too is very significant. God is more like the night than like the day, although many people have been thinking of god as light, as day.

In fact the word ’day’ comes from the same root as divine, but sufis say god is more like the night because god is a rest, the ultimate rest. God is not action, god is absolute inactivity, passivity. It is silence, not sound: everything goes into deep sleep, into utter rest.

And the night is more infinite than the day. The light always has a boundary, the darkness has no boundaries; it is infinite. The light is temporary, the darkness is eternal; it has always been. To exist the light needs some support, it depends on something. You have to fill the oil in the lamp: when the like you to get more and more in tune with the night....

Anand means blissful, and laila means night – blissful night. So get more and more in tune with darkness: whenever you have the opportunity put the lights off, be with darkness. Enjoy it, cherish it, sing it, celebrate it, dance with it. Let night be your meditation... and that is going to lead you very very deep.

[To a new sannyasin, Osho says: You have belonged to me for many lives. This is not the first meeting!]

Nija means self, ananda means bliss. The self is bliss. There is no need to look for it outside, and those who look for it outside, look in vain. Their whole life becomes just a long series of frustrations, because that which we are seeking is hidden inside our own being; that treasure is not somewhere else.

That’s what Jesus means when he goes on saying again and again, ’The kingdom of god is within you.’ Nijananda means the kingdom of god is within you. There is no need to go anywhere, there is no need to seek anywhere. All that is needed has been provided for already, all that is needed has been already given; it is a gift from god. The day he sends anybody into the world he provides for the whole journey; nothing is lacking.

But we don’t open our inner chest, we don’t look there. We start running outside with speed from here and there, and the more we run, the more we miss. The more we miss, the faster we go, because we think time is short and time is slipping out and we have not arrived yet. Are we going to make it or not?... More tension and more anxiety, and naturally one thinks only one thing – that maybe your speed is not enough so increase it. That has been the way of the worldly: to go on increasing the speed. But it is not a question of speed: it is a question of direction.

One has to be absolutely certain where the treasure is. If it is inside then going outside with all the speed is meaningless. In fact, the more speed you have, the farther away you will be moving from the treasure and it may become very very difficult to come back.

So let this be the declaration from this moment – that there is nowhere to go, no need to seek. One has just to close one’s eyes and dive within....

The word ’nija’ has many meanings: one is self, another is individual.When a person is just his own self, when a person has an individuality – when a person lives his way, in his own way, lives his life in his own way, when a person doesn’t try to fit with any mould, with any pattern provided by others, when a person has freedom – then he has individuality. And God loves individuals. God does not love the mass-product at all; he has no joy from people who are carbon copies of others. He wants the original and he has given everybody an original face. He never repeats, he never creates two individuals alike... not even two pebbles alike, not even two leaves alike.

Unique is his love, so those who want to be loved by god should become unique. There is no other a very poetic language, very fluid, flowing. Only when you are an individual are you blissful. The misery is always because we have not been able to assert our being.We have sold it for small things: respectability, ego, prestige, power, money, or security, comfort, convenience. For small things, for trivia, we have sold our individuality – and once individuality is gone, the soul is gone; then man is a mechanism.

My whole approach is individualistic.

And my message to my sannyasins is: be unique, be

individuals. Live your life the way you feel to live it... be rebels! There is no need to be too ready to fit into any mould. If you choose and if it is your joy it is perfectly good, otherwise there is no need...

For no other reason, for no other motive should one fit into anything. If one feels this is the thing that one would like to be, then it’s okay. Then it is no more a slavery; it is freedom.

If you choose even hell out of freedom, you will be happy there, and if you are forced into heaven without your choice, without your will, then you will be unhappy there. So hell and heaven are not places; they are certain spaces within. When one accepts something, welcomes something of one’s own accord, heaven arises. One may remain a beggar, but if one has chosen that, then there is joy. One may become a millionaire and if one has not chosen it of one’s own accord, has been pulled, forced, manipulated, pushed... the parents, the wife, the children; the society, the priests, the politicians – a thousand and one manipulators are there... if one has been pulled like a puppet, one can have all the riches the world can give and one will be unhappy, one will be in hell.

So from this moment assert your uniqueness, your individuality, your bliss. Nothing is lacking, all is already there. Good!

[A sannyasin says that he gets very depressed and withdrawn sometimes.]

I don’t feel that those are depressions; I think you have a wrong interpretation of your states. That’s just a need for meditation – just a need to be alone, left alone, within yourself. You are a very introverted person and you are trying too much to be extrovert; that creates the trouble. Those are not depressions at all. You have a great need to be with yourself sometimes, just to be alone within yourself. If you don’t fulfill that need you will feel depression. You will be hungry for it but you pull yourself out of it – and it is a basic need for you.

It is just as if an extroverted person is told to sit in the room and do zazen. He will feel very depressed. He will feel he is almost going mad. He will say ’What is happening? I want to relate and go to the club and to the restaurant and talk to people, and to the movie and this and that. A thousand and one things have to be done; what am I doing here just sitting silently? How can one sit silently?’

He needs activity; he wants to relate, he wants to move. He will be very much in difficulty: he will have to keep himself repressed, only then can he be there. Exactly the same happens to an introverted person if he is continuously trying to relate and talk and see people and do things....

You are not an extrovert. Once you understand who you are then things become easier. So it is good: when you can relate good but don’t force It is perfectly okay if you don’t want to look at closed eyes ? All the great meditators come from such people; you can become a great meditator!

Your interpretation is wrong – drop it. Start enjoying it, and after one month tell me again, mm?

Good!

[A sannyasin says that two days ago he had said something to Osho and later felt uncomfortable about it. He feels there is something unconscious hanging around him.]

Then there is no need; forget about it!...

There is no need – you can say anything to me and you can change it! No need to be worried about it. In the first place I always forget what you say so you can change! I keep no accounts, no notes –

nothing! And whatsoever you say I will believe that that is what you must have told me before. Don’t be worried about it, mm?

CHAPTER 12

12 August 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin couple are leaving for the West. The man explains they have to travel on separate days because the wife had come to poona after him.]

Mm mm, separately?...

That’s very good... that’s very good! We come separately and we go separately, and all our meetings are just on the way, mm? One should remember it – that we are strangers – and one should never take the other for granted; that destroys all love. She is a stranger to you as you are a stranger to her. You have come separately and you will be going separately and you are growing separately.

Aloneness is utter; there is no way to be together with anybody. Even when we are together, we are alone. The deepest core of our being remains private, we cannot share it. Even if we want to, we cannot; it is simply not possible. We can overlap each other’s boundaries but the centres still remain separate. We can penetrate each other’s bodies and minds but our souls remain absolutely untouched.

And if this is remembered many ugly phenomena can be avoided. One of them is taking the other for granted. We start doing that: it happens unconsciously. If you are living with a woman or a man for a few days, by and by you start taking the other for granted. You think you know the other, and the moment you think you know, love is hindered; a great obstacle has arisen. Knowledge is very very antagonistic to love, so remain strangers and remember perfectly well – never for a single moment forget it – that you are alone.

In love we don’t come together in love only two lonelinesses come close And it is beautiful that you should never forget it. Love together but with the full awareness that you are alone, and then there will be great compassion for the other... because the other is also alone.

The other is also groping in the dark as you are; the other is also searching and seeking as you are, and nobody is perfect. Then you don’t expect and you don’t have any ideals that the other should fulfill. Then you are always careful about the other’s aloneness: you don’t try to occupy the other’s aloneness. You remain careful when the other wants to be alone: you leave the other alone because you know the sacredness of aloneness.

Otherwise lovers start interfering, lovers start trespassing. (to the husband) And if she wants to be alone, you will feel hurt; that is not love. If you want to be alone she feels hurt; that is not love. If you want to be alone, if she loves you, when you become aware that you want to be alone, even before that, she will become aware that you want to be alone and she will leave you.

One has to respect the other’s aloneness, because that is the other’s soul. And when lovers respect each other’s aloneness, love starts becoming spiritual; it is no more physical. The physical dimension may be there but now it is no more only that: something deeper, something greater, something higher starts descending.

So good – that’s true: you come alone, you go alone.

[The wife asks what to do in the West... she loves making things: spinning and weaving.]

That’s very good, mm? Spinning is very good, weaving is very good. Make it meditative.

That’s very good – to do anything that is creative is very good and very helpful to growth.

We come closer to the creator when we become creators. If you create something you are close to god – whatsoever it is: a poetry, a poem, a chair. If you create something, in those moments of creating it you are very close to god. In fact when you are completely lost in your work you are not there – only god is there, because only god creates; how can man create?

That’s why in India particularly in the ancient days... We don’t know who has written the vedas. We don’t know who has written the Upanishads: it is one of the most beautiful scriptures of the world but we don’t know who has written it because the writers have not left even their names and signatures.

The idea was that they were not – only god had been speaking through them, so who were they to sign it for god? They were nobody: they effaced themselves completely.

Thousands of poets must have composed the Vedas, it is not one man’s work, but nobody has left his name just because of this understanding – that whenever something is really created it is god who creates.

When you create something then it is at the most a production, not a creation; you become a producer. You can become a producer but you cannot become a creator... and to become a creator move more deeply here, mm? Continue to meditate! Keep this with you (Osho passes them both boxes and touches their heads).

[A sannyasin who is leaving to do a year’s army service says: When I was doing the ’Who am I?’ I had some very nice moments. Maybe I should do it more deeply or should I just do it spontaneously when I remember?]

Try to do it, and when it happens spontaneously then go into it also, but make it a point to devote at least one hour every day to it. Both things are to be done: for one hour make it a regular practice to do it, whether you feel like or not, and then if sometimes you feel like doing it for other than that one hour, you can.

And this has to be understood – that real meditations always happen spontaneously, but those spontaneous moments come only if you practise, otherwise they don’t come. In practising you will not find those great moments coming, so don’t be worried about that; don’t think that nothing is happening. In those moments when you are practising nothing may happen; nothing to be worried about. But it will create in you a kind of energy that will explode sometimes spontaneously, and then something will happen: something really deep will happen.

If you think that now there is no need for this practise – you can wait for the spontaneous moment, those spontaneous moments will not come or they will come less and less and by and by they will disappear. So continue both, mm?

... Finish the army, mm? and convert a few army people! I send my people everywhere to convert!

And that one year will be very good to meditate... and help others to meditate. Good... good!

[A new sannyasin says: I surrender!]

I know; you have said it without saying it. When the surrender is there, it is there; it is immediately communicated. When it is not there, you can say, but just by saying it doesn’t show the reality. When it is there it vibrates. It is the deepest kind of love: every gesture, every move, says it. It is good to express it in language but language remains a secondary expression when it is there. When it is not there then language is the only expression, and language is a great method of falsifying.

People have become falsified so much that if you say to them that you love them, only then will they understand; they understand only language. If you don’t say you love them, you can go on loving for years and they will not understand. And even if you don’t love and you say you love them, they will think you love. They will not look into your eyes, they will not look into your face and they will not look into your being. That is almost non-existential for people.

People live in language, so whatsoever is said is believed. Whatsoever people read they believe.

A printed word creates great belief in them. So there are people like dale carnegie who suggest that even if you don’t love your wife, go on repeating again and again that you love her and she will believe it. Dale carnegie is one of the prophets in america; the sale of his books is only second to remember the beauty of the whole, the celebration that goes on continuously. When you see the sun, see the light of god; that will become a remembrance. When you see the moon, see god. When you are with people, don’t just see their surfaces, look into their depth. Look into their eyes and you will find god. Soon you will find god everywhere, throbbing, breathing, living... all that lives is god.

Then slowly, slowly, one becomes so attuned that there is no need to even remember; one simply knows it is so. This is what sufis call zikr. That is their only method – to continuously remember god.]

Once it happened that a sufi went to a western country. It was his first day in the hotel. He asked for water and then thanked god and tears started flowing from his eyes. He drank the water and thanked again.

A few people who were just sitting around the table started ridiculing him about what he was doing.

They started laughing at him, and laughingly they asked, ’Is it done by everybody in your country?’

The sufi said, ’Except for the pigs, everybody does it.’

A real man is constantly remembering god. In fact a man is different from animals only because he remembers god and animals cannot. The answer of the sufi is perfectly true – except for the pigs!

So start remembering...

[An sannyasin says she has pains in her right leg when doing dynamic and kundalini meditations.

Osho checks her energy.]

Don’t do them. You have a little too much difference between both sides so anything very vigorous will not fit you. Nobody’s sides are ever both the same, nobody’s are the same, but yours are very distant. So whenever these two sides are very far away from each other, anything vigorous can make the distance even more, and that can create trouble. That can give pain and you can start losing energy from the side.

Stop all vigorous methods. You can do sufi dancing; that will be perfectly okay. You can do chanting, you can join the music group – just soft things. And then too you have to do them very softly.

Even if the others are doing them vigorously, you go very softly – you have to remember that. And everything will settle, nothing to be worried about, but be very soft....

Do the sufi dancing and chanting for at least two months and then the camps are there – you can do the nadabrahma. After two months you ask me again, mm ?

Right now it is not good to say anything. Right now your energies are really disturbed; let them first settle.. But they will settle: within four to eight weeks they will settle. After two months we will decide what to do, mm?

And you have to be very careful about it, otherwise sometimes it can start having harmful affects, it can almost give you a kind of paralysis. But it will settle; nothing to be worried about. Good!

CHAPTER 13

13 August 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[Deva Marifa – the divine way of knowing. It’s a sufi term. Osho explains that God can be known in two ways, either through intelligence or through feeling... the way through intelligence is marifa... ]

You have to become more and more alert, more and more mindful: watch life, watch yourself. Try to come out of the sleep everybody is in; that slumber has to be broken. Once small windows start opening in the dark night of the soul one starts having contact with the divine. Your way will go through intellect – but by intellect I don’t mean become an intellectual. Become intelligent but not an intellectual... and these are two totally different things.

Become a knower but not a knowledgeable person. Don’t accumulate knowledge – rather, on the contrary, clean your eyes so you can know better. A clarity is needed, not an accumulation. By accumulating knowledge a person becomes knowledgeable, he has much information, but the more information he has, the more dust gathers in his eyes and he has less and less transparency; he can see less and less. this is the dilemma: the knowledgeable person becomes blind; he can’t see anything other than his knowledge. His knowledge is so close to him that the whole reality disappears; only his knowledge remains. That is not the meaning of ’marifa’.

The meaning is: drop all knowledge, drop all information, so your eyes become absolutely clear and transparent, so you can see through and through. And then god is everywhere. Once the curtain is removed, nothing else is there except god.

That’s what the sufis means when they say ’There is no god but god!’

[Osho gives a special meditation for a young boy who has just taken sannyas ]

allow to happen, it does not happen through any effort. You are simply sitting silently and you allow god to speak through you. And you will be surprised that sometimes sounds just come which you are not producing, and sometimes a song, sometimes a dance starts.

... You can practise it: whenever you are sitting silently, at least every day for one hour, allow god to say something through you. Sometimes it will be just gibberish – something will start coming, anything; it may not have any meaning. Sometimes it may have great significance, it may have great meaning. Do it for at least three weeks and then you tell me how you are feeling.

You will feel so joyous, so jubilant, almost weightless, once it starts happening. Great energy is released and great freedom...

[A sannyasin says that she is feeling very restless and wonders which meditations are best for her....

She likes the humming most. Osho checks her energy.]

Continue humming, but do it with great gusto, with great enthusiasm, almost passionately, then it will bring results for you. Be very passionate, as if you are making love; then it will bring very orgasmic joy.

Through humming you can attain very very deep orgasms and they will spread all over your body, but you have to go really passionately, so-so lukewarm, won’t do. You may feel good but that won’t do. Go intensely in it.

[A visitor asks about: ... my big ego, which I’m very attached to... which I even like!]

So nothing to be worried about: enjoy it! Enjoy it! If you like it, then there is no problem. The problem arises only when you don’t like it and it is there; if you like it, there is no problem. If you like it and you are enjoying it, then go headlong into it. Some day it may create trouble but only when it does will the problem be there; then we can settle the problem.

Right now you need not worry, mm? This is very good!

Enjoy your ego – it is a beautiful game, mm? And pump it! When it becomes too big, it bursts!

[A sannyasin says some strange things have been happening to him: he starts shaking and crying and seeing a face in his mind.]

Don’t stop it. If you feel it is awkward to allow it with people you can just do it alone. Just sit silently in the room, fall into that space and start looking for the face. Help the face to come, invite it... and when it comes and if you feel like screaming, scream.

That face is not something outside you; it is something projected by your unconscious mind.

Something wants to get out of you, something wants to be released... and it is good. Once it is released you will feel very very light, weightless – a burden will be removed; that’s why you feel like if you start thinking too much about it you will start repressing it. And the unconscious can function only when the conscious is not interfering, so don’t make any rational analysis about it; don’t be analytical. Simply allow it, let it be there like a dream, like a vision, and whatsoever. happens, you have to go into that energy. If the body shakes and you tremble....

It happens many times when you are with a woman and energies are really meeting and mingling into each other and there is a contact which is not only of the body but more of your vital being, more of your vitality, more of your energy field. When two energy fields, man and woman, are m deep tuning, the unconscious starts functioning in a very new way.

Ordinarily it functions only in the night when you are fast asleep, because the conscious mind goes to sleep, the unconscious can function. The repression is no more there, the guard is no more there.

The same can happen sometimes while you are with a woman. The woman is the opposite polarity.

When two energy fields, male, female, meet, a circle is created and the energy starts moving in a circle: you are more whole. You disappear, the woman disappears: there is only one energy field functioning. It is as relaxing, sometimes even more than deep sleep. And once that deep-sleep relaxation happens, the unconscious starts releasing its burden. You are perfectly awake, and when the unconscious releases its burden you will be seeing dreams with fully alert eyes, open eyes and they will look almost as if they are objective, there.

That’s what has happened. And be mindful now: whenever you are lying with a woman, relax and wait; many more things will be surfacing from the unconscious. In fact, a love relationship between a man and a woman can be of tremendous transforming... It can become almost an alchemy, it can change your whole being.

This has been very good, so allow it. Just sit silently every day for half an hour at least and wait for it... and it will come. It is within you, it is not coming from anywhere else! It is not somebody else trying to frighten you or anything, mm? – it is your own projection. And once you have screamed to full, cried, or done whatsoever the unconscious wants you to do, it will be gone, and then you will feel that something like a rock from your stomach has suddenly disappeared. You will have a better flow of energy, and next time, something else will come.

So whenever you are with a woman, make those moments of great possibilities – they are! You have suddenly stumbled upon a tantra method. Go into it, mm? Good!

[A sannyasin woman says:... I want to make love with you. Osho says: Mm! you are making! All my sannyasins are making love with me!]

[A sannyasin who is a yoga teacher says: I’ve read and heard a lot about tantra and it seems really opposite to yoga. I wonder if it’s possible to make a combination of the two.]

Yes, a combination is possible. They are opposites like man and woman, but as man and woman can meet, tantra and yoga can also meet.

and yoga meet it will not be a homosexual love affair; it will be heterosexual!

Perfectly right... try it! I would like all kinds of syntheses to happen around here. And whenever two very very opposite methods are brought together, something new arises out of the crossbreeding, something very valuable. Sometimes the child is more valuable than both the parents together.

So try! Nothing to be worried about. Go on understanding tantra and go on practising yoga, mm?

And next time when you come, try a few things here.

And introduce my methods there – meditations and tantra; you introduce everything, mm?

[A visitor who was involved in the Gurdjieff work for the past eight years says she is confused because she cannot give it up.]

There is no need to give up anything... there is no need! Whatsoever you are doing in Gurdjieff work you have to continue. You need not drop it because it is perfectly good work. I will help you to go into it deeper. There is no need to drop; that is just a wrong idea in your mind.

My work is not at all different from Gurdjieff’s work, so you can have both together. There is no need to choose; it is not either/or. There is no problem; you are unnecessarily creating a problem in your mind. If something is wrong, then I say drop it; if something is perfectly right, why? why should one drop it?

Use it: you have worked for seven, eight years in it. All that energy has not to be wasted; it can be used! You can go further ahead. No problem in it.

[The visitor says she is training to be a child psychotherapist... but doesn’t like the intellectualisation in it.

Osho says that the head is useful in its own place; one need not be against it. The heart can remain the master and the head is a perfect servant; you cannot find a better servant. There is no need to be antagonistic; just remain aloof and alert that you are not the head, that’s all.... ]

And next time when you come stay a little longer so you can learn many ways of how to use the mind; nothing is a problem. And continue your work – the Gurdjieff work you continue with all my blessings. Good, mm?

[Osho spoke about this visitor in a morning discourse:]

And another person has written to me that she has been following George Gurdjieff for a few years.

Now, guru Maharajji is a false master – utterly stupid to follow him – but Gurdjieff was a real master, a sat guru, a sufi. If you are following Gurdjieff, perfectly good, but Gurdjieff is no more. Even if Gurdjieff is no more, a real master dead is more potent than an unreal master alive, but remember that if you can find a real master alive you will not be going against Gurdjieff. No two real masters responsibility. Don’t blame Gurdjieff; he has brought you here. He has already done too much for you...

If you have been following a real master and the master is no more, then it is the responsibility of the master to send you to another real master so that your growth can continue. Now don’t be obsessed by the past. Gurdjieff is no more – I am. Soon I will also not be here. And remember... my disciples especially I would like to remind: when I am gone, if you really love me I will direct you to people who will still be alive, so don’t be afraid of that.

If I send you to Tibet or if I send you to china or send you to Japan or to Iran, go. Don’t say that because you belong to me you cannot belong to another real master. Just look into the eyes and you will find my eyes again. The body will not be the same but the eyes will be the same. If your journey is not complete with me while I am still here, something is still to be done, to be completed, don’t be afraid. By dropping me you will not be betraying me; in fact by not dropping me and not following the real alive master you will be betraying me. Keep it in mind....

CHAPTER 14

14 August 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Anand means bliss and sujan means awareness. This has to be remembered – that awareness is good only when it is suffused with blissfulness. If it is dry it will enhance the ego; if it is dry, with no joy in it, it will not lead you towards the divine; it will make you more and more self-centred.

So awareness has two possibilities. One is: it can make you a very very crystallised egoist or it can lead you to a point where ego completely disappears. That’s why you will find jaina monks and other kinds of monks who have been practising awareness but without bliss, very egoistic; their ego is just on the tip of their nose. In India we have many stories about great saints getting so disturbed by small things that they could curse them for their whole life or even for future lives. And they were people who were practising awareness – but the practice was devoid of joy. It was done like a serious thing; it was not done playfully.

If one becomes aware and is not playful about, it, one is serious, one is getting into another trap and has been befooled by the ego. First the ego was there because one was unconscious; now the ego is there because one has become very self-conscious. The self disappears only when bliss arises. Only bliss is unselfconscious: it is conscious but there is no self in it. In the moment of joy you disappear – there is only joy. There is only a climate of joy with no centre to hold it.

... Become aware but constantly remember that each step in awareness has to be a step into cheerfulness too. If they are both growing together you are on the right track. If one is lagging behind, wait for it to come, grow, but always keep both together; they are like two legs or two wings.

[The new sannyasin says: I had tried vipassana.]

encounter, gestalt, bioenergetics, psychodrama, something cathartic first so the fever is thrown out, so anger is no more there lurking inside you, so repressed emotions are not poisoning your system any more.... When the system is purified of emotions, repressed emotions, and they are many, then vipassana is just the right thing to do. One has to first prepare for the right moment to enter into vipassana.

I never give vipassana to people in the beginning – first I give them catharsis; they should pass through a few cathartic groups. When they start feeling that now nothing is coming up, now even if somebody is shouting and they don’t feel anger arising, then is the moment to go into vipassana.

Now the body is ready to receive it. It is a great gift; first one has to be ready to receive it.

If you have been holding poison in a pot it is first necessary to clean it completely. Only then put something else in it, otherwise whatsoever you put into it is going to be poisoned. The poison has to be completely thrown out – not only that, the pot must have soaked the poison: the pot has to be thrown into fire again.

These groups are fire groups: it is throwing you back into the oven so that all that is non-essential and does not belong to you and should not belong to you, is burned. Then you attain a pure passivity.

In that pure passivity, vipassana is the right guest – but first you have to become the host.

So next time when you come, do a few other groups and in the end, do vipassana here. Good!

[Deva Mahabha – the divine path of love.... ]

And become more and more alert about it. Don’t miss a single opportunity where you can be loving.

If you start looking for opportunities for being loving, you will be surprised: they come in thousands.

Because you have not been looking for them you have not noticed them, otherwise they come each moment.

You are passing by the road and a child smiles. Now there is a possibility, a great opportunity. God has smiled at you – you have to respond! You are sitting and a stranger is sitting by your side and is crying, and the tears are coming; now you have an opportunity to respond. Or you see a rose flower just opening; it is an opportunity to be loving. You can dance around the rosebush; you can at least say hello to the rose. You can have a little chit-chat... you can be a little mad!

The whole universe goes on giving millions of opportunities but because we are hard and we don’t look for them, even if they come on our way uninvited, we bypass them.

By and by our eyes become completely incapable of seeing the opportunity for love, otherwise each moment god approaches you.

His hand is always very close to taking our hand but we don’t move: we function like rocks.

The society has trained us to be more and more rocky, because in being a rock one feels more you cannot do anything about your birth – it has already happened; now you cannot do anything.

You cannot do anything about death because it is unpredictable: when it comes, it comes; nobody knows when it will come. It can come this moment or it may not come for fifty years or one hundred years. And it comes so suddenly that it never gives a single moment’s time for you to prepare even.

Suddenly it is there and one is gone; it does not come gradually so nothing can be done about death either. And these are the only three important things. Something can only be done about love; love is man’s freedom. Birth and death are destinies; love is man’s freedom.

By being loving a man grows, by being loving a man becomes spiritual... by being loving one attains being-hood. And the miracle is that if you start being loving, if between birth and death your whole life becomes a bridge of love, you have changed both in an indirect way: you have changed the birth and. you have changed death also. You have changed death because the man who knows what love is knows there cannot be any death. In that very moment of experience one knows eternity; time disappears. One knows the body will die and the mind will die but there is something beyond both – within – which is not going to die.

That certainty is such a certainty, such absolute certainty. It is not based on any argument; it is based on experience. It is as if you have tasted something and you know it is sweet or it is bitter; you need not have any argument. Even if somebody proves that it is bitter, you will laugh at the whole thing. You will say, ’It doesn’t matter what you prove, what arguments you bring – I have tasted it myself. Now it is absolutely certain that it is sweet. I know the taste.’

Once one has known love, death becomes just an impossibility: one never dies. And if one never dies, how can one be born? So there has been no birth and no death. The birth was just the beginning of the body and the death will be just the body falling back into dust, but you continue.

You were before birth and you will be beyond death.

So by knowing love, one comes to change death, birth, both. Love is the only transforming door in life.

Deva means divine, nisarga means nature – divine nature. And all that one has to do is to allow divine nature to function through oneself; nothing else is needed. We go wrong because we go against nature; we go wrong because we start trying to improve upon nature.We go wrong the moment we start thinking that we are higher than nature. Relax and become part of nature.

[A sannyasin says he feels a generosity inside that he can’t express, that doesn’t get through. Osho checks his energy.]

Good... very good. It is happening!

And it will come: it will become a flower soon. It is coming up, and it is coming with such energy that soon it will flower. Be happy, rejoice!

And it happens that when it comes for the first time one feels suffocated. One knows it is there just ready to burst and it is not bursting It is very urgent it feels and still something is blocking but

stops. It is neither going away nor coming close; for a single moment it stops and then it starts coming back. This is the moment: the energy has up to now been going away, away, away. Now it has stopped going away – it is no more going away from god. It is a very very pregnant moment; it will start turning back home. Once it starts turning back home, joy will grow, ecstasy will grow. You are going to disappear; there is going to be only ecstasy.

So don’t be afraid, because when one starts disappearing one becomes very frightened. I am with you, so when you start feeling that you are disappearing, relax and surrender, accept and welcome, because that is a blessing. That’s what sufis call ’bourka’ – that’s a gift from god. And it is going to happen....

[A sannyasin says she has to return to her work as a lawyer to earn the money to return to the ashram, but she does not enjoy the work.]

Manage, mm? because you will not be able to remain in your profession long. That profession is one of the most ugly; even to be a thief is far better! And it is difficult – it will become every day more and more difficult, and I don’t think that it is for you.

Even if you try to remain unaffected by it it will be destructive to your soul. It is a wrong kind of profession, and when you are in a certain profession more and more time has to be devoted to it, you have to think about it more and more. And if you are not in a fighting mood it will be difficult to be a lawyer because the whole thing depends on fight. Even when there is nothing to fight, one has to fight; the whole profession depends on that. One has to find ways and means to fight and to continue fighting. The longer the fight goes the better... and finding how to make it more complicated is the whole game.

So if you are not m the fighting mood, and you cannot be any more, it will be really hard and destructive. So my suggestion is – you are finished with it – that you go and arrange somehow and just come back.

[In reply to Osho’s invitation to take sannyas, a visitor says: I am so afraid of death!]

Nothing, mm? – everybody is afraid of death... and that’s why everybody goes on missing life. If you are afraid of death you will be afraid of life too because death is involved in life. If you are afraid of death you will escape from life because everywhere, wherever life is, death is. So if you really want to live life don’t be afraid of death: start living death too!

Both can be lived together because both are together: each moment of life is a moment of death. It is so together – it is like breathing: when you breathe in it is life, when you breathe out it is death.

When a child is born he will breathe in; that is the beginning of life. When a old man dies he will breathe out and will never breathe in; that is death. Inhalation is life, exhalation is death; it is so close. And the same inhalation becomes exhalation; it is the same breath just turning its direction.

[The visitor says: I want to be a child. I feel I am dying as a child too soon.]

be a toy! An alive child is already on the way to death, is already dying. The day the child is born he has started dying. Now every moment is of death. You can avoid death only by becoming plastic, false, artificial.

The real rose is gone by the evening; you can keep the plastic flower forever. Every day you can wash it with soap and it will be very fresh and very young – but whom are you befooling? No bee will come to it for honey, no butterfly will come to it. Whom are you deceiving ? You can deceive human beings because they are also plastic. And there will be no fragrance in the flower .... It is already dead; that’s why it cannot die!

If you are alive then death is going to come – and death is beautiful! I will teach you how to die....

Have you heard a joke ?

An Indian who used to live in Germany, died and reached hell. The devil said, ’You can choose which hell you would prefer – the German or the Indian.’

The Indian was puzzled and asked, ’What is the difference between the two?’

The devil laughed and said, ’The punishments are the same, the torturers are the same, but of course in a german hell things are done with german accuracy, precision and perfection – in short, in a german way!’

[A sannyasin says: I was reading some Laing and some other things and I’ve just been having the feeling that my whole make-up is just a kind of fantasy.]

Mm mm... don’t read much; this is not the right time to read. Reading will not help you right now. It will give you many more troubles, and those ideas will start moving in your mind. And particularly not Laing... no! When you want to go crazy then you can read laing. He is just crazy – a good man but crazy! It is not good; you will not be able to absorb him. It will create a kind of sickness in you.

Meditate more, be more, dance more, sing more.

Reading is good when you are not affected by it at all. Then it is perfectly beautiful; you can enjoy it.

But then there is nothing serious. You can read the bhagavad gita or the bible or the koran just as if you are reading a detective novel; there is no problem. And they are all detective novels of ancient days written in a different pattern. But right now you can get very serious about things ....

Just relax. Reading is not good right now....

Enjoy things: doing is good rather than thinking. Go for a long walk, start running, swimming, dancing, jogging. Do things; these are all relaxing. Whenever your mind is not getting tense, you are relaxed.

Do something with the body – be in the body more than in the mind. Shift your energy towards the you do on your bed? Run, walk, swim. Do something so the whole energy moves into the body and the head does not get any. And enjoy these things because these are the real things in life. Reading is almost living life second-hand.

For example, you are reading poetry. The poet may have lived the experience – he may have looked at the moon, he may have listened to the birds, and a song arose in him and he sang. Now you are reading his song; it is second-hand! Why not go to the bird? Why not go to the rose? Why not go to the moon... directly? Why bring in this poet as a mediator? Why look through his eyes?

You have eyes and the moon is available and the rose is available, and the bird is singing for you too! Live life directly. That’s what I mean when I say ’relax’. Relaxation is not being lazy. Relaxation means being utterly joyful in the body.

When you have run for miles and enjoyed the wind and the sun and the sand and then you come and you lie down on your bed, there is relaxation. Then you can fall into a very very quiet and silent sleep. Or even if you remain alert, thinking does not happen; there is a kind of silence.

Try this!

CHAPTER 15

15 August 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A visitor says she wants to leave the work she is doing in an embassy in rome and to separate from her husband, who is a writer but earns no money.

Osho advises her to leave him unless she wants to be a babysitter for the rest of her life! He says that a relationship should only be out of love and for no other reason. If you love, then be with him, Osho continues. I am not saying to leave him; it is you who are asking. If you love him, be with him.

There is nothing like a vagabond lover because he is the purest lover. But if you don’t love him the relationship is meaningless; get out of it!

She would like to take sannyas but is afraid about returning to rome.]

No, no, I will be with you, then you will not be alone. That is the whole point of sannyas: you will never be alone. I never leave my sannyasins alone! I constantly haunt them, day in, day out! Even in your nights I will not leave you alone!...

Now this will become your courage, and much has to be done and you have to be very decisive.

And your whole life is at stake; these are not small decisions.

Get out of your past entanglements, be free! Mm? you have your whole life to live so there is no need to get into any rut. And I’ll be with you....

... Deva Anurupa. It means god-like: deva means god, anurupa means like.

We are created in the image of god. Man is god-like, he has all the possibilities of being a god...

j

t h

t

ll th

t

iti

i htl

job or the husband or the friend, anything that you don’t like – it is better to get rid of it. If you don’t like it and you go on doing it, it is deceptive. It poisons you slowly, slowly; it makes one insensitive. If you don’t like a person and you have to live with him, you have to grow an insensitivity: you have to grow thick skin around you. If you do something that you don’t like, then naturally you cannot remain open. You have to remain closed so you can tolerate it. You have to become dead to it so it just passes by and you remain aloof, distant.

Unless you like a thing how can you get involved in it? And without involvement there is no joy. So in one stroke finish the husband and job and everything! Maybe there will be a little trouble for a few weeks, but find out. One finds that something or other always happens.

[Deva Eha – desire for god.] And there are three types of people in the world – the worldly... The worldly means the one whose mind has many desires. The mind has so many desires that it cannot fulfill them and it is naturally divided. One desire goes to the north, another desire goes to the south, and man is pulled apart. Hence the worldly man feels constant confusion. He remains in pieces; he cannot become one whole. He cannot be integrated, and without integration there is no possibility to be happy. So the worldly remains miserable, he remains in hell. These desires, millions of desires, create the hell.

The second kind of person is religious. He has only one desire, he has put all his desires into one desire; he has made a big desire out of all small desires. He does not want money, he does not want respectability, he does not want fame, he does not want anything. He wants only god. All his desires are focused onto one desire. Then life becomes one, integrated, and there comes a new quality of togetherness. You can feel that the person is together, that he is not in fragments, that he is one whole. And out of being one whole, is health. That is the second kind of person....

And the third kind of person is the spiritual one, in whom even the desire, the one desire, disappears.

Many desires make the worldly man, one desire creates the religious man, no desire is the state of the spiritual man: from many to one, from one to none.

So today you are being initiated into the world of religion with the hope that one day you will go beyond it. This is only a transitory period. It is just a remedy; one is ill, we prescribe a medicine.When the illness is gone the medicine is dropped. Religion is medicinal.We are all ill from so many desires

– one desire is prescribed: put all your desires into one. It will be difficult to drop them suddenly; it will be easier to put them into one desire.

And when all have disappeared and only one desire has remained, drop that too. Take the help of one desire to drop many desires but that is medicinal, it is a remedy. When the illness is gone, throw the medicine too. Then become desireless... and that state of desirelessness is liberation.

[Deva Amoda – divine fragrance.... ] Everybody is born with a fragrance to be released, and until we release it we cannot feel contented. Unless we start blooming there cannot be any joy.We are not miserable because we are missing material things, no: we are miserable because we are missing our potential.

to the world has been given, there is great joy; one is fulfilled.

Everybody is carrying a great potential to release fragrance, to release a song, some creativity, to leave the world a little better than one has found it, to do something here, something there, to make it a little more colourful, to make it a little better.

Unless that is done one remains in hell. When one is in one’s seed there is hell and when one has come to one’s flowering there is heaven. The difference between hell and heaven is the difference between the seed and the flower. Hell and heaven are not geographical locations, they don’t exist somewhere on the map, but they are tremendously potent symbols: the seed and the flower....

[A sannyasin asks what meditation is best for him. He has tried a mantra and sitting silently, though he finds the latter difficult. He likes the humming meditation.]

That will suit you; just sitting will not help right now. Later on, after six, nine months, of humming, your mind will start falling into a different rhythm and then it will be possible to just sit silently. Right now it will be very difficult. In fact you will find that you become more disturbed when you are sitting silently. You will find that more thoughts come and more turmoil inside than ordinarily when you are doing other things; then the mind remains occupied, in other things. When you are not doing anything the whole mind is available to chatter; it knows only chattering and it knows nothing else.

So go slowly – first start humming. Humming can be of tremendous help and you can do it whenever... At least once a day or if you can do twice, it will be good. It is such a great inner music that it brings peace to your whole being. Then your conflicting parts start falling in tune and by and by a subtle music which you can hear arises in your body. After three, four months, you will be just sitting silently and you can hear a subtle music, a harmony inside, a kind of humming.

Everything is functioning so perfectly well – like a perfectly functioning car whose engine is humming.

A good driver knows when something goes wrong: the passengers may not become alert but the good driver knows immediately when the humming changes. Then the humming is no more harmonious; some new noise is coming. Nobody else is aware, but one who loves driving will immediately become aware that something is going wrong: the engine is not functioning as it should.

A good hummer by and by starts feeling when things are going wrong. If you have eaten too much, you will find your inner harmony is missing and by and by you will have to choose – either eat too much or have the inner harmony. And the inner harmony is so precious, so divine, such a bliss, who bothers to eat more?

Then without any effort to diet, suddenly you find you are eating in a more balanced way. When the humming goes still deeper, you will be able to see which foods disturb your humming: you eat something heavy and it stays too long in the system and then the humming is not so perfect. Then you will be able to see....

That’s how India came by and by to vegetarianism – it was because of humming. Now people think eating those foods?

Then they started dropping things; simplicity of life became their way. Because the more simple you are, the more your organism functions well and great music arises in you... and it is so satisfying.

Then your sexuality starts taking a certain discipline. It is no more sexual: it becomes sharing. It becomes more love and less lust, and you don’t go into it mechanically. You don’t make love to your wife every night because you are supposed to, because it is supposed that a healthy man should do it, because this is hygienic or because it is what experts say is right. You don’t feel like it, you don’t grow in your inner silence, but you go on doing it.

But once humming starts you will find when sex is right and when it is not right. If the wife and husband are both humming you will be surprised at how great a harmony arises between two persons and how by and by they become intuitive, how they start feeling when the other is feeling sad; there is no need to say.When the husband is tired the wife knows it instinctively because they both function on the one wavelength.

Go deep into humming, and after a few months – humming has to be continued – start sitting silently for a few minutes, twenty minutes, thirty minutes. Do humming once and once simply sit silently. Then you will know that it will become easier. When you come next time, come for a longer time... and by that time much will have happened. Good.

[A visitor asks about archery which she practises – she feels that sometimes there is an element of competitiveness in her archery, which is not good.... ]

Archery in itself is a great meditation and if you can drop the competitiveness in it, it will be tremendously beautiful. The competitiveness will function as a poison because competitiveness means ego. Be in the archery, go into it as deeply as possible, but with no idea of competing. If you have an engrained habit of competition then only compete with yourself. Let your today compete with your yesterday – then there is no problem: by and by competition will disappear.

Each art can be used in two ways: either it can become a part of the marketplace or it can become a great meditation. Just look at nature: a rose flower is there without any competition. It is not competing with any other flower anywhere; it is just there on its own, and so beautiful. A bird is singing... it is singing on its own. Nature exists without any competition, and whenever we bring in competition we destroy beauty.

So continue archery but by and by drop your ambition to compete...

[Archery] can be used as a path to know yourself... it can be used!

Anand means bliss, and kavishwara means a great poet – a great poet of bliss. Now sing a few songs of bliss, write a few poetries of bliss, because in the west the poets have been crying and weeping and talking about anguish and anxiety and despair. They have all forgotten the language of bliss That language has to be brought back

has been revolution going on!...

It has been always so and the revolution will continue; it is not going to end. It is a constant phenomenon... it is life itself!

[The sannyasin says that by necessity revolution goes by jumps.]

It is always going by jumps but every age has been thinking that this is the age of revolution because every age has a certain ego. In the days of buddha, the followers of buddha thought, ’This is the day!’ and jesus’ apostles were thinking, ’This is the revolution that has come!’ It has always been the case and so it will be the case always.

[The sannyasin makes a differentiation between the being and the existence... that the being is always in the tradition and the conscience is always in the revolution.]

Right! They are like two wings of a bird – the tradition and the revolution, the conscience and being.

But tradition cannot exist without revolution and revolution cannot exist without tradition – they are together. They are partners in the same business! They are not enemies: they are like man and woman.

The revolution is man, the tradition is woman, and they are both needed; they are like day and night.

So there will not come a day when tradition has completely disappeared and only revolution remains, no. Because every revolution creates its own tradition, every revolution becomes a tradition again.

And that which is a tradition today was a revolution yesterday, and that which is a revolution today will become a tradition tomorrow.

If you look at the total vision there comes a great acceptance of everything as it is. Then tradition is good and revolution is good. The world as it is is perfectly good, it is the most perfect world: one can bless it!

[The sannyasin continues: But I think the best pass through the worst and we don’t know the worst yet.]

That’s right! The worst is a blessing because through it is the best; it is always good. The greatest sinner becomes the greatest saint, so to become a saint one has to go to the very depths of sin.

When a tree goes high, its roots go deeper down into the earth.

The world is going into the worst to get the best! Good!

[The following morning Osho mentioned this sannyasin in the discourse, saying:]

Just the other night an old french poet took sannyas. He was asking me when is the revolution coming? Of course he is french so he thinks in terms of revolution. Though very old, he must be beyond seventy he is a frenchman after all. He is a frenchman; they don’t grow old.

to disappear. Because body and soul are two realities – two, I am saying, because still science and religion are separate; in fact they are not two. It is just the mind standing in between them that keeps them separate.

Once philosophy is gone, once the mind is no more there, who is there to divide the object from the subject. Then the outer and the inner will be one; they are one.

’Darshana’ may become the name for the ultimate synthesis. Darshan is not philosophy as it is ordinarily thought. Darshan means not love of knowing but love of seeing, love of realising... an effort to realise a vision of the ultimate reality.

CHAPTER 16

16 August 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[Osho talks about monastic life... ]

So help the monks to get free... they need to!

They are good people, they are in search; they are honest sincere people. They are good people but they are trapped and it happens that good people are easily trapped because they are not cunning.

It is very difficult to trap cunning persons. The people who are searching and have a vague desire for god, who are not satisfied with the world as it is, who are not satisfied the way they are, start seeking and searching, and naturally whatsoever is available they fall into.

And the established religion is always available. It is very difficult to find a master but teachers are always available, the priest is always available. You need not go anywhere: he is just int he neighbourhood.

So when people start seeking and searching the first thing they stumble upon is the priest, and naturally one of their own religion in which they have been brought up. It fits with their conditioning, it appeals to their ego; they can understand its language. Everything seems to be right – and nothing is right.

Tell them: seek the christ and don’t be trapped by the priest. The priest has always been against christ and will always remain against christ. You will find many beautiful souls there – help them!

Veet Chinta.... It means the end of worry... and let this moment be the end of all your worries.

You have worried enough more than was needed Now drop them; now let them disappear And that you bring in to end one worry will bring ten worries, so it goes on and on.

The very effort to solve a worry is to continue it. The moment one understands this viciousness of worry, one simply jumps out of it. It has not to be solved, it cannot be solved, but one can get out of it; one can grow out of it.

Let this be your fee for sannyas: drop the worries! Give them to me – simply be free from this moment. Even if because of past habit they come sometimes, just say goodbye. Say ’I’m finished; I am no more interested.’ Don’t get distracted by them, don’t even fight with them. If they come let them be there, remain indifferent, and within a few weeks you will find that they are coming less and less and less, and one day suddenly they are not there.

The day when one finds oneself without worries is a great day. One is really born that day and one has, for the first time, a glimpse of what life is. It is the smoke of worries that doesn’t allow you to see the flame of life.

Deva Tapudana: divine sage... The sage is there although asleep, but he can be awakened. And it is very close to the morning; you have come in the right moment. A few people come who are in their deep slumber, in the middle of the night; to wake them will be painful. Mm? they are lost in beautiful dreams; it will hurt. But your morning is very close. You are already coming out of sleep, the night is disappearing, so it is not going to be painful. It is going to be very joyful! Something you would like to say to me?

[The new sannyasin says: I feel as if I’m riding a horse and I’ve let go of the reins and the horse is just... ]

Yes, just let go the reins – don’t be worried, mm? Now I will take care of the horse! You just leave the reins, there is no need to control. Control creates conflict, control creates confusion and control creates duality. The very idea that you are the rider and that something like a horse is there, is a wrong idea. You are the horse and you are the rider, the horse is not separate from you. But religions have been teaching this nonsense: control the horse. In the very idea they divide you: your body becomes the horse and you become the rider. And naturally the ego feels very good that you are the rider. The body feels very bad so it goes on taking revenge. It will throw you into this ditch and into that ditch and will say to you, ’Now see who is the rider and who is the horse!’ It is not right to make this division. You are the horse and you are the rider, so there is no need to control. Be more and more flowing, easy, relaxed.

The horse is already going towards god. It cannot go anywhere else because there is nowhere else to go. This whole world is his, so wherever you end up you will end up in him. Don’t be worried: one can go with absolute trust!

Deva means divine, tarsa means thirst. The english word ’thirst’ comes from tarsa; the root is the same: a thirst for the divine. And there is a difference between a thirst for the divine and a desire for the divine. A desire is of the mind; your totality is not involved in it. A thirst is total: your mind, your when you are asleep it is there. You may do a thousand and one things but it will be there. A desire can easily be forgotten – you get involved in something else and you forget the desire, it disappears

– because desire is only a very very tiny thing in the mind.

Thirst is all over: from the toes to the head it burns like a flame. When god is only a desire, one cannot reach. God demands you in your totality. When one becomes thirsty, only then does one start moving.

Prem means love and tushir means a quiver in the heart – a quiver of love in the heart. And let the heart start quivering for love; it is almost a physical quiver. Whenever you see anything that reminds you of god let the heart dance for it. You see a rose flower: don’t be in a hurry, wait a little there. Say hello... Let your heart have a contact with the flower. It is raining: stand under the sky, dance with the rain and let your heart dance with the rains.

Wherever you can find an opportunity to thank god, to be grateful, don’t miss it. And there are millions of opportunities given every day. Each moment of life brings unaccountable gifts from god but we go on missing because our hearts have become so hard. They don’t quiver, they don’t welcome, and god can only enter from the heart. The heart has become like a rock. Melt it! And it melts only if you dance, sing, love.

Don’t miss any opportunity to sing a song or dance a dance. Don’t miss any opportunity where you can be loving. Be loving! That’s what real prayer is. And this whole earth is the temple of god so wherever you are, you are moving on holy earth. Be full of awe, wonder, surprise. Let your eyes start feeling the mystery of existence.

It is incredible; it is just that we are blind. It is unbelievable, but we live behind a curtain, a thick curtain, and we go on missing. So become more open, be more nude with nature, and things will start happening!

Anand means bliss, tarika means a small star – a small star of bliss. And get more and more in tune with the stars: whenever there are stars in the night and the night is clear, just lie down on the earth and look at the stars. If you feel attached to a certain star then concentrate on that. While concentrating on that think of yourself as being a small lake and that a star is reflected deep inside you. So see the star outside and see it reflected inside you. This will become your meditation, and great joy will arise out of it. Once you get in tune with it you can simply close your eyes and see that star, your star, but first you have to find it.

In the East they have a myth that everybody has a certain star. All those stars are not for everybody: everybody has a particular star. That myth is beautiful.

As far as meditation is concerned, you can find one star that belongs to you and to which you belong.

There will arise a certain affinity between you and the star, because we are made of light as are the stars; we vibrate as light as do the stars. You can always find a star with which you simply feel in tune, which is on the same wavelength. That is your star; meditate over it.

the navel, two inches. Deposit it there, go on depositing it, and soon you will feel great light arising inside you as if a star has already in reality burst forth. And it will not be only that you feel it, others will start feeling, it... that a certain kind of light has started surrounding your body, your face, has become your aura....

Just look for a few nights and you will be able to find your star.

[A sannyasin says he has not been able to wear orange while in the West, and has hidden his mala inside. He doesn’t like people asking questions about it.]

That’s not good.... Let them ask! You can have a small written thing with you – just give it to them.

If you don’t want to talk, if you don’t have time, just give them a handbill. A few of them will come to me so why not help them? They may be not just curious, they may be really interested.

This orange, this mala, is given to you for a specific purpose; you may not be alert of it. It has many implications in it: one is that, too – that people who are really seeking and searching may find a way through your orange, through your mala, towards me.

I am not going anywhere, I simply sit in my room and I am not going to move out of my room, so how am I going to manage for thousands of people who need me and for whom I am waiting?

This is just a small strategy to bring all those people to me. Many are here who have just come by this way: they saw somebody in orange – they asked, ’What is the matter?’ Maybe they asked simply out of curiosity. They were not even aware of their own unconscious desire and had not thought that asking was going to be risky... that by asking it their whole life might be changed and transformed. They have come here and now they are in orange.

And secondly, I want my sannyasins to be completely free of the fear of public opinion; that is a cowardliness.

And this orange and this mala constantly keep you alert. They do not allow you to lose yourself in sleep. Wherever you are going people will look, people will become attentive: what manner of man is coming? What has happened to this man? And when they are attentive, you are alert.

People like to remain anonymous for a certain reason: that keeps you asleep. You remain a part of an anonymous crowd – you are nobody, mm? just part of the crowd. Nobody takes note of you so you need not take any note of yourself.

This is basically meant to create that situation. It is a device to constantly keep you arrowed from everywhere. You are never left so that you can relax and relapse into your sleep.

That’s not good; next time don’t do that. Be courageous, mm?

[A sannyasin said he had left the encounter group on the sixth night because he felt mad:... and the madness; it is a higher kind of sanity that is going to happen to you. It is not the average kind that’s true; it is a higher kind of sanity. It looks mad... because you compare it with the ordinary, average mind; then it looks mad.

Psychologists still go on thinking that jesus was neurotic. If you compare him with the average, normal mind, he is abnormal. And abnormal does not have a good connotation in the psychological world: it means mad, that something is wrong. Either you are below the normal, then you are abnormal, or you are above the normal; then too you are abnormal. And they don’t make any distinction between these two, totally different, kinds of things.

Something above the normal is going to happen – just allow it; that’s why madness and surrender.

Just surrender; there is no need to be worried.

And in the group also people felt something; they became afraid? They started thinking you are a witch or something?

A witch means a wise woman; that is the real meaning of the word ’witch’ It became condemned because of male chauvinism, otherwise ’witch’ is a very very respectful word. It means ’a wise woman’ – it means exactly what ’buddha’ means – but it became condemned because of christians.

They started witch-hunting and destroying women who were of some other dimension. They really destroyed one of the greatest possibilities of human growth. They stopped women from growing. All exceptional women were destroyed in the middle ages; only very ordinary women survived. It is one of the greatest crimes... but it happens.

Whenever a woman starts becoming something exceptional, the man will become very much afraid because he cannot understand it. When a man becomes exceptional he can understand because the difference is only of quantity. But when a woman becomes abnormal or super-normal the man cannot understand at all because this is a totally different kind of energy – the female energy. He has no understanding about it; it is very dangerous. And man has always remained afraid of woman because woman is more intuitive. Intellect man can understand but intuition he cannot understand; it seems uncanny.

Perfectly good. But don’t be worried that you are a witch: something good is going to happen!

[An ashram therapist says he has a conflict between surrendering and trying to respect himself.]

No, you are creating an unnecessary problem. By surrendering for the first time you will gain respect for yourself. You have never respected yourself, you may think you have but you have not. And if you call it respect, it is not respect; it is something else. It is just an ego that you have been calling

’self-respect’. By dropping that ego for the first time you will find something new arising in you.

[A participant of the new anatta group said he found it boring.]

Boring? That’s very good! That’s very good, that’s a good beginning. That shows you are still Mm mm... that’s very good! Sometimes to go crazy is very good: it simply shows that one is not satisfied with the ordinary run of things so one wants to jump beyond the boundaries.

All good people are a little crazy... all rare people are freaks. Don’t be worried! Enjoy it here – you cannot find a more crazy place anywhere! Here even the craziest person looks very sane! Good!

CHAPTER 17

17 August 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Jivan means life, harito means green – green life, fresh life, young life. and always remember that life is green, theories are grey. Avoid the theories and plunge into life. Theories are suicidal, poisonous; they destroy. Life is divine, life is eternity.

To get in tune with life is to enter into god, and to remain confined to the theories is to remain in the prison of the mind. So the whole dilemma, the human dilemma is: how to get out of the mind and into life. Our whole being is caught in the web of thoughts – and thoughts are impotent. they cannot give you anything: they can promise you everything but they cannot give you anything. It is only through life that something is possible.

So listen to life more, trust life more. Let life become synonymous with god. And wherever it leads, go with total trust: don’t hesitate and don’t defend. In defending against life one simply loses an opportunity. And strange are the ways of life to bring you back home. They are not very straight like super-highways, they are very zig-zag, so one tends to doubt. And the mind creates a thousand and one questions.

Once you start living a life without questions you have become religious. When one eats, sleeps, walks and goes on doing the ordinary things of life with immense joy, celebration, that’s enough; there is nothing more to it!

Then each small act becomes sacred and through each small act god starts approaching you... and the meeting happens almost every minute. One just has to get out of the mind. [Remember] again and again that life is god and there is no other god....

And just enjoy; don’t strain Don’t try to become an achiever There is nothing to achieve: all is contact. As he becomes more and more articulate with language, mathematics, reasoning, he starts losing contact; he starts entering more and more into the mind. And that’s what our whole education is: it destroys contact with life. It creates the prison of the mind. Our whole education is how to disconnect a human being from real life and how to connect a human being with unreal thoughts. Never again will the child be in such immense rapport with life again unless he consciously, deliberately, chooses to become a child again.

That’s what sannyas is: a deliberate, conscious choice to be reborn again. So start counting your life from [the moment you take sannyas]. This is your birthday – forget the old birthday; that was nothing. From this moment start counting your life and start participating again in small things. They are wonderful if you look through the eyes of a child....

Deva means divine, chintana means reflection. Thought can have two directions: when it goes outwards it is called thinking; it if turns upon itself it is called reflection. If you see something, it is thinking. If you start seeing the seer, then it is reflection... and reflection is the way to one’s own innermost core.

Just now I am saying something to you. You can listen to it; that will be thought. If you start feeling the listener inside you, that will become reflection. A slight change, a slight change in the gear, and suddenly you fall into yourself. You can go on looking at me; one moment it is thought. If you get completely absorbed in the object, whatsoever is outside, if you completely forget yourself and only the object remains, it is thought, it is contemplation. If you suddenly become aware of the subject –

who this is inside you who is looking at somebody, who this is inside you – if you suddenly become aware of, alert about, this inner phenomenon, it is reflection, and reflection is the door to one’s soul.

’Chintana’ means reflection, and I would like you to fall again and again back into yourself – hence the name. Looking at a tree, go on looking, looking, and then suddenly take a jump: close your eyes and start seeing the seer who was seeing the tree. Listening to music, go on listening, listening, and then suddenly take a jump and just listen to the listener.

This constant reference to oneself becomes a tremendous meditation, and again and again one moves out of the world.When you are in your innermost core, you are no more in the world; you have transcended it. So during the day, in twenty-four hours, many times one can have this glimpse: by and by it becomes so easy. Just as you come out of your door into the garden and you go back into the room – just like that it becomes so easy. Once you learn the knack of it you can go inside any moment... and inside is the treasure.

That’s why all beautiful words that denote anything significant, carry the word ’in’.

’Insight’,

’inspiration’, ’intuition’, ’instinct’ all carry the word ’in’ – not accidentally, because all that is really real is in one’s own being. The treasure is there, the kingdom of god is there....

[The new sannyasin says: I’ve been a catholic nun for seventeen years.]

Mm mm, that’s good! You have come to the right person, now! Seventeen years ? – it is more than monkhood, the nunship, but seventeen years is a long time; habits get deep into the unconscious.

Unless you uproot them from there they will go on poisoning your life.

It is beautiful to be in love with god but one need not deny life. In fact the only way one can love god is through life; there is no other way. Any kind of ideology that goes against life is basically against god, because it is god’s life; these people are god’s people.

So uproot it. These groups will help, these meditations will help. It shows something important –

that you have been seeking and searching, otherwise why should one become a nun? And people are in such a deep search that they are ready to accept any kind of absurdity.

It is a good indication of their desire and thirst...

Now something is possible. And we can use even that; those seventeen years can be used in a positive way. This will be the positive way – that those seventeen years, whatsoever you lived, whatsoever you thought have been life-negative, so now start becoming more life affirmative, more loving. Get more into your body. The body is god’s body, it is his temple. Really it is the church, the body, and if we have to find jesus or god or whatsoever name we give, we have to find him through this body.

So be more alive in the body... because those seventeen years can dull the body; they can dull sensitivity. They are bound to do that because the whole game depends on that. But you must have been a very alive person, that’s why you escaped; otherwise it is very difficult. It is very easy to get out of a prison – it is very difficult to get out of a monastery, because it is self-imposed imprisonment.... But good!

[The mother of a sannyasin is visiting and says she would like to find herself.]

That’s possible!...

And to find oneself is possible, it is not difficult. One just has to be courageous. Nothing else is needed – just courage. Become a sannyasin!

Deva means divine and sandhya means twilight – divine twilight. And that’s exactly where you are –

in a great moment of transition. Something is on the verge; any moment the jump is possible. So be full of enthusiasm and be ready to receive it. If you can put your energies into it your desire is going to be fulfilled: you will be able to know yourself...

[A visitor says that he’s tried on different occasions to work with colleagues, to cooperate and collaborate with them on projects, but after a few weeks or months it falls through and breaks up in competition

Nothing to be worried about.... We have been brought up in such a way that we say that we want to cooperate but deep down we want to compete. And we can cooperate only under some pressure: like that.

Because you have to compete with the enemy you cooperate with the friend, but if the enemy is defeated what are you going to do? Then you will start competing with the friend. When the enemy is gone, the friend will become the enemy. The friend was only the friend because of the enemy.

This is how we have been brought up. This is a very poisonous situation but this is how it is. Every child has been brought up to compete, to struggle, to defeat others and not to be defeated by them.

Every child has been taught that the whole society consists of enemies. If you are not on guard you will be nowhere, so be on guard, be cunning, be clever. Talk about love, go on smiling, keep a good face, and deep down go on planning how to defeat everybody, how to destroy everybody.

This is the whole teaching of all the schools, colleges, universities... and when you teach a child for twenty years to compete, it is very difficult for him to simply drop it; it goes into the blood.

You want to drop it because you see the ugliness of it, but it is not like your clothes that you can drop and be naked. It is like your skin now. It is going to be very painful.

My suggestion is: work indirectly; directly you will not succeed. Forget about cooperating. The first thing is to meditate rather than cooperate, because the competition is very deep inside the unconscious. You will have to transform the unconscious first; you will have to un-condition your mind first. You will fail with this mind again and again, and the more you fail, the more failure will become certain, because from the very beginning you will know that you are going to fail. You know: it has happened so many times. It is almost a certainty; you are hoping against hope. You know it is going to fail so your efforts will be self-defeating.

And each time one fails in a certain effort, one loses much self-confidence. You start feeling that you are just helpless, a victim. You cannot do anything, things happen by themselves. You become a fatalist; you start feeling impotent .

Don’t go directly.We have to be very very scientific about destroying this inner core of competition.

In cooperation you will be working directly against it; that is not the right course. You will have to do something in which neither competition is involved at all nor cooperation is needed.

For example if you meditate you cannot cooperate, you cannot compete, because there is nothing.

In meditating you are alone, in meditation you are alone: the moment you close your eyes you are alone. When you start going inwards there is nobody so you cannot cooperate and you cannot compete. The whole mechanism of competition and cooperation does not function; it is irrelevant. Now this can be the way, and if meditation starts growing you will be able to see where this competition comes from, and with a more meditative mind you will become more cooperative.

Cooperation can only be a by-product of a meditative mind, just as competition is a by-product of an achiever’s mind. That’s what we do: all our schooling is nothing but to create the achiever’s mind –

how to achieve, how to have more, how to be first....

through it and it will not be difficult. And almost always it happens that we choose the difficult one because there the ego feels good – something very difficult, challenging.We leave the door. The door is there and it is open but we don’t look at it; we look at the wall. The wall simply attracts, it has a magnetism. The ego feels good encountering a great problem. And in fact meditation is so simple and easy a thing that the ego is never interested in it.

[The counselling group is half way through the three-week training and the participants are here tonight. One of the leaders says that working with the other leader has been important, besides the group.]

Mm mm, good! No, the group is going well, and it is going to be different for different people; it depends on a thousand and one things. Everybody has a different receptivity, a different kind of mind, a different past, different ambitions, different reasons why he has joined the group and different interpretations. So it is going to be different; that is not the problem. It can’t be the same for everybody.

You should remember just one thing – that you have to put your all into it, that’s all – that you have to be totally in it. So if somebody needs to be benefited he will be benefited; if nobody needs to be benefited, you will be benefited... but you have to be total in it. You should not be just there formally, that’s all.

You should be there through the heart, through your whole being. Then you will never wonder whether anybody was benefited or not; that’s not the point at all.

You had opened your heart and you were available: if they wanted to partake of something it was for them to choose and decide. If they did not want, that too was their decision and they are free.

But if you are not total in it – you are in it formally and half-heartedly in it – you will not be benefited; somebody else may be benefited, but you will not be.

And the groupleader has to be benefited otherwise the group will become by and by a boredom.

The participants go on changing, the groupleader remains the same: sooner or later it becomes a stereotype thing. If you are not totally in it sooner or later the thrill will be gone: you will be doing the same thing again and again. But if you are totally in it, it is new every time and the benefit of the groupleader is immense.

When new people come and participate they will bring new energy and new things will happen. So let there be a very very liquid form, not a very rigid form: a very liquid form, almost no form. So whenever new people come they can adjust themselves and they can create new energy and new challenges.

A group is an opportunity to be responsible... an invocation from heart to heart, an invitation to open.

So keep a very very liquid form just to begin with, that’s all, and then let things flow and let them take their own form.

very good for the participants? It will not be very good... just so-so.

[A group member says she wants to stop seeking.]

It will come. Seek a little more! You are not yet tired! A little urge to seek is still there, a comer of your mind still wants to seek. Yes, one part says . stop, but one part says stop only because another part is saying ’go on’ – otherwise why this idea to stop? If you are really finished with seeking, you are finished; there is nothing to stop.

If somebody comes and says to me, ’Osho, help me so that I don’t start running’, what does it mean

? It simply means that a great desire to run is there! He wants to run, one part at least, and there is every possibility that the major part wants to run. The major part is not asking for my support to run. The minor part is asking my support because the minor is afraid that on its own, it may not be possible to stop running.

There is still some urge... and it is natural! Every-body seeks, everybody has to seek, but nobody finds by seeking. One day seeking has to be dropped, but when I say ’has to be dropped’, I simply mean one has to go to the very end of it where it drops of its own accord. That moment is really of great bliss – when there is no seeking, no longing, no desire, nowhere to go, nothing to achieve.

One has come home; one has attained relaxation. One is in immense rest... not even a ripple in the mind. In that very state god happens.

But that is going to come, mm? – don’t be in a hurry. Don’t manage it; it is going to come. Seek a little more, and if you want to finish it quickly run as fast as you can so it will be finished soon. If you go very slowly it can take much time, mm? Right now it will be premature to think to stop it. Let it ripen, and when the fruit is ripe it falls.

CHAPTER 18

18 August 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[Prem Deval... let love be the god and you become the temple... Feel love for anybody and for everybody... for all, with no conditions....

... Shift from the intellectual to the world of feeling. Intellectuality is just rubbish. Words cannot fulfil, logic cannot satisfy. One can have beautiful philosophies but one remains ugly; those philosophies don’t help. The real question is not what to think but what to be, and that being comes from feeling.

Through thinking only memory goes on growing: you don’t grow. Through feeling you grow... and that is the real growth. The growth of memory is just like a computer being fed. New information is being fed to the computer: it goes on growing. Memory is a bio-computer.

Now biologists say that memory transplantation is possible. When a man dies his memory can be transplanted in a child; it is just a mechanical part. Sooner or later it is going to happen: when an albert einstein dies there is no need to lose his memory. His memory can be transplanted on a small child and the small child will know all that Albert Einstein used to know – without learning; he will simply know it.

Memory is just mechanical. It can be separated from you. It can be transplanted, it will be transplanted. But real growth happens in you, and that is a totally different dimension of existence: it is not intellectual. And intellectuals are more or less stupid people, because this is stupidity – not to grow and just go on accumulating knowledge.

Intelligence is totally different than intellect. This is intelligence – the idea coming to you that you should start feeling more. This is intelligence – that you should stop intellectualising and should move towards the heart more; this is intelligence

things happen far more deeply, far more easily and faster. When you become serious and you want to force, you become so tense that it is not possible for anything to happen. Things happen only when you are non-tense: when you are non-tense incredible things happen! When you are tense your doors are closed; no light can enter, no breeze can enter. Then one starts feeling suffocated.

That’s what people are feeling: they go on feeling suffocated but they don’t drop their defences and they don’t open their doors. They are so afraid of the fresh air, they have become so addicted to the stale air, and they go on recycling the same air again and again and again. Christians, Mohammedans, Hindus just go on recycling the same stale ideology. And they don’t see outside that god goes on creating continuously. Each moment something new is happening.

God has not stopped creating, as Christians say, after six days; he is still creating. But for them he has stopped because they have closed their eyes. They think that god created the world in six days and on the seventh day he rested; that’s not true. He has never rested: he cannot go on a holiday otherwise the whole universe will disappear! He cannot afford that!

What really happened is that after six days christians closed their eyes and since then they have not opened them. Just be here and enjoy! Good.

[A sannyasin, who is leaving, says: I wrote you a letter about your being a guide and then somehow you disappearing. Now I don’t have anything inside.]

That happens... that happens. It is part of the whole growth. Many times I will be there and many times I will disappear. It is not really I who is disappearing – it is you. Sometimes you are open and sometimes you become closed. When you become closed I disappear; when you become open you will find me there. I am always there; it just depends on you opening your eyes. And this is part of the human mind – that it cannot remain open for twenty-four hours or for a longer period of time; it has to close. It is just as the eyes blink.

And the next time you see me, you will find me deeper in you. For you I may have disappeared but that is not true from my side; I am continuously working on you. Next time you will find me deeper, and each time that I disappear and come again, you will find me deeper. So nothing to be worried about.

And that too is natural – that insight is sometimes there and sometimes there is great confusion and you are lost in mist. Then you don’t know who you are, you don’t know what you are doing and what is happening. This is part of the inner melting.

We exist on many layers. In zen they have the perfect saying for it. They say that in the beginning for the seeker mountains are mountains, rivers are rivers. In the middle mountains are no more mountains and rivers are no more rivers. In the end, again mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers.... And this happens many times; it is not a single process.

Man is like an onion, layers upon layers. When one layer is broken you will be confused. Soon you will settle on another layer, deeper, better, but again that layer has to be broken; then again you will be confused This is going to happen many times but each confusion will lead you to a better once it has happened, it has happened!

... And continue to meditate. Even sometimes if you feel you are missing me, you need not worry.

Just go on remembering me and continue to meditate. You are on the right track, that much I can promise to you.

For you it may not be clear where you are going, but it cannot be. For you it cannot be clear: you are moving from the known into the unknown. But slowly, slowly, you will become accustomed to this phenomenon that is happening to you, and you will be immensely joyful once you start feeling what is happening.

[Osho gives sannyas to someone who practises archery.]

Veet means beyond and chanchat means wavering – beyond wavering. Wavering means the mind: beyond wavering means gone beyond the mind. The mind is constantly wavering; ripples and waves

– that’s what the mind is. When all ripples and waves disappear and the surface is silent, a different kind of being arises.

And because you are an archer, that’s why I am giving you the name. The real archery starts only when the mind disappears. You cannot miss when the mind is not there. If your mind is continuously working, you can be technically right but not spiritually... and archery is a great technique of meditation.

The thing that I was telling you was not clear to you last time; I would like to say it again.... You can go on participating in competitions but you need not be competitive. You can simply aet as if you are a competitor. You can go on competing. The competition remains just on the surface; deep inside you are no more involved in it.

The inner involvement has to disappear. That will do both things: you can grow in archery and you will not be growing in ego. And finally, you have to become part of this family and teach archery to my sannyasins!

Right ?

CHAPTER 19

19 August 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Prem means love and chandralekha is a mythological tree, a tree that is found in paradise. The whole name will mean, a love tree of paradise. Get more and more in tune with trees and you will find great moments of silence through it. Just sitting by the side of the tree get lost in it. Treat trees as persons and be very loving towards trees.

The tree is the most primitive form of life. If you start loving the tree then love starts arising. Then you can love the animals, and then only can you love human beings, not before it. These three steps have to be taken: start with the trees because they are the most innocent, then the animals – they are innocent but they can play tricks – then man, who is very cunning.

To love man needs a great compassion, a great understanding, but to love a tree nothing is needed.

No tree has ever deceived you, no tree has ever cheated you, no tree has ever been fraudulent, so it is very simple to be loving towards a tree. It is very difficult to love a man, because men have cheated, deceived, and who knows? – this man may cheat and deceive you. One can never be certain about man.

So start with the trees and then grow towards animals, birds, and then man. And then one can take the last jump – that is god. When one has become capable of loving man then one may be able to love god – because god is invisible. And if you can’t love man who is deceptive, cunning and cannot be trusted... If you can love this kind of man, then only can you love god, because it is god who has created this world of deception, illusion. Behind all this is god’s hand – behind all this misery, illness, death.

If o can lo e itho t an conditions from o r side onl then can o lo e god other ise this idea people poor? Why do so many people die out of starvation?

These questions persist in the mind and won’t allow love to flow towards god. But if you can love man, then a new quality of love arises in you. You love man irrespective of what he is doing, what he has done. That is not a condition in your love, it becomes unconditional. Then the highest jump is possible.

This will be your new name: Swami Deva Tusar. Deva means divine, divineness, and tusar means fine rain – fine rain of god, fine rain of divineness. And that you have to make into a meditation: whenever you are sitting silently, just close your eyes and feel rain falling on you, god showering on you... very soft, with no noise. When you are going to bed, just lie down on the bed for two minutes, feel the shower and then fall asleep feeling that. In the morning when you feel that sleep is gone, don’t open your eyes first: first feel that shower again for just two minutes, three minutes. Within a few days you will get in tune with it... and you can feel it anywhere. Just sitting in the car or in the plane or in the train, just close your eyes and feel it. You will be protected by that shower and it will keep you continuously fresh....

Deva means god and chama means one who sings in praise, a poet who sings in praise, a bard. So the full name will mean: one who sings in the praise of god, a bard of god... and there is the key for you.

Start remembering god more and more – and any excuse is good enough to remember. Feel grateful for small things. They arc not small; they only look small because we have become accustomed to them.

If a man is dying in a desert, is thirsty, he will not think that a glass of water is small; that will be his whole life. And if you can give him a glass of water he will be thankful forever. But ordinarily, a glass of water is just a glass of water – who bothers?

We start taking things for granted so we miss their mystery, their joy, and we start forgetting how to be grateful. Just the very fact that one is alive is enough to be grateful for; nothing else is needed.

Just the very fact that one can still breathe, that one is breathing, that one can see a rose flower, can see a cloud pass by, can see the rolling waves in the ocean and one can hear a child giggle, is enough... more than enough to be thankful for!

Just think of a blind man who has never seen a rose flower. Think of what he is missing. But we never think that way so we never feel what we are getting. Think of a blind man who has never seen a rainbow, who will never see a rainbow. You will pass by, the rainbow will be there and you will not look.

Just the other day I was reading that it happened in new york that the sun never set for three days.

But nobody became aware of it; who bothers? People are rushing to their own work. They move according to the clock; the sun is almost non-existential in new york. Yes, that is the case for millions of people. It looks absurd but that is the case.

some poet will stumble upon the fact or a child may start asking ’Where is the moon?’ Otherwise, so-called normal people will not take any note. This so-called ’normality’ is so abnormal....

In giving you this name I am just giving you an indication, a finger pointing to the moon, to start becoming more and more grateful... for small things. They are not small. Nothing is small... nothing can be small because all is suffused with god. Feel grateful for everything – for a green leaf in the wind, for a small bird singing alone, for a kite on the wing in the sky just relaxedly floating. All these are great mysteries but because they are given to us free of any charge, we don’t take any note of them.

If there were a price we would have hankered to see a kite, just relaxing high in the winds above the clouds. If there were a price then people would have stood in a queue, would have waited long, and would have felt very thankful.

Life is given without any charge: it is a gift. So start being more and more praise-full. That is the meaning of ’chama’ – one who goes on singing in praise....

CHAPTER 20

20 August 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[Osho gives sannyas to someone who had great difficulty to decide to take sannyas, because of her commitments in the West.]

The decision was difficult – decisions are always difficult but it is good to be decisive. Sometimes one may even take a wrong decision; then too it is better to be decisive rather than remaining indecisive, because in indecisiveness one disintegrates, one becomes fragments; one has a centre no more.

The centre is created through constant decisiveness. Each moment one has to decide. It is not very important what you decide. My emphasis is not on what you decide; my emphasis is on that you decide....

Mm mm, so start making decisions in small things, in very small things. For example if you have decided that at ten o’clock you will go to sleep, then go to sleep. It is not very important whether you go at ten or eleven, that is not important, but decide that you will be going at ten every night, and suddenly you will feel very good. Or decide that you will get up early in the morning at a fixed hour or you will eat at a certain time.... Just start being decisive in as many things as possible and then you will find more and more decisiveness coming to you. It needs practice, that’s all. You have never practised it; you have always been hanging in a vague way, ambiguous, this or that. One can go on hanging between this and that the whole life.

Ordinarily the problem is created because people make much fuss about the right thing to be decided. that’s why. Because we have been taught always to decide the right thing that creates a problem. It is not always so easy to decide whether this is right or not....

My whole approach is: don’t be bothered too much about right and wrong and don’t be bothered it is always inadequate, because the right moment, the right situation is already gone. By the time you decide it is no more the moment for it, so you are lagging behind.

For example, somebody says something and you start deciding what to answer. By the time you decide, the man is gone, or whatsoever he said has become already irrelevant; it needs no answer now....

Life is a constant decisiveness. Each moment one has to decide. And sometimes not knowing what is right and what is wrong, sometimes not knowing which is better, one has to decide. One cannot afford not to decide, mm? otherwise one will start disintegrating. So this decision was difficult, I know, but it is a good beginning....

And now, from this decision, start becoming more and more decisive.... It will happen!

Deva means divine, darshan means vision – and you have immense capacity of vision. It just has to be released, it has to be uncovered. The door is there; it just has to be opened.

And you have come in the right moment. This is the time one should become a sannyasin. So everything can be hoped for and all is possible. You have all the energies needed, you have all the faculties needed. A great poet is going to be born – just allow me to work upon you. And you have started it.

[A sannyasin asks about doing the Fischer-Hoffmann process because she has a tight knot in her stomach at the idea of seeing her parents. She says: I either become very distant, mechanical with them, or very argumentative and defensive. And I know that they’re limited and they have problems, but I don’t have the compassion for them.

Osho checks her energy.]

There is, in fact, no need. The energy is perfectly good, but your fear is also there. It is just a fear which comes from the past, just an impression from your whole past which is hanging around. Your energy is perfectly good: there is no knot in the energy, the knot is just in your memory. These are two different things.

If the knot is in the energy then it is a difficult thing, a difficult problem to solve. But if the knot is just in the memory it is a very simple thing. If you want you can drop it just like that. My suggestion is that before going into anything else, just be happy back home for two, three months, the way you have been here. Just enjoy life with no barrier, with no guilt, with no inhibition. If you can enjoy life with no guilt and no inhibition, a great compassion for your parents will arise in you. Now you will not be able to see how this can function....

In fact, no child is ever able to forgive his parents unless he becomes guiltless, because parents mean guilt. They have created the guilt, the basic guilt: do this, don’t do that; be like this and don’t be like that. They were the first creative elements, but they were also destructive. They helped the to balance the hatred, otherwise parents will be killed! They will not be able to survive; it is a survival measure! So, all the societies, ancient, new, eastern, western, cultured, uncultured, all agree about one thing – that the children should respect the parents, because they know that if this respect is not enforced, forcibly, the children are going to revolt. When they are small they cannot do anything, but when they become powerful, when they come into their own – by the time they have become a little older and powerful – the parents will start becoming old and powerless; that time will be dangerous for the parents. To avoid that calamity all the societies have to create this taboo. Now, this taboo cannot be dropped unless you drop the guilt – because it is a shadow of the guilt.

You are feeling against your parents, afraid of your parents because they don’t allow you to be yourself. So whenever they are there, you start feeling cramps, you feel knots in your stomach, because they won’t allow you to be yourself. Again you become a child in their presence; again the past becomes alive. Again you are helpless, and you are not a child now, so naturally you become argumentative, you retaliate, you say things, you become angry or you become very defensive, or you start avoiding... but all these things create a distance.

And there is a deep urge in you to love your parents; that’s so with everybody. You have come from them, you owe your life to them. Everybody loves this origin but the origin has done something which does not allow closeness, communication, so when you come close there is a problem. If you don’t come close, some deep urge to commune, to forgive, to make new bridges is there.

For three months just live as you would like to, and that will be the cleaning of this memory part.

Just live the way you want to live. Your parents are not obstructing you any more so you can live your life. Your parents will speak from within you many times: you will be doing something and a parental voice will come, ’Don’t do this’. Laugh at that parental voice and remember that now you are free and your parents have made you mature enough that you can live your own life and can take responsibility for it. So no need for this voice – now you have your own consciousness, you need not have a substitute for it. Now the parents need not speak for you; you can speak on your own.

Just keep this in mind, and don’t listen to the parental voice. Even if sometimes it is hard, go on your own; don’t listen to the parental voice. For three months try this; within three months this knot will disappear. If it doesn’t disappear then you can go through Fischer-Hoffmann, and that will be helpful.

But I don’t see that there is any problem. Much has happened to you here. Mm? you were not here for many days but much has still happened. The energy is perfectly flowing. It is just a memory thing, and a memory thing is not very important. Mm? it can be washed very easily, it can be erased; this will be the way to erase it. And you can do it on your own, then there is no need for therapy. If you cannot and you feel it is difficult, then Fischer-Hoffmann will be helpful. It will do the same thing: it will try to erase the memory. If you cannot do it alone it is always good to take the support of any expert who knows how to do it, there is nothing wrong in it, but first try it on your own.

Otherwise, what happens sometimes is that your therapist may be able to help you to get rid of your then the therapist becomes the problem. Then they cannot afford to lose the therapist; they cannot drop out of therapy. They have to continue in one or another. They can change the therapist, they can change the therapy, they can go from one kind of therapy to another kind of therapy, but they become therapy-addicts.

It is very good sometimes to tackle your problems on your own – it will give you more confidence. If you can finish... and my feeling is that you can finish; there is no problem about it. You have just to make an effort for three months.

And this is the process – to do whatsoever you want to do; don’t listen to any parental voice. Good or bad, that is not the point. Whatsoever you want to do is good for these three months, and whatsoever you don’t want to do is bad so don’t do it. Be completely at ease and free, and enjoy life almost as if you are born for the first time. And that’s exactly what has happened through sannyas. You are a new child, it is a new birth. You can start growing on a new line, and then those parental voices and the parental conditionings will not come in the way at all, it is a new growth.

For three months just enjoy, and if you feel that things have changed, perfectly good; if they have not changed, then there is nothing wrong. You can take Fischer-Hoffmann. Keep this (Osho gives Madhu the box) with you. And whenever you need me, just put it on your heart and remember me...

and I will be working continuously. And help my people there!....

[A visitor says he has been with the Gurdjieff movement.]

That’s very good; all Gurdjieff people have to come to me. Spread the rumour! That’s very good, that is one of the most precious things to be related to.

[The visitor says that he was a little afraid of Gurdjieff.]

He was that kind of man. Nothing wrong with you; he was that kind of man! He was really a dangerous master. The West has never known anyone like Gurdjieff. The East knows many people.

In the East Gurdjieff is not thought a dangerous master, but in the West he was. He was absolutely new, a phenomenon – because the West has become acquainted only with christian mystics.

Christian mystics are good people – saintly, virtuous, loving, compassionate, goody-goody. Gurdjieff is totally different, mm? – he can cut off your head! But only a man like Gurdjieff helps. Christian mystics are good to worship. They are beautiful flowers, mm? – you can worship and praise them and sing a song for them but nothing much will happen to you.

Gurdjieff is a roaring lion. You will either escape forever or you will start roaring in the same way!

His roar is to provoke your sleeping lion. So it is very natural to be afraid of gurdjieff; nothing wrong in it....

And be afraid of me too!... That is not just! Just being afraid of Gurdjieff is not just. You can have the same relationship with me too!...

That’s how things happen: they start with surprise!...

Everything is an accident while you are asleep. Accidents stop only when you become enlightened, otherwise not. In sleep you cannot expect more. How can you expect more in sleep? – everything is accidental while man is asleep.

Just the other day I was reading about a man, a very famous poet. He writes that his father was travelling in a train – he was a young man in those days – and there were five more people in the compartment. He took out his packet of cigarettes to smoke and then offered cigarettes to all, so all the six cigarettes that were there in the packet were finished. Then he got down at a station, was going out, then again started feeling to smoke. He looked, but the pocket was empty so he turned back and went to the cigarette store... and he fell in love with the woman who was working there.

She became the mother of the poet!

[A sannyasin asks if she should finish everything in the West and come to live here forever. Nothing to be worried about! says Osho. Finish everything and come, mm? And I am coming with you!]

[Another sannyasin says if he stays in his job another three years he will receive a pension, but he is not enjoying the work. Move where you feel joy, Osho says, Don’t wait for the pension – that is nothing.... ]

My whole effort here is to soon create a big alternate world, so people who cannot live in the world, who have got stuck in the world, can have some alternatives where they can start moving again.

They can be born again, can become children again, can become innocent again. And it is possible only in a new kind of commune. It is not possible in the world because the world has its own ways and you have to fit with those ways. That’s why creativity disappears sooner or later. It is like a river moving in a desert; how long can it move in a desert? Sooner or later it simply gets stuck and then divided and lost in the sands. The desert is so big that it is almost impossible to hope that the river will be able to continue to flow out of it, it is not possible.

The so-called world is a desert, it is a wasteland. We have to create small oases where people can start living the way they always wanted to – with no worry, with no financial problem on their head, and amidst people who think in the same way.

In the West the family has disappeared and it is not going to come back. Only communes can come back; the family is out of date. And without the family man is uprooted. The family cannot exist the way it used to in the past because that whole social structure is gone.

First the joint family disappeared; then came the unit family. Now that too is disintegrating, and people are left alone: nobody to be together with, nobody to understand, nobody to commune with.

One has to drag on in one’s life because one has to earn one’s living. One goes on doing things that one doesn’t like because one has to earn money. It is selling one’s life – for nothing!

you have life but no money to live.... And the problem is so complicated that people think, ’Let us do this for a few years, then we will get the pension. Then we will retire and I will do things in my own way.’ Now there are many problems involved...

First, one has to postpone living continuously. When you postpone your living for thirty years, twenty years, that very postponing becomes part of your mind, part of your structure; you learn it. You postpone for twenty years saying that when you are retired you will go to the forest and live your life – but twenty or thirty years postponing is a conditioning. You did it for thirty years – tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow – then after thirty years one day you get the pension, but that thirty years habit of tomorrow is there. You cannot drop it just like that; it will persist.

Now you will be stuck. At least up to now there was hope; there will be no hope any more. Up to this day there was hope that one day you would get the pension, you would retire. The problem of money would be solved and then you would do your things – non-utilitarian things. You would sing, you would dance, you would play the guitar, paint, or whatsoever you wanted to do – because money would not be a problem. But after retirement one suddenly feels empty because one knows only one way to live... and that is for tomorrow. Now today is there but it is empty and you cannot postpone it for tomorrow.

Retired people die very fast: they could have lived ten years more if they were employed. In the same employment where they were always miserable they could have lived ten years more. Life is lessened by at least ten years through retirement. The man may have lived ninety years; he will live only eighty. And the retired man’s life becomes a nightmare because nobody needs him any more.

He is no more important, no more significant. He is almost thrown into the junkyard. Who cares?

He starts feeling useless.

The day you feel that you are useless you have started committing suicide. It is poison. So my feeling is that vou need not waste your time.

Soon we will be moving to a bigger place far away, so you can come and just be here and do whatsoever you want to do. I would like you to be here. Good.

CHAPTER 21

21 August 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[Osho and warns a new sannyasin that much is going to happen so not to be afraid!]

It is very natural that when something really starts happening one becomes frightened, because we have become so accustomed to a life where nothing happens, so when something starts happening one gets frightened. We want it to happen, but when it really starts happening we become afraid because we have become very much accustomed to a dull and dead routine life.

We have lived so superficially that we have lost all contact with our own depth, so when something starts happening you start feeling as if you are drowning. It is exactly like drowning: one drowns in one’s own depth and then one becomes afraid. What is going to happen? Are you dying.... How will you be able to come back? And that depth is abysmal, it has no bottom to it. One can go on falling into that, and falling and falling eternally

But in fact there is nothing to be afraid of. Buddha calls that bottomless abyss ’nirvana’; it is endless nothingness. Once you have become courageous enough to go into it, by and by you disappear.

And the disappearance of you is the greatest moment in life, because here you disappear and there god starts appearing.

This is the crucifixion and the resurrection. This is the meaning of the crucifixion, and everybody has to go through the cross. It is not only a question of christ being crucified: everybody has to carry his own cross. Now this orange is going to be your cross, this mala is going to be your cross, I am going to be your cross....

All real meditation is death like One dies

but that is the only way to be born again and to be born

happen. If you become afraid it will be only delayed a little longer, that’s all. It is going to happen so why delay it ? The sooner you go into it, the better.

You have come to the most dangerous man in your life. And I am not responsible – you have come yourself! Right?

Anand means bliss, nihar means a nebula, out of which the whole existence comes. It is a creative chaos, ’nihar’. It is chaos: there is no order in it but order is pregnant in it. Order is going to happen but it is still not visible. It is a creative freedom: something is going to crystallise but all possibilities are still open. Nothing has happened yet... it is just on the way to happen. And it is just a chaos.

Stars will be born out of it, the whole existence will arise out of it, and finally the whole existence will dissolve into it again. So it is the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega...

And those who really want to be creative have to attain to this state of ’nihar’, this state of creative chaos. All creativity is out of chaos Order is very antagonistic to creativity; it kills because it gives you a straightjacket. It allows you only this and does not allow you that, it allows you only to this extent and no further beyond. It gives you commandments, and because of those commandments the spirit loses all dignity; the spirit becomes a slave.

My whole work here is to release the chaos in you again. Slowly, slowly, one has to become capable of losing control, because control is the imprisonment. By and by one has to be capable of being utterly in no discipline because all discipline is bound to give you a certain fixed routine, a certain fixed style. And all discipline is born out of the past: through discipline the past tries to dominate, the future. Through discipline the dead tries to control the living... and that is one of the most ill state of affairs: the dead dominating the living.

If you make some discipline, from where are you going to make it? You will make it out of your past experiences; there is no other way. The discipline will come from the past, it will be the quintessence of all your past experience, and then it will dominate the future which you have not known yet. So that which is no more goes on dominating that which is going to be. This is the human slavery, the mind of slavery.

One has to learn how to live in chaos, how to live without discipline, how to live without order... and there is an order! That comes each moment, it arises out of the present, it does not come from the past. There is a discipline but that discipline is not managed by you; it is a response, a spontaneous response to the reality. Each moment it is there and each moment it is gone. When the situation is no more there the response is no more there. You are again empty, again a ’nihar’, a chaos.

When you do something there arises an order naturally, you cannot do without an order, but that order arises out of the present moment and the need of the present moment. When you are not doing anything that order again disappears. It was temporary, it was momentary. It was meant only for the moment; it has no permanency in it. It does not become a fixed rule; it does not create a character.

So each moment order arises each moment it disappears and you are again left in chaos This is the characterless man is not characterless in the way people use the word. Really, the characterless man is the only man who has character but his character is alive; it is always responsible – it is out of response. Immediacy is its nature. It does not cling in his mind, it does not persist. It has no continuity: it is atomic. Such a man remains unpredictable, because life is unpredictable. How can man be predictable? – one never knows what the next moment is going to bring. Then there is great thrill and adventure. And that I would like you to become – a nihar, a creative chaos. That’s how one attains dignity.

B. F. Skinner has written a book, ’Beyond Freedom and Dignity’. And it is the right title for his philosophy because he does not believe in the inner man, he does not believe in the inner. He says that the behaviour is the man; there is no inner man. You are what you do; there is no soul in you.

He believes only in the character: all that you have done is what you are. The accumulated actions define you; you don’t have any other being, any other selfhood.

If he is right then there is no dignity for man. Man is a machine and there is no freedom, because if there is no inner man who is going to be free? Then man simply reacts. There is no real action, it is only reaction. Then there is no difference between man and animals, no difference between man and trees and no difference between man and the rock. All the differences are there only in the mechanism. Man has a superior mechanism, that’s all – a more complex mechanism, that’s all.

The rats also have the mechanism but they have a simpler mechanism: But by studying rats we can know about man; he is nothing but quantitatively more complex, that’s all. By understanding a simple organism, we can understand the complex organism; there is no qualitative difference.

To me, the dignity and the freedom consist in being chaotic. Chaos is the very soul of man. Man is capable of transcending all his actions and man is capable of doing things which cannot be predicted by studying his past. A saint can commit something which could not have been predicted; a saint can become a sinner. A sinner can become a saint; a man who has been a sinner up to this moment can take a quantum jump. His whole past will not be binding on him – he can simply slip out of it. Hc can simply say, ’Enough is enough, and I am not going to repeat any more of my past. I am going to start a new future.’ That’s the dignity and the freedom.

With Skinner, of course, there is no dignity and no freedom; with behaviourists there is no dignity and no freedom. That is the only difference between a spiritual approach about man and the materialistic approach about man. Spirituality believes that man has some transcendence. He can always do something which nobody could have predicted; he can always do something which even surprises himself.

For example, this sannyas is a quantum jump. You could not have predicted it, you had never dreamt about it. You have never thought about it, it was never an alternative in your life, but it is happening.

Let this be the beginning of many more happenings. Become more and more loose, fluid. That is the meaning of nihar.

[Osho gives a meditation to a new sannyasin.]

way that just in the middle of the palm some small hole remains. Cover the ears completely so the sound is created and listen to it with closed eyes. It will go very deep: it will shake your whole body.

You will start trembling, you will start crying; allow it. Do this every day for fifteen minutes, mm? And it will be of tremendous help. Next time when you see me, tell me what happened, mm?

Nirvan means enlightenment, and turyna means swift, sudden, fast – sudden enlightenment. It is possible, but a little more crying will have to be done! It can be stopped, but then a rock-like thing will remain in your heart.

You have always been stopping it; that’s why it is there, otherwise it would have gone. It has to be released. It is not much. Once you allow it totally... Don’t be half-hearted in it. Even if you do allow it, you go on repressing it: only a part, the tip of the iceberg comes up but the whole iceberg comes inside. It will come again and it will come again....

It is better to finish it. It is better to go into it as deeply as possible so you can come out of it. Yes, it will disappear, but it will disappear only by going through it.

[The new sannyasin says she has a shop in the West.]

So make it a place for me too! People can gather there. Make a centre also, a small corner in your shop for me, so books can be available there and people can start getting interested. That will be good. Help people to meditate a little....

Make a small comer in it for me, mm?... and convert your customers!

Deva means divine, paritosh means contentment – and let that be your fundamental attitude: all is good. Feel satisfied with everything, drop the complaining mind and let a new mind arise – the mind for gratitude, of gratitude.

Feel thankful for small things. Feel thankful for life itself, because we have not earned it. It is a gift, and we are not even thankful. We have not done anything to be here, to be alive, to be given this opportunity, yet we don’t feel thankful and we go on complaining and complaining. The mind only complains.

I have heard about a great supermarket that was celebrating its jubilee. They had decided that to whomsoever enters the store, to whoever is the first customer, they are going to give ten thousand dollars. It was a secret, it was not declared; it was just in the mind of the boss.

A woman entered. They received her with garlands and a music band and gave her a cheque for ten thousand dollars. They said that this was decided – that whosoever entered would receive this gift. Then the boss asked, ’Where were you going?’ and she said, ’I was going to the complaint department.’

And she still went! Even after getting this gift of ten thousand dollars for nothing, she still went to the moment, but because we don’t have any gratitude, we don’t enjoy them, we don’t celebrate.

Paritosh means utter contentment with life as it is, no desire that it should be otherwise.

CHAPTER 22

22 August 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin says: I have had a dream for years... It is only a feeling – I have no pictures, nothing, but it’s a feeling. There’s a feeling of death.

Osho checks his energy.]

The dream is significant and has much to convey to you. It is not just a rubbish dream; it is a good indication of something that is going to happen. It is not death, it is meditation that is going to happen. But meditation also looks like death to the mind, so the mind interprets it as death. But your energy is perfectly good... so flowing, mm? Very few people’s energy flows; many people are just frozen. You are not frozen at all; things are perfectly good.

The dream is a good dream, an auspicious dream, a very sacred dream. So enjoy it: when it comes next time enjoy it and love it and wait for it. And the day you start enjoying it, it will disappear, because then it has delivered its message; there is no need for it to come again.

One thing that can be helpful to convince your unconscious mind that the message has been received, is to lie down on your bed every night before you go to sleep, put out the light and for three minutes just think you are dying. Just go into it knowingly, consciously; create it yourself rather than the dream creating it. Create the whole situation – that you are dying, dying, dying – and within three minutes you will feel that you are almost disappearing. Don’t be worried; in that very space fall into sleep. So these three minutes have to be practised only when you are almost on the verge of sleep, not before.

First lie down on the bed then wait When you feel that now sleep is just there and that any moment has been delivered to the conscious mind. That’s what a dream is all about: an effort from your depth to inform the surface mind that something is going to happen.

Because you could not understand it, that’s why it has been repeated again and again. The moment you understand it will disappear. And it is a blessing; it is not something wrong or something evil – it is beautiful. From tonight start dying on your own!

I don’t ask whether you are worthy or not. I am in such a hurry to give. I have so much to share – I don’t care a bit whether you are worthy of receiving it or not. I am simply giving it to you because I have so much and I have to unburden myself.

The cloud is so full that it wants to rain. It does not matter whether it is desert or wasteland or fertile soil; it does not matter. The flower has bloomed and the fragrance is heavy on its heart; it has to be released. Whether somebody will appreciate it or not does not matter. I am giving to you without any condition. You are the most fortunate people ever....

Deva means divine, paritosh means contentment... and let that be your constant remembrance: contentment, contentment, contentment. Let it become like a climate around you, contentment, and you will by and by start feeling a change. Sometimes it happens, and my feeling about you is this –

that it can happen very easily.

There are people for whom even a single word can become transforming, and you are one of them.

There are people who can simply repeat ’peace, peace, peace...’ and they will become peaceful;

’silence, silence, silence...’ and with the very sound of the word, the feel, the nuance and the music of the word, they will start feeling silent. These are the people on whom mantras work. They are not few, they are many. Almost one-third of the world belongs to these people but even they have forgotten it. This one-third is the most potential.

Once you become alert about your potentiality, you can work miracles – just by an idea. As a man thinketh, the bible says, so he becomes. This is not true for all; this is only true for one-third of humanity, and of that one-third of humanity, more than seventy-five percent are women.

That’s why women are more suggestible, receptive; they can be hypnotised very easily. But this capacity to be hypnotised can be harmful, can be helpful. It can be harmful because they will be hypnotised by adolf hitler, they will be hypnotised by the beatles too; they will be hypnotised by anybody. They will shriek and scream and can become hysterical about anything. But if rightly used this very capacity can become their door to the divine.

Being suggestible means that they are very very vulnerable and their soil is fertile: any seed that falls into that soil starts growing. One has to be very alert not to allow just any kind of seed to fall in, otherwise weeds will grow... and the soil is not responsible. Any seeds that fall into it will start growing. The weeds will grow if you don’t put rosebushes there.

A person who has this capacity to be easily hypnotised is, in a way, in danger, because anything can Keep the idea of contentment... and not only the idea – support the idea by every possibility. Become contented with small things. You are thirsty and you drink a glass of water; it is so satisfying. Don’t miss that opportunity. The thirst is quenched; at the same time remember contentment. So with the water entering in you, the suggestion of contentment also flows in. With the quenching of the thirst, the idea of contentment also enters your being.

You are hungry and when you are eating and when you feel full and happy, remember contentment.

You have slept a good night’s sleep and there is great peace, satisfaction with the night’s sleep. One feels rejuvenated; remember contentment. The whole day has passed and there have been many things and you have lived one day more. In the night feel contented, and fall alseep in contentment.

So, wherever you find an opportunity to be contented... a friend comes, somebody says ’hello’ on the road, a child smiles – just use all kinds of possibilities. Then with each opportunity, the idea goes on hammering inside: contentment, contentment. And you will be able, within three months, to feel immensely contented.

CHAPTER 23

23 August 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin, who is a journalist, says he would like to change his job towards more growth oriented work, but is afraid of the insecurity. Osho assures him that any security he fancies he has now is illusory, and that real life is in insecurity – so that shouldn’t be a factor. Uncertainty is a blessing, because it opens new doors.... ]

So that’s perfectly good: be a journalist for the growth movement. And it needs many people so that many people can come to know what exactly is happening in human consciousness.

A new kind of journalism is needed. The journalism that is routine is already out of date. It is not really concerned with humanity and it goes on fulfilling juvenile needs. Murders, divorces, accidents, wars – all that is rotten and negative gets the greatest coverage. Ninety percent coverage is about the ugly, nauseous, horrible... and it is exaggerated because that is what the neurotic mind needs.

That is the neurotic mind’s food, nourishment; it cannot remain without it. It needs murder stories, it needs wars, it needs suicides; this is the news for the neurotic mind.

On the TV this mind wants to see horror films. This neurotic mind will go to the movie to see murder, lust, passion – something ugly and horrible that he always wanted to do but could not gather courage to do. So he lives through others vicariously. Somebody is murdering – he lives through the murderer. But both are the same; he becomes part of it. It is his violence that is projected there.

So the old journalism is out of date; it has no future. In the future, when the right journalism has appeared, people will simply be unable to believe why for many years these stories were written and elaborated and repeated again and again, and why people were reading all this nonsense. For what

? The hole of h manit m st ha e been mad that ill be the concl sion of f t re generations new possibilities, of new horizons. Of course it will not be very paying and it will be insecure but it is worth it. You may not be very rich but you will be enriched through it.

[A visitor says that he doesn’t know where he is.... He feels many contradictions between what you say and the life of the ashram, the organisation of the ashram.... He feels people around you are very defensive, and that makes him upset.]

So for the first: you are nowhere. And you have to start from abc. Even the first step has not been taken yet: you have to be born. And the other two are irrelevant... because these things need not be your concern. If there are contradictions between me and the ashram, that is my problem... and I am perfectly happy! That is my problem; you are not to be concerned with that.

And the third: if people are defensive that is their problem! If you are going to solve the problems of everyone then you will not be able to solve your problems. You will become insane if you start thinking about everybody’s problem – what is what and who is who and.... Don’t get into that! If you want to grow, just look at me. Forget about the ashram and about everything.

And drop your knowledge. You seem to be knowledgeable; that won’t help....

Mm mm, do a few groups, and don’t get puzzled by these things. That is none of your business.

Just listen to me and try to find a way for yourself. If you can solve your problem that is more than enough; nobody expects you to solve anybody else’s problem. And sometimes it happens that what you see as the other’s problem may just be your projection: you may be defensive and may project onto people.

My feeling is that you are afraid of sannyas. That is making you defensive and you project your defensiveness onto people.

And there is always bound to be a contradiction between the master and the organisation that exists around him, because all the people who are here are not enlightened. They exist on their plane, I exist on my plane. There is bound to be a distance, a great distance, but that is natural! The only thing that has to be seen is that they are trying their hardest to grow. It is a long, groping effort.

Many will start, few will reach. When they have reached there will be no contradiction between me and them, but on the way it is natural.

My suggestion is that you be completely unconcerned about these things. Just do a few groups, mm? and think more about your problems and bring your problems. When the river is flowing by, don’t be worried that others are thirsty. If you are thirsty, drink! Mm? Good!

[A sannyasin, who is leaving, says that she feels there is something inside her that has decided never to surrender.... ]

Who is it who decides never to surrender?... It is not you, that’s certain; it is your ego. It is everybody’s problem. The ego will resist, give you a great fight not to surrender, because your surrender means the ego’s death It is surrender for you it is death for the ego so how can the ego against it. Now, a love is growing towards me; the ego is afraid and the ego is jealous. Now there is a competition, a competitor has arisen. Sooner or later you will have to decide – either the ego or Osho. The ego is naturally trembling and afraid that now there are less and less chances for it to survive. So the less chances there are, the more trouble it will give to you. But if you are alert it is going to go.

It is happening to everybody: it goes slowly, slowly. A moment comes when the ego comes to understand that now there is no way. It is better to commit suicide; it will be more restful to commit suicide than to go on fighting.

So there is nothing to be worried about and nothing unnatural is happening to you.

I will look after it. This is between me and your ego – you need not be.... mm? You can simply stand by the side! I will take care.

Keep this (a box) with you and come back. And whenever you need me or whenever the ego is troubling you too much, just put it on your heart and remember me, mm? Good!

CHAPTER 24

24 August 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin says that during a group she began to speak in a language she knew nothing about.

She has a fever afterwards. Since the group it has been happening many times to her. Osho tells her to go into it while he checks her energy.]

You have stumbled upon a beautiful method of meditation. It has been used in a few christian communities in the past! It is of immense good. We were using it here too; we have changed it just now (the devavani meditation). But it is of immense help; don’t think anything wrong about it. Just start doing it every day at least for one hour.

Close your door, sit in the middle of the room – exactly in the middle. It will be good if you are naked; be naked or have very loose clothes so the whole body is free, no constriction – and then start it. And enjoy it... Let it become almost orgasmic. You will have an orgasm through it. Your whole body will start moving, gestures will come, postures will come, and your body will have deep sexual orgasm through it. But don’t be afraid at all; you will be immensely benefited. Go on talking and really get animated; don’t be just lukewarm. Become passionate about it, talk in passion. And this gibberish will become your greatest meditation.

But when it happens on its own everybody thinks that something is wrong – that some spirit is there or some evil thing has happened. Has some evil possessed them or what? – because it is so... Yes, you are right! You say ’cuckoo’; it is so cuckoo but it is so beautiful!

If you were not here and it had happened anywhere else they would have thought you had gone insane. But it is one of the most ancient methods. You must have heard about it.

comes back to consciousness. The milieu helps it to come back. You must have practised it and you must have practised it very deeply.

Just get passionate about it and happy about it and let it be a celebration... and do it every day. Do it for three weeks and then report to me. Those three weeks will change you utterly. Mm? something great is going to happen through it!...

Don’t worry! Even if it comes in the group allow it. And you have my approval that you are not cuckoo, mm? Good!

[A visitor, who is leaving, says she is afraid of many things... the aeroplane, returning to the West, men smiling at her, her own anger... she is unsure whether to finish her teaching job.]

I can understand your fear.... Something is happening to you; that’s why the fear. Something that you always wanted to happen is stirring. This is just the beginning, just glimpses of it, and you are afraid that back home you will lose track of it again. It is not really the aeroplane, it is not really the going back. It is that something joyful is happening to you or you have the hope that it is around the corner – and that you have never felt; for the first time you are feeling hopeful.

[She says she was feeling joyful after a group, but when she heard a sudden noise, she became fearful again.]

Mm mm, that is there. That is there only because the joy has not happened, so you are afraid. Fear has many causes and for different people, different causes. For you, especially, the cause is that you are afraid to die; you are afraid that something may go wrong. And your joy has not happened yet. You have not lived your life yet, you have not bloomed yet. If something goes wrong – the hotel burns or the plane falls or is hijacked or something – and you have not attained anything, your life will be a sheer wastage.

Your fear is coming because you are not feeling any fulfillment the way you are; the things that have happened up to now are not fulfilling. Your fear is coming because joy has not happened. Yes, there may have been moments, but those moments simply make you more thirsty for joy and nothing else.

They create even more anxiety – that it is possible and it is not happening. Because you have seen glimpses. If you had not even seen those glimpses then there would have been no fear: you would have accepted that this is the way life is, there is no more to it. But you know that there is more to it.

And you are afraid that something may be cut short, that you may lose track of it, that you will be no more in the body or will die or something else will happen.

When a person attains to real joy he becomes completely unafraid of death – because there is nothing to be afraid of. He is fulfilled. He has sung his song, he has danced his dance, he has loved, he has been loved. There is fulfillment, there is contentment. If death comes it is perfectly okay; there is no fear. But when nothing has happened and the bud has not opened, naturally fear arises that if somebody comes and cuts the bud and the flower has been missed...

divine moment – when one attains to one’s self, when one comes to know one’s self. That moment is called ’divine moment’. the moment of realisation. That moment is not part of time at all; it is timeless. In fact to call it a moment is not right, but language is not adequate. It is a momentless moment; it is just the gap between two moments, just the small interval. One moment has passed and another is coming, and just in between – that small door. It is timeless... it is part of eternity.

From that small door one enters into oneself. And I would like you, while you are away, to just wait for this moment. Just sit silently and do nothing; every day for at least forty minutes just sit silently.

Close the doors, make the light very dim, a candle is perfectly good, and having a certain kind of fragrance will be helpful, whatsoever you like. Incense is good, but the same incense, and a very dim light, candlelight; it should be neither bright light nor dark. And sit relaxed, if it is not too cold, naked. If it is too cold then just have some loose thing thrown over your body. Just sit silently with closed eyes waiting for that moment, not doing anything at all.

If thoughts come, let them come, let them pass. No need to fight with them, no need to tell them to stop; remain indifferent, just a witness. And within these three months some day you will have a glimpse of that moment; then you will understand the meaning of your name.

This word ’nimeesha’ is a very significant word. In english there is no synonymous word for it, that’s why I am translating it as ’moment’. If you can do this meditation at exactly the same time and in the same room, that will be the best. If it is not possible then you can change the time or change the room, but first try to make it absolutely regular so that the body/mind, both are ready for it. It is really waiting for that time: your body is waiting, your mind is waiting, you are waiting.When all these three meet in a certain wavelength, then that moment happens.

One should not be hungry and one should not be too full. One should not be too tired, too sleepy; these things have to be taken care of. So if you find it is good in the morning, then in the morning. If by the evening you are too tired, sleepy, and you will fall asleep, then do it in the morning. If you feel that the evening is perfectly good, you are not tired, you can do it in the evening.

And don’t be hungry, because when you are feeling hungry the consciousness goes into the stomach; it roams there. When you are too full, when you have eaten too much, one starts feeling sleepy; one feels like falling into unconsciousness. Take a shower and sit silently with a certain fragrance, with a certain light; just sit doing nothing, waiting for something to penetrate.

It comes just out of the blue. You cannot bring it, you cannot pull it, you cannot manage it. You cannot do anything about it: you can just be in a receptive mood. So whenever that receptivity happens, it comes. And once you have tasted that moment you know the way to Then any time you can fall into that wavelength. Again you can invite it and it will be coming.

That moment by and by starts growing, becomes bigger. bigger, bigger; a time comes when it starts overlapping your whole being.

And don’t be afraid – just go, mm? We have a centre there.... So go to the centre... meet orange I act as if I’m above what’s happening... outside the group as well, I feel as if I’m only letting a very few people into my heart and with the great majority I’m very superficial.

He also says he has done many groups in the ashram. Osho checks his energy.]

Nothing to be worried about, not at all. Simply don’t be bothered about the feedback that you have been getting.

[The group leader] is right – that you have a certain perceptivity, an intellectual understanding, and because of that understanding people will look superficial. But you don’t actually experience at the heart centre... but that is going to happen. Don’t make it a worry and don’t make it a problem.

This same perception that is in the intellect right now will slowly, slowly, seep into the heart. I cannot say that same thing to everybody but to you I am saying it – that this same perceptivity that is in the head right now, slowly, slowly, will get into your heart, because there is no barrier between the head and the heart.

There are people who have great barriers. When the barriers exist it is difficult; first the barriers have to be broken. You don’t have any barriers, any walls. It is true – your perception is in the intellect, but there is no wall so it will seep through; it will go automatically into the heart. You need not be worried at all, don’t think about this problem. And now there is no need to do any groups, mm? Just enjoy being here... meditate and just enjoy. And it is going to happen, mm? – some day listening in the talk in the morning it will happen! Good.... Nothing to be worried about!

[A sannyasin, who is leaving, says: I just have a very hard time surrendering totally. I feel my own strength and I like to rely on it, on who I am, and so I’ve always felt very much to rely on myself. It’s very hard for me to give up to someone else, in a lot of ways.]

But I’m not somebody else!...

It’s no problem. I’m your deepest being; there is no conflict. If you are really for yourself, surrender is simple – because I am not, in any way, standing against you and I am not in any way imposing any ideals on you. I am not giving you any programme of how you should be. I am just a support: whatsoever you want to be you can be. I am not even directing you to go to the north or to the east or to the west; wherever you are going I’m simply blessing you.

So I can understand: surrender is difficult and there are so many pseudo-gurus in the world that it is good that it is difficult. Otherwise you will surrender anywhere and that will be a sheer wastage of your time, your life energy....

But with me there is no problem. The problem is not there because I am not standing against you in any way. I am absolutely for you, more than you are for yourself. If there is going to be any conflict between me and you, the conflict will be that I am more for you than you are. So the more you understand me, the easier it will become. It is only a question of time and understanding. But it is CHAPTER 25

25 August 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[Deva Nasti – divine nothing. The past is something, Osho says – solid, concrete, there. And the future is absolutely uncertain but you can create a kind of certainty that is projection, desires, dreams. Between these two the present remains out of our reach. The past is, the future is – the present is not. That is the meaning of nasti.

The present is so empty of content, Osho continues, that we cannot say it is. The mind cannot function in the present; that is why it is afraid of the present. Hence all the great teachings of the world insist on the need of being in the present, because if you are in the present, the mind cannot be. the present moment is really nothing but emptiness – what buddha calls ’shunya’ or hindus call

’nasti’.... ]

Only one modern thinker, Jean-Paul Satre, comes close to it. He says, ’Man is the being who brings nothingness into the world, because it is only man who can be aware of nothingness.’ Trees cannot conceive of it; animals cannot think about it. Nothingness is an absolutely human phenomenon. It is the dignity of human consciousness that it can conceive of nothingness. and really a man becomes a man only when he can conceive of nothingness, emptiness, a state of non-being.

Being is surrounded by nothingness, and deep inside the being at the very centre there is nothingness. Outside being there is nothingness; that is what we call death. We are surrounded by death, and deep inside is the state that we call samadhi – another death, far deeper than the first.

At the centre there is nothingness, at the very core there is nothingness. It is just as if you peel an onion: you go on peeling, peeling and suddenly nothingness is left. If you peel a human being, at the very heart there is just nothingness left That’s why people are afraid to go in because to go in

will attain to ultimate death... and through that ultimate death one comes to know the eternal. Only through nothingness do we approach the totality; only through nothingness do we disappear and god appears. So, I am giving you a very very meaningful name, ’nasti’.

It is only man who can say no. No other animal can say no; they don’t know no. And because human beings can say no, their yes is total. Animals never rebel, they never protest. They remain part of the unconscious existence. It is only man who rebels, who can say no – and by saying no his yes becomes important; it has significance.

Before one can say yes to god, one will have to say many nos to the world. That too is the meaning of your name: divine no. One has to say no to the scripture, one has to say no to the orthodox, dull and dead structure. One has to say no to the armour that surrounds one; one has to say no to the politician, to the priest. One has to say no to the parents, to the society, to the education. One has to say many nos; only then does a moment come when one can say yes to god. Through many nos comes the yes. And if you don’t say these nos, you will never come to that beautiful yes, that total acceptance, that welcome, that utter welcome.

So the real religion consists of two things: saying no to all that has been taught – saying no to all that you have learned, saying no to all conditionings – and then becoming capable of saying yes to that which cannot be taught, which one can never learn, which cannot be conditioned. So it is a double-edged sword....

To become a sannyasin means to say many nos so that one can become capable of saying the absolute yes.

[The new sannyasin says she has never done groups, and only a little meditation.]

That’s good, mm? It is good to be a clean slate then things happen more easily with me; much work is saved. Otherwise first I have to destroy too much!...

It will be good if you can go through a few groups. They will be of great value. And it will be too early to leave. If you can stay a little longer you will become more strong as a sannyasin arid you will be able to cope with the west. Otherwise it will be difficult, you will be too fragile. So my suggestion is that you be here a little longer so that you can do a few more groups. Mm? and I will tell you: first do these two groups, then I will tell you. Good.

Prem means love, babula means madness – love madness. And that is the only sanity in the world, the only sanity; there is no other sanity. A man who is not capable of becoming mad in love is insane, is pathological, is neurotic.He cannot be playful, he cannot put his so-called serious games aside.

In his life there is no value, no significance, higher than money, power, prestige. It will be impossible for him to have any contact with god.

The first contact with god is through love. It is only in love spaces one becomes aware that life has much more in it than appears on the surface. Only in a love space does one enter into the temple explain a few things which cannot be explained without him. If they can be explained without him, thinkers will be very happy to drop that concept.

When Copernicus wrote his thesis about the universe he didn’t mention god in it. When somebody asked, he said, ’That is an unnecessary hypothesis. I can explain the universe without it, so what is the point? The lesser hypotheses used, the better. Why use unnecessary hypotheses?’

But for a lover god is not a hypothesis. It is his existence, it is his being. It is only through god that love is possible. So through love god becomes possible. Or, we can say that love is a glimpse of god in this mire of the world, a ray of light in the darkest night. The ray comes from a far, faraway star... but it enters into the darkest night. Through that one ray of light one becomes aware that light exists, that there is a hope, that one can hope.

And I call it madness because it is illogical. Love has no logic, it is utterly absurd. It cannot prove anything. It knows, but it cannot prove – and people who can prove do not know. This is a dilemma.

People who can prove know not and people who know cannot prove.

Somebody asked Ramakrishna, ’Have you got any proof of god?’ Ramakrishna said, ’Look into my eyes, that’s all. There is no other proof. If I am the proof, then okay; otherwise there is no other proof.’ A saint cannot give any other proof, he cannot argue. it is a superb madness but immensely fulfilling.

So I am giving you a very dangerous name... and giving it with a great trust that it is possible you can become a madness of love. And that will be your flowering.

[Osho suggests she do some groups. She can only stay a short time but says she will try to postpone her leaving for another week.]

Stay as long as you can, that will be good, so you can have a little more nourishment... you can drink me a little more. And after sannyas it becomes very easy. Without sannyas, even if you are here in some way you are not here. You remain a stranger, you remain protective and you remain defensive and a little afraid.

Once sannyas has happened you enter inside me; now there is no fear. Now you can feel my love without any protection, so after sannyas a new kind of rapport becomes possible.

My suggestion is that you stay as long as you can. And next time you come stay a little longer.

[The new sannyasin asks about her father, who told her he did not wish to see her any more because she has changed, he doesn’t like some of the things she has now chosen to do.]

Don’t be in a hurry. You are in the right direction, and if he suffers because of it it is his problem. You are not here just to fulfill people’s expectations and styles. And finally it will be helpful for him too, because if he demands a certain kind of role from you, the role of a daughter, that simply means that he also hangs and depends on you; he is a dependent It is not only that he wants you to depend on to him that now you have become a sannyasin and not only are you not playing any roles, you have taken a totally new turn. Write about sannyas, write about meditations, send him a few books, and just don’t bother, mm?

Within six to eight months he will become interested again – and that will be a kind of meeting. You will have to wait, because when he is rid of his father role only then can you meet on an equal plane and then only is love possible. Between roles, love is impossible. You play the role of the daughter, he plays the role of the father, so two roles go on playing with each other and the real persons remain far away, uninvolved.

You will be enriched, he will be enriched... but it will be a little painful; you will have to wait. Don’t be in a hurry, otherwise he will force you to fall into the role because he will see that you are also dependent, you cannot live without him. That means that you will be back in the role and he will remain in his role... and that is not going to help either.

Sometimes one has to be a little hard too. And once these roles disappear he will find you for the first time and you will find him for the first time, and then a new kind of love will be possible, so wait.

[She then asks: I love two different men and both of them want me to choose between them. I don’t know what to do. The first man she has been with for six years and he is more like family or friend.

The second she met a year ago, he is more like a lover and new type of friend.]

I understand. Sometimes it happens and it will be happening in the future more and more to more and more people. It was never a problem in the past because the past was very obsessed with monogamy. The problem never arose or even if it arose it never came to light. Monogamy was the rule, so either people followed the rule whether they loved each other or not, whether there was thrill, adventure or not, whether there was any romance or not.... They were settled: it was secure, comfortable, a good family atmosphere.

And sometimes if it did happen that somebody fell in love with somebody else, then that was to be kept secret. It was rare, and that was also part of the whole monogamy game. But really monogamy is destructive. It does not allow all dimensions of your being to flower. One should love as many people as possible because each different person is a unique gift of god. In a future world when love is completely free of jealousy that will be possible. Once more understanding grows people will be loving many, many people for different reasons, and there will be no conflict.

In fact there is no conflict in this. You love both in different ways – one is a friend and the other is a lover, you cherish the friendship and you cherish the love. But it will be difficult for them to understand. It will be very difficult, because throughout the past man has been conditioned in such a way that he cannot conceive that love can be shared or that there can be two kinds of love; that is impossible to conceive of. And it is too much against the male ego.

The male ego starts feeling as if he is not sufficient or he is not male enough or he is not a good lover. That’s why the need has arisen that you have chosen the other – so they will say.

If you ask my opinion – because both are male chauvinists, so both are the same type. Choose the third! Otherwise the same trouble will be there, and if you have to choose between the two and you cannot choose the third, then choose the second. Be always in favour of the new – because the old you have known for six years; now what else is going to happen? Mm? the possibility is exhausted.

Six years is more than enough to know a person; why not know a new person?

So if you want to change between the two, choose the second. If you really want to choose a man, then both are not... Because the second will sooner or later create the same trouble: if you start falling in love with somebody else, the same thing will happen.

Always choose love, and any possibility that gives more facility for love to grow has to be chosen.

That’s why I say that the third will be the best, the second, the next best.

And don’t hang, choose, because hanging is bad; being indecisive is bad. That creates a division in the mind. And if you are indecisive for too long, that becomes your nature – and love is such an important thing that one should not remain indecisive too long; otherwise it cuts the heart into two parts.

But my feeling about you is – that’s why I have given you the name Prem Babula – that you cannot be happy in any monogamy. You would like a more free kind of love and you would like to love many more people. So it is better not to be confined to any relationship.

In fact, people who are satisfied with one relationship are dull people, very dull people, insensitive people. It is as if a person goes to see the same movie again and again; every day he is again going to see the same movie. Or he sings the same song or plays the same record every day. How can he be very rich? His life will be a repetitive life, a very dull life.

If one is sensitive, one would like variety, in everything one would like variety. One would like to see the whole world and one would like to see many more people, because each person is such a unique gift of god that he has something nobody else has. That something you can see only through him; that aspect of god is revealed only through him, through nobody else.

This is my understanding about your heart, so keep it in mind – that whenever you feel confined, there is no need to be. All security can be dropped, all comfort and convenience can be dropped, but love should never be dropped and one should never lose one’s freedom.

Now, both are trying to make you a prisoner. From my standpoint neither loves you; both love their egos. If either of them loved you, he would allow you to love as many people as you want, because he would like to see you happy. Why not? – if you can be happy with somebody else tonight, go and be happy; there is no problem in it. If somebody really loves you then you have an intrinsic value and he has immense respect for you. How can he cripple you or how can he force anything on you?

– do this or he is finished with you; either choose him or choose the other, otherwise he is finished with you.

They don’t know what love is but that’s the situation So remember when it happens again that you Good!

[A sannyasin is leaving for the West. Osho asks after her companion, who is at present in jail for two years.]

But he is fine? (she nods) That’s good. He can use the time: there is no more beautiful a place than a prison. Write that to him, mm? A prison can be used immensely – because you are protected from the world; even a rich person is not so protected. The whole world is outside, everything is settled and life is a perfect discipline. All that can be used for meditation – and there is nothing else to do!

So tell him to use the time... and he can come out very much benefited....

This whole world is a gaol! We are all in gaol! It is just our idea that gaol is a bad place to be, but there are far worse places to be.

And all are prisoners here.... Somebody is a prisoner in his money and somebody is a prisoner in his power and somebody is a prisoner in something else – in his family; somebody is a prisoner as a husband and somebody as a wife. All are prisoners here... so nothing to be worried about. He is in a small prison, that’s all. These people are in a bigger prison.

And all these nations are big prisons. Whenever you cross the boundary you know that it is a prison.

[A couple talk about their tempestuous love affair.]

(To the woman) He is not the domestic kind – no!... A wild animal! That’s very good! But you are not domestic either So let it continue – it is perfectly good. On and off it is good, but don’t do physical violence to each other; that you have to drop. At least after six months that has to be dropped now, mm? Or is it also necessary?...

Physical violence has to be dropped. Whenever you don’t feel good, say goodbye. There is no need to be physically violent; after six months there is no need. In the beginning it is okay. But now whenever you feel good, be together; whenever you don’t feel good, just say goodbye. This much understanding should happen – that there is no need to beat each other, and... it’s not good.

(To the man) Who starts it? Who takes the initiative – you or her?

[The man says: I do.... I feel she talks too much and I don’t feel good.]

So she defeats you in talking?... Because that happens only if the woman is a great talker; then the man cannot do anything else! He has to beat her otherwise she will go on and on! Yes, that’s right!...

Whenever she starts talking too much, you talk gibberish. You know gibberish? Talk gibberish – and in that you can defeat her easily. But make it a point that you are not to start the violence. If she wants to hit, let her, but you are not to start it... and she will not hit you.

But I can understand your trouble

Women can sometimes drive you nuts! Whenever you feel that non-violently, mm? Very good!

[A sannyasin says that during a workshop she went through a rebirth process and then just started screaming. Since then the top of her head is really tender.

Osho checks her energy.]

It is something good. Nothing to be worried about. It is just that energy has reached that centre for the first time, so it is tender.

It is better that you avoid having people touch it. If somebody who is on a higher plane than you touches it, it will be beautiful. If somebody who is on a lower plane than you touches it it will be very destructive. And it is very difficult to find people who are on a higher plane; it is better to avoid having it touched at all.

You can use a skullcap, mm? – it will be good.

In many traditions the cap was used particularly for this reason. Hindus down the ages used to cut all their hair but they would leave a bunch of hairs just exactly on the seventh centre to protect it.

Jews have been using the skullcap. It is just to protect the seventh centre, because if you pray too long it starts functioning. Then it becomes very receptive too and can be disturbed. In the east when you go to the master, he will touch your head when he blessed you... but it is good from a higher source of energy.

It is better not to be touched by everybody and anybody. Soon that will start functioning more solidly; then this trouble will disappear. Right now that centre is very tender.

And one thing will be helpful – you can stand on your head; that will be very helpful, sirshasana.

That was also invented for certain purposes; one of the purposes is this. When the energy is flowing towards the head it is against the gravitation, so it is difficult. If you stand on your head then you take the help of the gravitation and energy can flow very forcibly. So the work that will be happening within a year can happen within a month. Much energy can go there and become such a solid crystallisation that there will be no trouble: anybody can touch you and you will not feel anything. It just needs to be strong.

So if you can stand on your head, that will be very helpful; you can learn it and start using a skullcap.

I will find one for you!

CHAPTER 26

26 August 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[Osho gives a three-year-old girl sannyas. The mother says her daughter wants to ask Osho about dying. She wants Osho to tell her where everything goes when it dies.]

That’s very good.... All children are interested in death; it is one of the natural curiosities. But rather than answering them – because all answers will be false...

So never answer – just say that you don’t know, that we will die and we will see. And let that be a very very tacit understanding about all those things for which you don’t know the answers.

When a child asks anything that you don’t know accept your ignorance. Never feel that acceptance of ignorance can be harmful; it never is. Parents always think that to accept that we don’t know will be harmful, our images will fall down before the child, but in fact just the opposite is the case. Sooner or later the child is going to find that you never knew and still you answered and you answered as if you knew. And the day it is recognised, the child will feel that you have been cheating, and then all respect disappears. Sooner or later the child is bound to find that the parents are as ignorant as anybody else, as powerless as anybody else, as groping in the dark as anybody else... but they pretended – and that pretension is very destructive. So whenever there is something you don’t know, say ’I don’t know; I’m searching and seeking.’

And death is one of those things about which nothing can be said except one thing – that we go back home, we go to the same place from where we have come. We don’t know either. We come from some unknown source and we go back to that unknown source. Death is the completion of the circle, but both ends, the beginning and the end, are hidden in mystery.

when the bird was inside the room. We had seen the bird entering from one window and escaping from another window; we don’t know from where or to where.

And this is the state of the whole of life. We see a child is born; the bird has entered – from where nobody knows. And then one day a person is dead; the bird has flown. And life is just between birth and death... a small passage.

Make the child aware of the mystery. Rather than giving the answer it is better to make the child aware of the mysterious that’s all around, so the child starts feeling more awe, more wonder. Rather than giving a flat answer, it is better to create an enquiry. Help the child to be more curious, help the child to be more enquiring. Rather than giving the answer, make the child ask more questions. If the child’s heart becomes enquiring, that’s enough; that’s all parents can do for the child. Then the child will seek his or her own answers in his or her own way. Never give answers. That has been one of the most dangerous things that man has practised down the ages, the greatest calamity – that we are very arrogant when we give answers; we lose all humbleness. We forget that life remains unknown

– something ’x’. We live it and yet it remains unknown; we are in it and yet it remains unknown.

Its unknowability is something that seems to be fundamental. We have known many things but the unknowability remains the same – untouched. Man has progressed in knowledge much, much is known every day; thousands of research papers go on being added to human knowledge, thousands of books go on being added. But still the fundamental remains the same. Before the fundamental we are humble and helpless.

So help her to feel the mystery more and more, mm?

Deva means divine, paradha means mercury.... Mercury is a symbol of constant change, of aliveness, of flux, of liquidity... and these are all the qualities of a sannyasin. A sannyasin should be like mercury – never predictable, never confined by any structure.

A sannyasin is absolute freedom. You cannot catch hold of it, you cannot keep it in your fist. There is no way to imprison that quality of consciousness; it is utter freedom....

[A new sannyasin tells Osho she is a salesman in the West.]

Salesman? Start selling me too!...

It is needed!...

It is needed... many more people are hungry and they need it. It is very essential. Millions are missing it and they don’t know how to find; they don’t know where to move. In fact they don’t even know whether they need it or not.

The greatest problem is that man is unaware of his own basic need. If you know that you are hungry you will do something- to find something and you will find something or other, but if you are not even aware of your hunger you are going to die.

the hunger and his mind. That’s what has happened between our need for god and our mind. A lingering suspicion is felt that something is missing... but what is it? By and by we start becoming adjusted to this feeling that something is missing. We tend to forget it because it is inconvenient and uncomfortable.

It is needed. You will become my walking salesman! That’s why I create sannyasins. The purpose is to send them to people who are hungry and who have forgotten completely that they are hungry. Just seeing you, seeing your joy and seeing your happiness, something will start stirring in their hearts.

They will start enquiring, and once they enquire, they are caught. That very enquiry starts their journey. If we can help people just to enquire, that’s enough. Then they start groping. Something clicks and their minds start feeling their need; then they start knowing what is missing.

In the ancient times it was never so. Everybody was aware that god was missing and everybody was trying and searching and finding. Now people are still trying but they try something else – a good house, a good job, more money, this and that, and they think these are the things that are missing.

Once they have these things there will be no problem. But they are living in a fool’s land.

Once these needs are fulfilled, suddenly for the first time there is the real problem. Now they have a good house, a good family, a secure job, money, everything. Suddenly everything falls flat and they recognise that the thing that was missing is still missing. It is missing even more so, because now all is there that they used to think would be a fulfillment. It is there and there is no fulfillment.

Nothing fails like success in the world: once you succeed you have come to the brink of failure.

Those who are not successful can go on hoping but what is there for the successful to hope for?

what is there for a Rockefeller to hope for? He has all that can be hoped for... more than he could have ever dreamed. Now what?

That’s why it happens that when people are a little richer they become religious... when a society becomes a little affluent. It is not just accidental that I have more Germans from Europe than anybody else – because they are now the richest people in Europe. It is not accidental. When there is richness, suddenly one starts feeling that richness won’t do; then the real need is felt.

So Germany needs many salesmen and many saleswomen, mm?

[Osho explains the meaning of Prem Neelesh – god of the sky of love. And love has the quality of the sky – the same depth, the same infinity, unboundedness, the same purity.... ]

Millions of things happen but the sky remains unpolluted. Everything else becomes polluted – the air becomes polluted, the water becomes polluted. There is only one thing in existence which remains unpolluted – the sky. Because it is not; it is just a name for emptiness, a name for space, spaciousness. So clouds come and go, and the sky remains untouched.

That is also the quality of love. It is the only thing which is incorruptible, which no poison can destroy.

And it is not that clouds don’t come – they come. Jealousy comes, that’s a cloud; possessiveness comes that is a cloud Anger comes hatred comes

these are clouds And sometimes the clouds

about it. The sky behind remains there, always virgin; its virginity cannot be destroyed. Clouds come and go but there is something which never comes and never goes – that is the sky. And that’s what love is.

The experience of love is liberating and the experience of love gives you infinity – an experience, a taste, of infinity. So become more and more like the sky and like love. Be less and less identified with the clouds, with moods, whims, ideas, emotions, sentiment; become less and less identified.

The day that one suddenly shifts one’s whole consciousness from the clouds to the sky is a day of great realisation.

And both are there; it is only a question of emphasis. You can see both – both alternatives are always possible. So always seek the infinite, look for the infinite, and beware of the finite because the finite is only momentary. It is only tentative, it is arbitrary; it is accidental. The infinite is essential, and with the essential there is joy; with the accidental there is misery. If you get too attached to the accidental you will be in misery because the accidental cannot remain forever.

That which remains and remains and which there is no way to lose – that is what has to be searched for.

[A sannyasin who is doing the encounter group says: A lot of fear coming up, a lot of anger coming up... just everything. It’s been very exciting.]

Mm mm, it is good when one starts becoming more alive. When one starts becoming more alive these things come up. They will go, they are not going to stay long; just don’t repress them again.

Because we go on repressing, we go on carrying them as a substratum. Encounter must have broken some layer and things have started coming out. It is pus oozing out, but it has to be thrown out. Once one is free of pus, one is heathy and whole. Then life has a new beginning and is far more grounded.

Far more positively one can start... because these are all negative emotions. If we go on carrying a lot of negative emotions underneath then our life remains negative. At the most we can pretend that we are not negative. We can smile and we can have a mask, but in fact you are fooling yourself because behind your smile you know there is no smile... and it hurts. When you say ’I am okay’, you know you are not okay, and it hurts. When you say ’Everything is beautiful’, you know that you are using a lie... just to save face. By and by one becomes very accustomed to these lies and then they don’t even hurt because one is not even conscious of what one is saying.

All those negativities go on moving in your blood, in your heartbeat, in your breathing, so whatsoever you do, even with good wishes, the consequences are not good. Even if you love your anger will affect your love – although it is hidden. You may not be angry with your friend, with your beloved, you may never show it, but it has its own way of coming in.

Anything negative carried in the system makes life sad, a joyless affair. Then there is no excitement and no ecstasy; one simply lives a routine life, a middle-class life, a bourgeois life. Just because one By and by all aliveness disappears; one becomes frozen, cold... a stone. Stones don’t bloom and don’t flower and no fragrance ever comes. And life is worthwhile only when there is fragrance, when there is a kind of dance... when one is so happy that one can thank god... when the gratitude is real, not just a routine prayer. When the gratitude is out of the heart, one can really say ’I am thankful because you gave me a chance to live and to see and to hear and to be.’

One great Indian poet, Rabindranath, was dying. He was a rare man – particularly in the east where people are very life-negative, where all the religions have been teaching life-negation, where people have been taught for centuries that life is a punishment, that because of your past karmas you are thrown into life as a punishment; when your punishment is over you will go back and then you will never come to life again.

This man, Rabindranath, was dying and a monk came to see him. He said, ’Pray to god that he should not give you any more life. Pray, because this last prayer is meaningful.’

Rabindranath opened his eyes and said, ’Stop all this nonsense! I am praying because he gave me such a beautiful life. I am asking that it be given to me again. I am so grateful! What nonsense are you talking? Life was immensely beautiful, and if there was misery it was because of me – I did not know how to live it; next time I will know better. If there was anything that was wrong, it was not because of life; it was just because of me. I was foolish, that’s why there was misery. Not that life is misery; it was just my foolishness. If I suffered, I suffered because of myself; that’s my responsibility.

I cannot complain. At this moment when I am dying, how can I complain? How can I ask not to be born again? That will be the greatest complaint against god!’

... And I love this man! This is how it should be!

If you have really lived a life of song and dance and celebration you will thank god from the very bottom of your heart. And this is the paradox – that those who can thank god deeply disappear: they don’t come again. This is the paradox. If somebody asks me I will say that this monk will have to come back and Rabindranath will not. There is no need: he has learned the lesson.

His being is transformed. That’s why he can unconditionally thank god and he can say, ’If you send me a thousand and one times, I will still be thrilled. Your life is so beautiful, your gift was so immensely precious – how can I thank you? My debt is infinite; I cannot repay it.’

This man is not going to come back. There is no need for him because there is nothing else to learn. He has learned joy, he has learned celebration. He has learned thankfulness, he has learned gratitude – what else is there to learn? He has learned prayer....

So let those negative emotions come up – don’t repress them. And come back again; whenever you can manage, come back!

[A sannyasin who is leaving says that she has separated from her husband and has two children.

The older one, aged twelve, is against anything new which she has done. They are staying with her him see this difference – that since you came back from india you have become more loving – that’s all, and that will prepare him. Next time when you come, he himself will ask. Don’t you say anything: if he asks, then bring him. And once he is here things will change.

Just meditate and be loving, and if he sometimes enquires about what it is, you can tell him but never in any way persuade him, never! Let him be persuaded of his own accord. He seems to be a strong child and the way to win a strong person is never to go direct, never, otherwise he will become more defensive and will shrink more and will become aggressive against you.

Just be as if you are not interested in any way in converting him, then he will come; he will become interested. Then he will start enquiring. Take books, leave the books in his room so he can see.

Play the tapes so if he wants to listen he can, but never in any way give him the hint that you are interested in his conversion, no; otherwise he will become very very stubborn and can create trouble.

My feeling is that if you are a little aware and without any interference on your part, he will relax. And it is good that he should be helped to relax, because that will become his whole life’s pattern.

If he is only twelve... And these are the most important days of his life. If he does not change before fourteen then that will remain his style of life. Once the child’s sexuality has become mature then things become difficult to change. So whatsoever he is at the time of sexual maturity he will remain; one tends to remain that.

People’s mental age remains near about fourteen. They never grow beyond that, very few grow beyond that. The body goes on growing; the mind stops. For all practical purposes nature no more helps you to grow. Nature’s purpose is fulfilled by the time a child is ready biologically to produce; nature’s interest is only in that. Once the child is ready to give birth to another child, nature is no more interested; nature’s work is done. Now, if you want to grow you will have to go on your own.

After the age of fourteen if somebody grows it is an individual growth, it is a spiritual growth. Up to fourteen it is biological growth... but millions of people remain near about fourteen. They never take on any other growth beyond that which nature gives them; they are simply stuck there.

So this is a very pregnant time for the child. Simply be non-interfering. It will be difficult for you, but if you love the child then become absolutely non-interfering. Yes, make everything available so if he wants to he can use it. But don’t even hint. If he feels that you will be happy by his coming to india, he will never come. If he feels it is his happiness to come – you are not concerned at all, you don’t care – then he will become interested.

One has to be very very intelligent with children because they are intelligent people. So, just be loving, be helpful, and wait. My feeling is that he will come. I will start working on him through you!

[A sannyasin who has completed some groups, says she has started losing, misplacing, her belongings... ]

It must be that you have just become too happy! It happens... because to remember things one unhappy it is very difficult to lose money; one remembers perfectly. But when one is happy one can lose; one tends to forget the non-essential. It happens to many people – this is not accidental. Mm ?

when you are feeling very floating, happy, joyous, you tend to lose your materialist’s consciousness.

That is a materialist’s consciousness that keeps you alert about where your moneybag is and where your passport is.

It is a good indication.... You will have to learn a new kind of awareness, non-materialistic. Not that you are concerned with money and that’s why you remember it, no. That is not the right reason to remember it, but one has to remember everything that one is doing. Just as part of training, a discipline for awareness you will have to learn that. Do you follow me? If you are too money-minded, you need not be attentive; you go on remembering money.

It happens sometimes that even in sleep a money-minded person goes on remembering his money.

It is very difficult, even when he is asleep, to take his money out of his pocket; he will immediately wake up. So this is one kind of attentiveness that is because we are too much concerned with the money, with this and that.

Once you start becoming a different kind of person this awareness will disappear. You will have to learn another kind of attentiveness. One has to learn to be attentive about everything – not because everything is valuable but because attentiveness is valuable. Then the shift has to change from matter to consciousness.

So now you have to be alert. Not that it is a passport and if it is lost there will be trouble, no, but because you are not to lose any opportunity to be alert; whether it is a passport or anything else, that doesn’t matter. Whether it is money or an ordinary paper doesn’t matter, but you have to be alert. Alertness has to be there; that you will have to learn.

And that happens to many people: the first kind of awareness disappears; they have to learn a second kind of awareness. In the gap there will be a little trouble, mm? so don’t carry too much money with you! Only carry things that you can afford to lose... and the remaining, [ashram] can take care of, mm?

CHAPTER 27

27 August 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin who is leaving asks if it is okay for her not to be in a relationship. She also says she can feel Osho inside and is confused because he is outside.]

I understand... I understand. It will be happening to many many sannyasins soon. It is something very significant and you are fortunate to be feeling that. Many many will be feeling this problem sooner or later, because they will start finding me inside them. Then looking at me outside they will be puzzled. What is true? – am I inside them or outside them? If I am outside, then how can I be inside, and if I am inside how can I be outside?

But this is a great experience. That’s exactly how it is: I am both. And my whole effort here is to make you ready so that you can find me within yourself. Soon you will start finding that outside is just a reflection of the inside – not otherwise.

First you will think that the inside is just an image of the outside, but finally you will find the outside is just an image of the inside. It is as if you are standing before a mirror: you see yourself in the mirror outside and you know all the time that you are inside yourself.

So my body is simply functioning as a mirror: what is inside, you will see reflected through my body outside. But there is no problem to be worried about; one should be happy about it. Start seeing me inside more and more. This is something fantastic!

And about the first thing: it will be good for you to stay alone. Right now, if you stay alone you will be more with me. If you start falling into a relationship something that is growing inside will be disturbed It happens every day here: when people are meditating they are more with me Sooner right they tend to forget me. That’s natural.

But right now it will not be good to get involved in any relationship. Something so delicate is arising in you that it will be disturbed by any rough relationship... and it is going to be rough! Any ordinary relationship is a rough relationship. It brings all the problems with it – all the anxieties, conflicts, anger, sadness. Yes, there are a few moments of joy too but those are few and far between. It is more or less a dark night. Just somewhere once in a while a lamp is lit and then it disappears again and there is darkness.

But right now something so precious is growing in you that you cannot afford rough relationships.

So wait: let this become more stabilised, let this become more crystallised. Then you can move in a relationship and then the relationship will be totally different, because I will be relating through you.

Then it will have a totally different quality: it will be for the first time what love should be. And you will find a totally different kind of person to fall in love with – somebody who is very close to me, as close as you, only then will it fit, otherwise not.

So wait... meditate, mm? And keep me in your womb as long as you can. Whenever you are sitting, just close your eyes and see me in your womb. Let me be there and let this child grow. You are pregnant with me, that’s what it is. It is very good!...

Continue to meditate: use these three months [you are away] for completely getting in tune with me. And don’t be distracted by any so-called relationship. Ordinarily I never say to anybody to avoid relationships, because they have nothing to lose so why not have fun? it is okay. In fact if they are not in relationship I help them to go into one because without those troubles they start feeling depressed. They need some misery so they remain occupied. They are feeling that they are doing something great, something great is happening. At least there is hope, and they live with that hope.

And when there is nothing to do it is perfectly good to be in any kind of relationship, it is fun, but when something higher is happening it is very very costly.

So be a celibate for these three months at least, and then when you come, we will see, mm? Good!

[A sannyasin, newly returned from the West, says he spent a lot of time with his mother and brother, and much hatred and judging came up about them, though they get along okay.]

I understand. My feeling is that you had around you a certain curtain of indifference which has dropped. You have become more caring about them, hence all that was repressed in your childhood is coming up. It has been there but there was a curtain.

That curtain we have to create: everybody has to create a curtain otherwise it is so uncomfortable to be fighting continuously with your parents, with your siblings. One creates a kind of cloud of indifference, of non-caring around oneself. Then it is okay if the mother is doing some wrong; that’s her business. Who bothers? If she is committing a mistake, that is her business. Who bothers?

Now that curtain has dropped, and it is good that it has dropped so that you can see things more clearly Now something can be done and these things can also be dropped but first the curtain has because she is ninety percent of the parent. The father is at the most ten percent or not even that much. The mother has to bring up the child and she has to teach the child – that this is right and that is wrong. The judgement comes from the mother. The child goes on watching – and children are very perceptive. He goes on observing that there seems to be a double standard. When he does something he is wrong, and when the mother herself is doing the same thing, she is right. If he lies, he is wrong. He goes on checking on the mother... and she is lying many times in the day, so he goes on seeing the double-bind. But he is helpless. He cannot assert himself; he cannot say anything. Even if he tries to, he is beaten into silence.

So that remains there in the unconscious; it is like a wound. When you become a little more powerful, independent... And that’s what is happening to you: you are becoming more mature, more independent, more yourself, so now all those wounds will come in. They have to be healed.

So you have just to understand them and to understand what the matter is. It is just an old hangover.

You have not yet been able to forgive your mother for all those things that she has done to you and which you never felt were justified. You always thought they were unjust, but because she was powerful you had to yield.

Now you need not yield; you can take vengeance. You can tell her that this is wrong, that is wrong and you can say to her, ’Now, see who is right and what is right.’

Just try to see it; deep down in yourself observe it. Something like Fischer-Hoffmann therapy will be good... will be very helpful. Have you done it before ?

That will be very good – the right process for you at this moment.

[Osho refers him to a sannyasin who is a Fisher-Hoffman therapist.]

So she can be helpful. She is a Fischer-Hoffmann therapist; she will be helpful. And you will enjoy it. This is the right moment. It cannot help everybody, mm? but you have already done more than half the work so immediately there will be great revelation through it. But you have to come to a point where you can forgive.

The day a man can forgive his parents is a great day. That day he really becomes free. If you cannot forgive, you remain dependent. You cannot forgive because you still feel dependent. A really mature person can understand that the mother was not personally responsible for whatsoever she was doing. The same was done by her mother to her; she was just a poor victim as you are. She must be still as resentful towards her mother as you are towards her. The mother may be dead, the mother’s mother may be dead... that does not matter.

Just a few months ago there was an old woman here. She is nearly sixty-five. She has children and the children have children and she is still resentful of the mother who is dead! And she wants to get rid of it. Now it is really a problem: at the age of sixty-five or seventy she still feels angry. That means she has not grown up at all. Physically she is seventy; mentally she must be somewhere you, whatsoever, good or bad... And there are a thousand good things that she has done and a thousand bad things that she has done, but she is not personally responsible. She was simply repeating a conditioning; she was simply doing what was done to her. You are fortunate that you can get out of that vicious circle – she was not that fortunate.... Then great compassion will arise.

And once you have forgiven her, you will be able to help her too. You can explain to her the whole process of how you could forgive her and maybe she can forgive her mother... and that will be a great change in her life. Then she can die as a mature person. Then life has been meaningful. One has gained something out of life, otherwise nothing is gained.

So something good is going to happen; you will just have to work it out. And Fischer-Hoffmann is the right thing to do....

I think you can do one group here – rebirthing; it will be good.

[A sannyasin asks about an illness he has had for twenty years. He started with pains in his right side which spread into the joints... sometimes he is unable to walk, but it comes and goes. The doctors do not know what it is, but suggested rheumatism. Osho checks his energy.]

No, it has nothing to do with rheumatism – not at all. In fact you don’t need any treatment for it;

[ashram hypnotherapist] will do something.

(To the hypnotherapist who is present) just give him a good suggestion. It is just in his mind. Your body is perfectly okay; it has just got into your mind. And because it has been happening for so long, twenty years, it has become a very deep-rooted suggestion. You just need to go into deep hypnosis and things will change. But drop the idea of rheumatism; it is nothing to do with it, mm? This is not the energy of a rheumatic person... no!...

Nothing to be worried. Just talk to [the hypnotherapist], mm? – things will be okay. And just enjoy and forget. You have just to forget this disease; there is nothing much to it.

[The sannyasin asks: But if I’m doing the Kundalini... ]

No, don’t do it; whatsoever gives you pain don’t do. Just be here and enjoy being here. And whatever

[the hypnotherapist] suggests, do it. Stop all meditations for a few days because they are all physical and you have that idea inside you; that idea will function. First the idea has to be uprooted, then you will be able to do all the meditations.

You can become the greatest meditator around here!

[A sannyasin says he has much pressure in his chest since seven years. He has done much therapy for it. Sometimes in meditation it dissolves but then returns.]

... My feeling is that it has something to do with your body. Your posture looks as if you are...

compressed So the posture has to be changed You can do a few things on your own to change the

[The sannyasin replies: Recently I started playing tennis.]

No, that won’t help; that is too bourgeois. No. Running can help, running can really help; it can really release you. Swimming can help....

Anything when you have to breathe more or anything in which the body has to take another posture and you cannot remain in the same posture. In running, in swimming, you cannot remain in the same posture. Anything in which the posture has to change automatically and anything that is very dynamic and in which the total body is involved will be helpful.

So my feeling is that you should do running, swimming, and take the whole course of rolfing, ten sessions. And take it from a really sadistic rolfer!...

Really sadistic, someone who enjoys torturing people. Mm? you need a little torture!...

And it is just a postural thing – I don’t see that your mind has anything much to do with it. It is good that it is a posture thing because it can be easily changed. Maybe it is in the mind a little bit but once the posture has completely changed your mind will easily drop it; your mind is ready to drop it. So continue meditations, take rolfing, and start running, swimming. If it is difficult then jogging is good.

[The sannyasin then says that he has been smoking a lot since he was thirteen. He tried stopping but is not really interested to stop.]

That may be part of this whole thing; that too is repressive. In fact, smoking is a strategy to repress something. If you don’t smoke that something starts becoming restless: through smoking you can repress it again. That’s why people smoke more when they are restless. When they feel more nervous, when they feel that something is arising, they will immediately start drugging themselves.

That drugging helps to stop something, but stopped, it is there and goes on accumulating.

Do one thing: don’t stop smoking right now – because that will not help and you will again smoke.

Do one thing: breathing. Whenever you have an urge to smoke, make it a point that first you have to breathe deeply for five minutes. Start by exhaling: exhale deeply. Inhale deeply, exhale deeply, but the emphasis should be on exhalation more than on inhalation. Mm? the whole air has to be thrown out. Just squeeze the whole system so all the air is out. Do this for five minutes before each cigarette....

You have to pay the price for each cigarette, mm? – that is five minutes of deep breathing. If after that five minutes the desire, the urge disappears, there is no need to smoke; if the urge remains, you can smoke. And this will help – this will help in many ways...

Firstly, out of one hundred times, seventy-five times the desire will disappear. Good breathing will give you such a good feeling that you will not feel like smoking. You will feel so happy and so full of vitality, you will not feel like smoking.

With smoking you go on dumping carbon dioxide inside the system: the system falls to the minimum.

It is just the opposite.

And once you are enjoying five minutes breathing you will not feel the urge. That urge always comes when you are not enjoying life; if you are enjoying something you can forget cigarettes. If you are looking at a movie and you are really into it, you will not smoke. If you are listening to music and you are really into it you will forget. In anything in which you get involved and in which you are happy you will not smoke. You will smoke only when you are not feeling in tune so you want something to do –

smoking.

Either the desire will not come... Then there is no need, don’t force yourself and feel that you have to smoke because you have earned it by five minutes breathing.... And if the desire remains smoke.

Tell me after one week, for one week do this experiment....

Continue this breathing back home. And through breathing smoking can be dropped very easily.

But there is no need to directly drop it; it will disappear automatically. Take rolfing back home and start running or swimming.

Swimming is very good – nothing like it; it is very meditative. I have done every kind of thing but nothing like swimming. My own practice was to go swimming for at least four to six hours every day.

At four o’clock in the morning I would disappear and I would come back home only after six hours in the river.

It is tremendously beautiful – you can go for miles. You can float you can swim and... And water is the basic element; life came out of water. In water you are very free and weightless. Gravitation functions less, and that is one of the most beautiful things in water. Ordinary gravitation is no more functioning, and that changes your whole system – the pressure.

You are under pressure; that pressure will be relieved by swimming. It will go.

[A sannyasin who has completed individual primal therapy says: I was very resistant but at least I feel good because for the first time I did the therapy for myself and not for the therapist.]

That’s very good! That’s how it should be. Sometimes it happens, but very rarely – otherwise patients are very very willing to help the therapist and they are ready to make him feel good and happy! One need not do that. The therapist has not paid you; you have paid the therapist!

It happens, even with ordinary physical illness it happens: when the doctor comes the patient smiles... just to help the poor chap feel good!

[The hypnotherapy group is present. One participant says they have much energy around the mouth and hands, which feels stuck. Osho checks his energy.]

fact, the best way for the child to relax is to be on the mother’s breast; almost always he falls asleep then and there. Both needs are fulfilled – food, love, the warmth of the mother – and he is simply in the womb again.

Your mother must have deprived you. In the west it is happening too much. Mm? no mother really wants the child to be breast-fed; there is too much fear that the shape, the size and the breasts’

beauty will be lost. So it is there.

Do one thing: if you have a girlfriend make it a point every night for half-an-hour to be on her breast.

Forget yourself and become a small child. Just suck, and fall asleep. Within two, three weeks it will disappear, it will not take more.

If you don’t have a girlfriend, then find a pacifier. That is not as good – a pacifier is a pacifier – but it is better than nothing. Fill the bottle with lukewarm milk, suck the teat and go to sleep keeping it in your mouth. Then it will take six, seven weeks, mm? – just a little longer time, that’s all.

But if you have a girlfriend and if she is willing to help you... Girlfriends are not so easily helpful!...

You don’t have any girlfriend here? You can just announce – somebody will help!...

Yes, you can just announce and somebody may be helpful... and somebody may be helped by it.

Mm? – you can find somebody who wants to be a mother and who is hankering for a child; she will be helped by you. So it will be a mutual help – otherwise when you are back in munich you can do it there. Here you can do it with a pacifier, mm?

First try it here if it is possible, otherwise the pacifier. You go and find a good big bottle, mm? Good!

CHAPTER 28

28 August 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Anand means bliss and haramita is a japanese form of a sanskrit word, ’paramita’. ’Paramita’ means going to the other shore. The unknown is the other shore, god is the other shore. The visible is this shore; the invisible is the other shore. So the whole search is for the other shore. This shore is not satisfying – it only creates more and more desires and more and more frustrations; it is utterly futile.

So everybody is seeking in his own way, rightly or wrongly, to attain to a state of absolute contentment where no desire disturbs, where the mind has no wavering, where all is quiet and calm and cool, where one is at rest. That is what ’haramita’ is – the other shore. Anand means bliss.

The full name will mean: bliss that takes one to the other shore... and it is bliss that takes one to the other shore.

So never be serious in the search; be sincere but never be serious. Be authentic, devote your whole energy to it, but not with a long face – otherwise nobody can take you to the other shore. It is the boat of bliss that takes one. Only those who are really cheerful reach... so be cheerful!

The other shore is... this shore proves that the other shore is, because the river cannot be with only one shore. We may not be able to see it – it may be far away, hidden behind haze, clouds, or maybe it is so far away that it is not visible to the eyes – but it must be. Standing on a sea beach you know that the other shore must be – it has to be; even the ocean cannot be shoreless. If one is, the other is bound to be. It may take years or even lives to reach, but it is.

Dissatisfaction proves that the possibility of satisfaction is. Frustration proves that it is possible that one can attain to fulfillment. Otherwise we would not be dissatisfied at all – if there were no possibilit to be satisfied the are both together We kno one the other is nkno n the other has other can be sought only by being blissful. So whenever one becomes sad one falls from grace.

Whenever one is serious one is not in tune with god. Whenever you are cheerful, joyous, laughing, then suddenly you are very close. That is the new thing I want to introduce in the world of religion.

In the past it has not happened. Although there have been masters who have talked about being blissful, somehow man has gone on continuously missing that point. People become very serious about it: they make it more business-like. It is playful fun!

Deva means divine, and hanya is a japanese word which means wisdom – divine wisdom. And divine wisdom is that wisdom that comes to you. You cannot grab it, you can only be a receiver; it is a gift. We can deny, we can reject, but we cannot strive for it.

It is like the sun in the morning: you can keep your doors closed; then it will not enter your room. It will not transgress; it will not even knock on the door to say ’I am here. Please open the door.’ It will silently wait. But if you open the door it immediately comes in.

Divine wisdom is that wisdom that is always there at the door. We just have to open our heart and it comes dancing in. And it changes you utterly... it liberates. That which man can manage is knowledge, not wisdom. That which comes from god is wisdom. Knowledge burdens, wisdom liberates.

Deva means divine, gambheera means depth – divine depth. And we don’t know what depth we contain. We live on the surface, we have never dived deep into our being. That’s why we go on missing all that is beautiful and all that is profound and all that is great. Because on the surface the profound cannot exist; the profound exists in depth. On the surface you cannot find pearls. You will have to dive deep, and the depth is such that one can go on and on; there is no bottom to it. It is abysmal; it is pure depth. Not that one day it ends and one comes to the bottom; one never comes to the bottom.

So one has to be ready to go into this inner depth, otherwise we can go on floating on the surface and we will be continuously troubled by waves and typhoons; a thousand and one things happen on the surface. In the depth all is silent and dark, all is peace. On the surface is turmoil.

Man is a circle and we are only acquainted with the circumference. On the circumference there is always misery, unhappiness, struggle, because it is an existence of turmoil – waves upon waves and conflict and violence.

Now, there are two ways to attain that peace: one – which is a false one but very appealing and very logical – to somehow make oneself so hard that one remains on the surface but nothing disturbs, to somehow make oneself very thick, insensitive, to surround oneself with an armour. So waves will be there, misery will happen, ugliness will be there, but one disappears into one’s own cave. One hides behind a wall to create a kind of citadel around oneself so that even if there is turmoil it never reaches one.

That’s what people have done because it seems to be easy, without any risk. You need not go and you will feel his hunger.

Somebody is crying and you will feel his crying... and all that will be too much, unbearably too much, and you will be constantly shaken. Life will become impossible.

So the easiest trick and strategy is to create a hard armour, a hard shell, around yourself – a cocoon, and to get into that cocoon. Then you can remain on the surface and the turmoil will continue and the waves will continue and everything will go on happening – because that cannot be changed by your being in the cocoon. But you will not be alert about it, you will be blissfully unaware. So you can avoid trouble in this way but you will not feel bliss. This is a negative way. You can simply hide against the turmoil but from where are you going to get bliss? It is not possible.

The other way and the real way and the only way is: disappear into the depth of the ocean where no waves are possible, where no turmoil exists. Then you can remain sensitive... you can become absolutely sensitive. Then you need not become hard, you need not become stone. You can remain flower-like, fragile. And once you have known your depth then you can come back on the surface.

I am not against the surface and I am not saying that somebody has to disappear forever in the depth and should not come to the surface. I am all for the world, but first you should go into the depth; you should see what depth contains. From there you can come back to the surface, but you will bring something of the depth in you – and that’s what is needed. Then a man can live in the world and not be of the world; one can exist in the marketplace and remain meditative. One can love, relate and yet be alone. One can have as many things as one needs and yet remain non-possessive. One can live joyfully and one can die joyfully and there is no anxiety, either about life or about death.

But this state comes only when you have known your profound depth.

That death is called

’gambheera’. And that’s what meditation is all about: searching for that depth.

[A sannyasin who is leaving says he is unsure whether to return or stay in the West and work to support his wife and children. He would prefer to be here.]

Just go and see what is possible. But don’t be hard, mm? If it can be arranged in such a way that they don’t suffer, arrange it and come. If you feel that it will be too much for them and they will suffer too much, then be there for a few more months and settle things by and by. Don’t be in a hurry. By and by settle things....

Just go and see. Just explain the whole thing to them – that you would like to come here....

It is important for you to stay here, but that responsibility is there and those children will unnecessarily suffer, so that has also to be looked into And sometimes to fulfill your responsibility is a great meditation... because you are sacrificing. They are your children and this is your responsibility, because you have given birth to them, to help them so that they can be on their own. Don’t make it just a duty but a joy.

Just go and see If it is possible that nobody is hurt and things can settle help them to settle and I think within a year things will settle. Good!

[A sannyasin says: The problem is about this imbalance in my body. The left part of the body is much more sensitive and much more supple and the right side is heavier and.... ]

That will disappear – nothing to be worried about. Don’t take much note of it. Simply forget about it, it will disappear. Continue the rebirthing process and this will settle on its own. Your being too much conscious about it will become a hindrance. All self-consciousness is a hindrance.

It is better not to be too much concerned about a few things. The body has its own wisdom; you need not be worried about it. Simply go on doing the rebirthing process and the body will start having its own harmony. One day suddenly you will be surprised that for a few days you have not noted any imbalance. But drop it as a problem. If you carry the problem in the head, that very carrying is a constant kind of auto-suggestion and that auto-suggestion will keep it as it is.

Changes happen so slowly that you cannot be aware of those changes within a day. For example, if you do some meditation today you will not find the change happening tomorrow. So you will say that nothing has happened; yom imbalance is still there. Now you again suggest that it is still there, that it is the same and nothing has happened.

If some slight change has happened, and it is going to be very slight, almost undetectable, you have destroyed it. That small part has been burdened by this suggestion that nothing has happened, the problem is still there. You go on doing meditation every day and the change will always be small and you will always destroy it by your suggestions.

It is better to forget about it. I will take care, mm? – that is my function. Just leave it to me. Once you have given any problem to me you need not worry about it... and I never worry about anything.

You see the point?!

It will change but change will come very slowly, slowly. It is going to come... it is coming. You have learned so much in such a small period. So much has happened – it rarely happens so much; you are fortunate.

You have come very close to me, and this closeness is going to remain there forever....

[A sannyasin says: My sons did not understand my coming to the ashram so I would like to be a witness for them that it was not dangerous for me.]

It was not! No, they will be happy!... Help them – some time they will come also. Just share me with them. And when they see you so happy and flowing, they will understand. You will be a witness.

Every sannyasin has to become a witness to me!

[Another sannyasin who is leaving says: I felt very at home here.]

here. All uninhibited people, all people who have dropped their obsessions and taboos will feel at home here. The people who belong to the future will feel at home here. The people who are not contemporaries and belong to the past, they will not feel at home. That’s very good!

[A sannyasin who is a neo-reichian therapist has recently arrived with her boyfriend. Osho tells her to lead groups in the ashram, and the boyfriend to assist. The man says: I always feel cast in the roll of helper.]

Mm. It can be of great benefit. If you lead a group it is one thing, if you participate in a group it is another, and if you are a helper it is a third dimension. The participant learns something but there are limitations for him. The leader learns something but there are limitations for the leader too because he has to lead. The helper is in a way not involved: he is neither a participant nor a leader.

He can be more of a witness of the whole phenomenon that is transpiring. And sometimes if he is alert he can learn more than either of them. He is totally out of it. The leader is confronting the participants, the participants are confronting the leader, and the helper is a witness.

If you are alert you can learn more than even the leader... because there is bound to be a kind of self-consciousness in the leader. He has to lead, he has to plan, he has to manage, manipulate, provoke, challenge – a thousand and one things. He has a responsibility; a sense of responsibility is there.

The participant naturally is very much concerned that something happens, he is there for that. If nothing happens he has missed another opportunity, so he is too expectant, too full of desire and greed. And the leader also wants that something should happen – otherwise he seems to be a failure.

But you don’t have any responsibility, you don’t have any desire that something is going to happen; you are just a helper. You don’t have any responsibility that something should happen otherwise people will think that this leader is a failure. You can simply be there and you can have double the benefit. So be in that space and you will be immensely benefited.

And sooner or later you are going to become a leader, so don’t miss the opportunity of being a helper because it may not come again, right? Good... good!

[A sannyasin says that after the encounter group he had eczema very badly on his hands. He feels separate from his hands. He has been trying to be more creative and responsible... so now he feels confused about himself. Osho checks his energy.]

First the hands.... They are in a deep healing process, that’s why you feel them as separate. The eczema was not just physical; something from the mind has been released through the hands. And the hands are very deeply involved in the mind; they are the mind’s extensions. The right hand is joined with the left mind and the left hand with the right mind; they are joined together, cross-wise.

Eczema is a mind phenomenon. It was good that it happened. Something, a poison that you have In fact it is something to be happy about. Much work is going on there. Much energy is there –

almost a kind of electric field around the hand.

In Russia they have developed a certain kind of photography they call Kirlian. It photographs the energy field of the body. They use very sensitive plates. If they take a photograph of your hand, the hand will be shown and the electric field around the hand will also be in the photograph. If the hand is going to be ill within six months in the future, they can predict it because the energy field starts changing. If the hand is healing the energy field is different.

Great work is there – much more energy than the hand can contain: only then can there be healing.

Ordinary energy is used by the hand for its day to day existence. Now much more energy is there; only that surplus energy can be the healing thing. So that’s why you feel dislocation. The energy is not the same: in the hands it is more, in the body it is not that much. Just be happy about it and enjoy it.

And the second thing: you are very close to a breakthrough... just on the threshold of something....

So be very very thrilled by it and be in a deep welcoming mood. Be expectant like when a woman is pregnant and the pregnancy is coming to term; nine months are being completed and she becomes really expectant.

And only after that breakthrough will your creativity be released. It is there – you have immense capacities to be creative – but something has been blocking it. That block is going to disappear.

[A sannyasin says she would like to stay here, but will need to give up a good student place in Germany, studying sculpture and pottery for two years.]

Mm mm, that’s really good! I would like you to finish it....

Nothing to worry about! You will become more helpful here in the community once you have learned it. Pottery is good, sculpture is good, and we will need all kinds of people, mm? If you can finish it...

you can come for a few weeks each year and then go and come back and go again. Two years is not too long, within two, three trips it will be finished, but it is a good thing to learn.

If you were studying something else, something nonsensical like law, then I would say to drop!

But this is immensely beautiful and it will be helpful for your whole life. You will have a feeling of significance because you will be able to contribute something creatively.

Always remember: a person feels good if he can contribute to the world; any kind of creativity gives a well-being. If you cannot contribute anything to the world you feel somehow like a burden on the earth. And I don’t mean that you have to be a very great artist. If just in your own capacity you can produce a small thing... there is no need to become world famous – that is again a kind of ego trip.

There is no need for that, but if in the work you do, you work with such contentment and happiness so that whosoever looks at it feels good, you feel good, one feels some significance, life seems to be worth living Meaning comes out of creativity

go, mm?... because I don’t want to be hard.

So you think over it and next time you see me, tell me. What is your mind? You don’t want to go at all to study there? If you don’t want to go then nothing to....

Mm mm... so you think about it and then tell me next time. Good!

[The sannyasin then says on one occasion she felt like killing her boyfriend, and in the encounter group she felt like killing.]

That’s a very natural thing: everybody wants to kill the boyfriend! It is so normal. Nobody does, that’s another thing, but everybody wants to kill. It will go; nothing to worry about.

[A sannyasin says I feel it’s very difficult to love myself... ]

Start loving others....

One has to start somewhere! It is difficult, that I know. Either love yourself or love others – whichever is less difficult. Start by loving others, that will be easier for you. It is difficult, that is true, but it is only through difficulty that one grows.

And you have great energy to love. Once it starts flowing you will become a great river. Right now it is frozen ice, but it will melt!

CHAPTER 29

29 August 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[To a sannyasin couple who are leaving Osho says:]

Manage to come forever; become a part. I will be calling all of my people to stay with me now, so prepare...

Because now it will be needed. The work has to take on a totally new dimension and I will be working now on deeper planes. Many people are ready to dive deep, so now there is no need to collect a big mass. Now I can start working on a few chosen people. And that will be far more meaningful finally, because once you are ready I can throw you into the world; then you can start working on your own.

It is just like coming close to me: once you are really close your unlit candle is lit, but to light that candle a real closeness is needed. It happens only at a certain point of closeness. Once it has happened then I am you. Then you can go anywhere and you can start working and that will be my work. That is going to be my way of sending myself to millions of people. And that is the ancient-most way – because the modern media has never existed before, but christ did perfectly well without any printing, without any newspaper, without any books, without any television, radio; he did perfectly well. With a small group of people buddha did perfectly well. Although he never went outside a small part of the country, bihar, the whole Asia turned buddhist. This is the ancient-most way to work, and it is still relevant.

Rather than people seeing me on the TV it is far more alive if you are lit by me and they see you.

It will be more live than seeing me on the tv or seeing me in a newspaper or listening to me on the radio. If I can light you then you are exactly me; then you can go on. This will be the shape of the work, so get ready, mm? Within a year prepare.

good for you and good for other people, so get into it. And get into it as a love affair – less than that never satisfies. When your work is your love affair, only then does something start happening to you and to others. When your work is your love affair then there is a magic quality in it, and a therapist needs to be a magician. It is pure magic, white magic; it is no ordinary work.

But your energy is there, the basic energy is there; you can build a great temple on it. But go into it whole-heartedly as a poet writes poetry or a painter paints, as a singer sings or a dancer dances...

be a therapist like that!

Don’t think of it as a kind of job. Think of it as a vocation, as a fulfillment, as a great involvement and commitment. So learn the art!

[The sannyasin then says he feels blocked in the front of his body, especially his sexual energy as he had a catholic education.]

You suffered a lot by being a catholic! It is a kind of calamity that happens to a few people... but you survived; nothing to worry about. You are still alive so something is possible!

It is a wrong kind of education, this catholicism, because it is life-negative, because it does not respect life. It is death-worship. That’s why instead of christ becoming the symbol, the cross has become the symbol. They would not have bothered about christ at all if he had not been crucified.

It is a death worship, and because of death worship it poisons life.

But about your energy this is my feeling – that if you can start moving towards therapy your problem will change. It is not really a block. You just have energy and you don’t know how to use it – hence the block is felt. No block has to be removed, a direction just has to be given in which the energy moves. This is a totally different thing, not a block. It is just that the energy is there and you have not yet found your vocation.

Once the energy and the vocation meet, your problem will disappear.-

About sex, this is my observation – that if a person has found his way, his style, his life, then sex problems disappear. Sex problems exist only because your life energy is moving in a direction where you don’t enjoy its movement.

For example, you go on doing a certain kind of work and you don’t like it; on the contrary you hate it from your very guts. And this becomes chronic, because every day you go on doing the same work that you hate. Then suddenly, if one day you start doing the work that you love, you will be surprised by the ecstasy that will arise in you. It is as if a reservoir is broken and the water starts overflowing from all sides. And when everything starts flowing – love, prayer, meditation, relationship

– everything!... Sex is symbolic; it simply says your life is stuck in a routine which is not your destiny, which you are not meant to be.

So become a therapist, mm? and that will dissolve all your problems. And next time come for a how to work with them and yet not lose energy. She tends to get too involved, she says, and to lose herself.]

The work can become good, can be used as a meditation, because compassion will be needed. You just have to change your focus. Don’t think about it as work but think about it as service. Think of the handicapped children; don’t think of your salary. Don’t think about your bond and don’t think about other things. Think of those small children who are suffering. You can be of some help to them –

you can make their lives a little better. Take it as prayer, worship, and the quality will immediately change. You will start flowing and you will start enjoying it... you will be thrilled.

Sometimes it takes just a small change of gear, just looking at it from another angle, and things are totally different. One angle is that you are just doing a job: you get your salary, you get your benefits and you are finished. Then those handicapped children will look like enemies. Then you will think many times, ’Why does god create handicapped children? If there were no handicapped children you would have been saved from being a teacher. Why, in the first place, are handicapped children there? And how can one be happy with such a miserable lot?’ One becomes sad, depressed; seeing the injustice, one starts doubting even god. This is one standpoint – the negative, the ordinary.

There is another standpoint – the positive, the extraordinary – that this is an opportunity for you to grow because you can show compassion. If your compassion cannot arise with handicapped children then where can it? If your heart cannot start throbbing for these children where will it be possible? You are in one of the most potential situations where much can happen. And if you can be in compassion then your work is no more work. It is your way towards god.

Start seeing in those handicapped children not your enemies but your friends. Start looking into those eyes, feel their hands, hug them, and feel the god in them! They are god’s children.

And if you can be happy serving them you can never be unhappy anywhere else. That will become a great foundation for your life. And once in a while, whenever you can have a few days’ holiday, come here, mm? – so you can again regain heart. And use these three years; these three years will become of tremendous value later on.

There are only two things that are meaningful: one is meditation, another is love. Either meditate so that love can grow in your life, or love so that meditation can grow in your life; it works both ways.

Now, this is a love situation. Love those children. Be a mother to them not only a teacher! Think of those children as your children.

This time go with this new perspective, with this new vision. Let it be an adventure into compassion, love, service, and next time you come here you will have a totally different energy, and then it will be very easy to go into meditation. At home continue to meditate; at school continue to be compassionate.

One never knows from where god is going to happen to somebody. God comes in unexpected ways.

This may be his way of approaching you, of challenging you, of provoking you. Don’t miss it!

out towards god.

Every place is as good as any other – it just depends on how you work it out... and this is really a beautiful situation. Go with this new vision....

[Two sannyasin men had been working as therapists together and were in a homosexual relationship.

They separated in their relationship and Osho advised them not to work together either. One of them says he is unsure what to do because they were planning to return to the West to earn money to stay in Poona.]

That’s why I suggested this – that for these few months you cooperate as far as the groups are concerned. There is no need for any relationship. Forget about the relationship; that has been destructive to both.

And you are both happy about it. I was a little worried about [your partner] – not about you because you were ready from the very beginning to get out of it He was a little too attached, but he has also got over it – and he is happy.

So just remember: don’t get into the old pattern, don’t allow it to become a relationship again, that’s all. And that will be a good challenge to your awareness. You will be together so every possibility will be there of getting into a relationship, but you are not to get into it. So this will keep you very very mindful, attentive to not fall into the old trap again.

And it will be easier for you and for [your partner] too, to finish work there and come back; that’s why I suggested you work together. Because he was also worried – alone he would find it difficult to do groups. Alone it will be difficult for you to earn money... so that seems to be the most feasible and practical thing.

And there is something more in it, plus – that is that you both have to be very very mindful that you don’t get into it. And you have to be more alert, because there is every possibility of [your partner]

slipping back. From the very beginning you were ready to get. out of it. In fact that was the first thing that you told me when you had come, years before....

So from that very day you have been thinking about how to get out. Then you were getting into it again, then out again. He was very much against your going, he depended too much on you, but this time something has happened to him. I was very considerate towards him – that’s why I used to tell you to just continue in the relationship – but now something has happened; there is no need.

So be very alert! If you feel that a situation comes where now it is a question of either you falling into the old relationship again or leaving cooperating in the group, then leave cooperating in the group...

the relationship at no cost – that has to be kept in mind. Without relationship it is perfectly good that you cooperate, be friends... as far as the work is concerned, that’s all. So you can come soon.

And I think it will be possible; it will not be difficult. You have also become more integrated, more said it, he has not said it yet, but that was his fear of coming closer to me too. And I was waiting for the right moment when I should hit!

This time it became possible, mm? You are divorced! He has survived and perfectly well. He is happy and has come closer to me too because now there is no fear. All that I could have taken from him I have taken so now there is nothing to take, mm? So just go happily, mm? Good.

[A sannyasin who is leaving says she feels she has understood what Osho has said to her about her practice of archery but expresses fear that she will ’escape on the way’.]

I will be taking care of it – you will not be able to escape anywhere! Once trapped by me you are trapped forever! You cannot go. I give enough rope but you cannot go anywhere. In fact because of that rope there is no need to go. People want to escape when they are not free. With me you are absolutely free... so there is no need to go anywhere.

And now, start practising your archery with a more meditative mind. This will be the change which has to be brought in. The ordinary archer thinks of the target, his whole concern is how to reach the target. He is concerned with the other end – there. If he succeeds in hitting the target he is happy.

But when archery is to be transformed into meditation you have to think of this end – you! The target becomes secondary; the archer becomes primary. What is more important is in what kind of mind the arrow leaves the bow. It has to reach the target – that is secondary – but in what kind of state, in what kind of mind the arrow leaves you is more primary.

You should be non-tense, utterly relaxed, at rest, with no thoughts in the mind – just empty. Let the arrow leave you in emptiness. And then it becomes a great meditation. That’s how zen people have used archery for centuries.

Have you read one book by herrigel? Read it again, meditate over it....

Mm, you can read it as many times as you like and you will always be benefited. It is one of the rarest documents. In fact the only book written by a westerner which really represents zen; otherwise all are just bogus. He has got the feel of the spirit, mm? And that has to be your way now. Work it out, slowly, slowly.

[A sannyasin he is not sure if his profession as a gardener suits him because it involves office work, and he feels tense around people. He wonders if he should become a therapist.]

Can’t you be with the trees instead of the office?... I think that is my suggestion. Rather than getting into group-leading, make friends with the trees. They are far more beautiful than the people who participate in groups! And you don’t have that kind of energy: you are a very simple and innocent type of man.

You will not be able to be benefited by a group leadership. On the contrary you may become very much disturbed, because these people who participate release all kinds of negative energies and that. You can even go mad; it is a very maddening thing.

You are already happy thinking that you are not going into it!

You move more with the trees. Change your work in such a way that the office and file work is less, and move more with the trees and bushes. Mm? Good!

[A sannyasin says her rolfing sessions are very painful.]

Rolfing is painful. In fact, when rolfing is painful only then does it help. This was the right session.

Maybe the seventh will be more painful... and the ninth is real hell! But the harder it gets, the more helpful it becomes.

In fact pain means that now the Rolfer has touched in you the real places where you are accumulating pain. You follow me?

We go on accumulating pain in our body; because the pain is not allowed to be expressed we have to dump it somewhere. People dump their pain in different places. The pain has to be dumped somewhere in the body; now it depends on different people where you dump your garbage. So these may be the places where you have been dumping your pain. Now he has touched those pain points so the pain is released and you will feel really disturbed. But it is good! Once the pain is finished you will become lighter than you have ever been. You will become so weightless and the body will have a new release, a new lease of energy.

Do all the ten; if you cannot do them here, do them in Germany. But finish all the ten – howsoever painful. Don’t be worried, because that pain is only for a few hours then it is gone; it is worth it. Never avoid pain; it is through pain that we grow. Because of avoiding pain we have stopped growing, and because we go on avoiding, the pain goes on accumulating somewhere or other.

And accumulated pain can create many psychosomatic problems. If too much pain is there then some disease is bound to erupt because that will be the body’s way to release it. And then again you give drugs to the body to force it back. You don’t help the body. People don’t help the body to release its burden; rather, on the contrary, they go on drugging it. So you can drug one part; then the pain moves to another part. From there it will find its way. It has to get out of the system, and rolfing is one of the most beautiful ways to get rid of pain... but it is through pain.

You can feel confused – because when pain is released it is not only in the body; the pain will hit your mind. It will disturb many things there. And it is out of the blue so one feels empty too. If somebody insults you, you know from where the pain is coming. If somebody hurts you today then you can relate it. Because he has hurt you the pain is there; your mind is disturbed.

Now this pain that has come out of rolfing may not have anything to do with the present, it may be years old, so you cannot relate from where it is coming, why it is coming. You have completely forgotten the reference. It is out of the blue, just out of emptiness it is there. . .as if the rolfer has meditation is. In the beginning it looks like emptiness. By and by you will start feeling its other dimension – that is fullness.

It is as if a room is full of furniture. When you remove the furniture the room looks empty, naturally.

You have become accustomed to the furniture in the room. Suddenly the furniture is removed; it looks empty. But there is another way of looking at the room. Now it is more full of room. Now it is more full of space, now it is more spacious: there is more room to move, to be. It is bigger now than it was before because all that furniture was occupying space. Now the furniture is out it has more space.

And it is exactly the case with the mind: when you start meditating, going through groups, you release many things from the mind; the furniture, the junk is thrown out. By and by you will stumble upon the other aspect of the energy – that you are not becoming empty; you are becoming spacious.

You have more room inside you to contain bigger things. You can contain more love now because the furniture is removed. You can contain more god now because the furniture is removed.

[A sannyasin who is returning to the West says he is unsure whether he is a real seeker or not.

He has been learning acupuncture for three years from a sannyasin who runs a sannyas centre in london. He feels very much in the shadow of this person.]

First, don’t be worried about what kind of sannyasin you are. This is how things are: in the morning you can be one kind, in the afternoon you can be another kind; by the evening you can be the third type. The mind goes on changing so you cannot decide, and there is no need to decide. The mind has to disappear. When all wavering disappears then you will be the real sannyasin, but before it disappears it is there, so nothing to be worried about.

And nothing is wrong in being curious. Just being curious is meaningless. If one sometimes becomes a sincere seeker – even sometimes; for a few minutes in twenty-four hours – that’s more than enough. If even for a few minutes in twenty-four hours you are surrendered to me, that is enough; that will do. There is no need to be devoted to me for twenty-four hours. 1 don’t demand impossibles... just the humanly possible. Even if for a single moment every night when you go to bed you can remember me and are surrendered to me, that will do the miracle! So don’t be worried about that.

And with [the acupuncturist].... This acupuncture thing is such that if you can learn, it is good. You have already wasted three years in it. You don’t feel that you are capable enough to do anything on your own now?...

My feeling is that by and by you start being on your own, and only then will you learn. I think my feeling about you is that you know the essentials. Once you have known the essentials then everything can be learned through being yourself, practising it. Those other planes don’t come by verbal knowledge. They will come only by going deep into it... they will come by experience.

So there is no need to go on continuously hanging around [the acupuncturist]. If it feels that it drains know how to mix the colour and how to put it on and where to put the canvas and you know how to paint – the essential – then all you need is there; you just have to work it out through your inspiration.

Now you have to go into your imagination and let it happen!

By and by you will feel your way and things will become more clear. Otherwise you will become more and more involved in the theoretical kind of knowledge – and that will never make you confident.

Confidence comes only by doing it. It is as if a man goes on and on reading and speculating and thinking about swimming and never goes to swim. The more he knows, the more he will become afraid.

Three years is enough, more than enough. Start being on your own. And you will have to find your own knack. Acupuncture is a knack, an art, and there is no need to follow anybody like a rule. There are none, rules don’t exist... just insights.

So start working on your own. And [the acupuncturist] is a powerful man and has a strange kind of energy; he can be too powerful over you. But you have learned enough from him, so be thankful and say goodbye and start doing something.

In the beginning you will feel a little unconfident and you will be worried many times about whether you are doing the right thing or not, but that’s how one has to begin. It is a kind of groping, but sooner or later you will find the door. Once you have started finding the door then less and less groping is needed. Then you know the door.

Start working!

[A visitor who has participated in the kyo group, says she wants to surrender but her mother wants her to earn money and be conventional, not spiritual.]

But my sannyas is very materialistic. I don’t divide spirituality and materialism in any way. Matter is as good as spirit, and when they both meet and there is a synchronicity between the two, there is joy.

The spirit alone is not capable of giving joy; the body alone also is not capable of giving joy. Joy is a harmony between the body and the soul – the meeting of the opposites, the meeting of the polarities. That orgasm is joy. So I am neither materialist in the sense marx is materialist; nor am I a spiritualist in the sense that the so-called spiritualist people are spiritual – Sri Aurobindo or Mahatma Gandhi. I am not a spiritualist in that sense. I am a totally different kind of phenomenon. To me, all is welcome and everything is good.

So about that you need not be worried. If your mother is really a materialistic person, she will also become my sannyasin, mm? I have a certain appeal for materialists!

Don’t be worried about that. If you want to become a sannyasin, become a sannyasin. If you want to surrender, you surrender!

CHAPTER 30

30 August 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva means divine, pargal means mad – divinely mad. And just by remaining ordinarily sane god cannot be attained. For the ordinary sanity nothing of the eternal is possible because the eternal needs total commitment, utter involvement. Of that only a madman is capable.

By madness I mean when you put aside your mind and you don’t listen to the mind at all; you listen to the heart. The heart is mad; the mind is very very rational. The heart has no explanations. Its longing is pure. The mind’s longing is based on reason; it is never pure. It is not just there; it has a motivation in it – hence you can find reason for it.

If you desire money you can say why. If you desire power you can say why. But if you love god you cannot say whey, there is no answer coming; there is no motivation either. Or if you love a woman then too there is no motivation; you cannot explain why. You simply shrug your shoulders. You say ’I don’t know – it is simply there. That’s why love has always been condemned as a kind of madness.

Lovers all over the world have been thought to be lunatics... gone off the track.

Prayer is a higher kind of madness than love and a deeper kind of madness than love. Love begins and ends; it is a honeymoon affair. Prayer only begins and never ends; it is eternal madness. Love is only a glimpse of that madness – just for a moment it is there and then it is gone – but prayer abides.

And you can become a madman; that’s why I am giving you the name. In the east we have worshipped people who were mad for god.

In the west there are many people who are suffering in mad asylums and they are not mad not work on yourself. Continuously be in the mood of a song. Create a climate of song around yourself...

let it hang around you. Do everything as if it is part of the song. Walking, talking, sitting, moving, sleeping – let every act become part of the great song that you are, and suddenly you will see things are changing. Now you cannot walk the way you used to walk because now it has to be harmonious; it has to become a kind of rhythm. Now you cannot talk the way you used to, the old pattern starts disappearing; now the talk also has to become more rhythmic. Then every gesture by and by becomes immensely elegant and every movement becomes a grace. Soon you will see that each act, ordinary day to day acts – taking a bath, going for a walk, eating – all start falling into a pattern, into a melody. And suddenly you can see that something bigger than the total of all the parts is arising in you. That is the song. It is more than the sum of the parts. It comes out of the totality of the parts – but it is more, it is plus. It is not mathematical; it is mysterious.

Two plus two are four; that is mathematical. But when two plus two suddenly become five – just by putting two twos together something new which was not there in either pair, neither in this two nor in that two, starts coming into existence – this is something new that is coming in. Something new enters whenever there is a unity; whenever there is some organic unity something new comes in.

You can dissect it and it will disappear. The past will be left there. If you dissect it again there will be one pair of two, another pair of two, but the new thing that has happened is no more there. It happens only when something is in an organic unity.

It is like the beauty of a flower. You can dissect it, analyse it, then a few things are left in your hands, but you will not be able to find beauty anywhere in those things. Chemicals will be there and things like that but the beauty will be missing. The beauty was there in the flower but it is no more in the parts. It is something that happens only when all the parts fall in tune, when all parts function together. In that very functioning something new arrives, and that’s what god is: the whole universe functioning as a unity. That humming sound of that organic unity is what god is.

When you start functioning in a unity and all your acts start falling in tune with something that runs like a thread in the flowers holding them all together – a hidden thread... It is just the same as it is running in the mala holding all the beads together. The thread is not visible; the beads are visible.

Just like that thread, let a grace arise in you. It will take a few days of remembrance, but walk as if walking has to be musical, eat as if eating has to be musical; talk, listen, as if each thing has to be musical. Slow down, become more musical... and by creating this music in your being you will be doing the right thing – the work; this is your work.

[A sannyasin says he was initiated by guru Maharajji and began to do his light meditation. Then later he experienced a pain on the right half of his head during orgasm. This spread all over the left side of his body. He took sannyas and has done the dynamic which helped but the pain is still there.

Osho checks his energy.]

It was not the right meditation for you and it has really disturbed your nervous system. But it will disappear; nothing to be worried about, mm? Just slowly, slowly it will disappear. Within a month it will be completely gone, so you need not worry about it....

and you -are a soft person; you don’t need that kind of meditation. It is a violent kind of meditation.

You forget about it. It was a nightmare! It will be okay, mm? Good.

[A sannyasin describes a sensation of shivers through his body accompanied by a need to let out a roar when pressure is applied to his spine.... It is something very beautiful coming up, says Osho.

Don’t be afraid, mm?]

.... It has not to be stopped, it has to be allowed.

Buddhists have a particular principle about it; they call it ’the lion’s roar’. When the energy lying fast asleep in the spine starts rising, it shakes you. It shakes your every fibre; every cell of the body becomes infused with a totally new kind of vitality. And then suddenly one day you feel you are no more a sheepish kind of being and a lion’s roar happens. A great roar comes – and it is not that you can do it; it is not within your capacity to do it. It happens when it happens; you are simply a witness to it.

What primal therapists call the primal scream is just the lowest rung of the lion’s roar. It is the beginning of the lion’s roar; it is not the end; it is just the first step. But even primal therapy helps so many people – even that small, tiny scream. Primal therapists think this is a very big thing because they don’t know anything bigger is possible. But even that tiny scream which looks really big when it comes, which is very orgasmic, which takes possession of your whole being, is nothing compared to what Buddhists call the lion’s roar.

Sometimes it happens that for days a person will be in that roaring state. In that state he is no ordinary man. He is a volcano; he has erupted, exploded. Then by and by it settles and you settle with it on a new plane of being... so please don’t stop it!

One can stop it in many ways: one is food, another is sex. Food and sex are very simple ways to stop it. Eat too much and make love too much and it will disappear... but you will have missed a great opportunity.

So when this roar comes the Buddhists have a certain discipline. You will be surprised.... They tell the person to fast, because if feeding can repress it then fasting brings it fast. And then the person has to be completely celibate for a few days so the energy gathers; otherwise sex is a kind of release. The energy is the same. If the release goes on working then it never accumulates that much that the roar can come. So if you avoid sexuality for a few days it will be good – and it is only a question of a few days. Eat light food and don’t fill yourself. There is no need to fast – just eat light food: fruits, vegetables, milk, but not too much. Eat just below that quantity that you ordinarily do – three-fourths of it. Leave the stomach a little empty, for a few days avoid sexuality, and the roar will come. Sometimes it comes and is finished in a single moment; sometimes it takes a little longer time – it continues. But something beautiful is on the way.

... And just enjoy this feeling – accept it. Don’t be worried and don’t be puzzled by it: welcome it. If it comes when you are sitting silently, just go with it: start shaking, trembling, go with it... allow it to darshan with the group. He says: I wont my toy monkey to be a sannyasin.]

You can give sannyas to your toy monkey. I entitle you to give sannyas to your play monkey! You can give it, and if some other monkeys come, I will send them to you.

I will make you the guru of monkeys, right? Good.

[The child says: And he needs a mala too.]

A mala is difficult for monkeys! You can make a false mala for the monkey; deceive the monkey. A real mala is not needed for the monkey because he will throw it, mm? Good!

CHAPTER 31

31 August 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[Osho gives sannyas to an Indian prince.]

Mayoor is so good and so meaningful. Mayoor is the symbol of dance and celebration and joy... and if life becomes joyful, then nothing else is needed. It is through joy that god comes; it is through joy that the first contact happens. So create this dancing energy around you. Don’t be serious, be joyful; serious people miss much. Be playful and get more and more in tune with nature.

Man has become very much alienated, almost like an uprooted tree, hence there is so much misery and depression. Get in tune with nature – go with the trees with the river with the mountains – and drop many wrong notions. For example if you are talking to a tree your mind will say, ’What nonsense are you doing? – talking to a tree? How can you talk to a tree? This is absurd!’ But I tell you that it is possible to talk to a tree. It only needs a certain kind of silence, communion, and you can talk to the tree. and there is an opening. It is not only that you talk to the tree – a moment comes when the tree starts responding to you.

Luther Burbank, a very famous man, used to talk to trees. He was a nobel prize winner and people used to think that he was mad – but he was experimenting. He was talking to a cactus plant for seven years and telling the cactus plant, ’You need not be afraid of me. You need not grow thorns.

I’m your friend and I will protect you. You need not be afraid of me’. It was one of the greatest experiments ever done. And then a branch without any thorns appeared on the cactus. That was a miracle! The cactus responded. By and by the cactus came to believe....

So talk to trees and to birds and to rivers and to animals....

Sometime stay a little longer and do a few groups You will be immensely benefited and you need little closed. One is always mannerly, doing things according to etiquette, this and that. One has to do this and not that, so the natural flow stops.

So whenever you come next, be here for a few more days and do a few groups, mm?

[A sannyasin who is leaving says she feels as if she has been thrown back on herself. She’s been crying a lot since sannyas-taking.]

I can understand. It is natural: you are going so early. Something has started to happen and you will be going into an alien world.

Here things are on a different wavelength. It is easier here to grow into sannyas, into meditation.

Going back to the west, and you are going so early, the fear is natural.

... But come whenever you can manage and next time you come, stay a little longer. Within just six to eight weeks you would have settled... and then you can go anywhere.

The contact has happened with you, but you will only become aware by and by; it takes time. The contact happened in the unconscious. When you take sannyas you decide from the conscious mind to take sannyas, but when I give you sannyas I give it to your unconscious mind, not to your conscious mind. The conscious mind is not very reliable and it is very superficial. It is a very minute part of your totality... just one-tenth of your total mind. You decide from the one-tenth and I give to the nine-tenths.

My approach is not towards your conscious mind, the known you; my approach is towards your unconscious mind, the unknown you. I try to relate to the unconscious, and you will not be aware of it for a long time. By and by your conscious will understand that something is growing in the unconscious. By and by the message will reach from the unconscious to the conscious; then you will be thrilled with joy.

Right now I can understand why you are feeling that you are being thrown back on yourself, but you are not. I’m there, and I will show you ways to relate to me even if you are far away.

One thing is: continue to meditate. Choose one meditation – any one. Which one did you like the most?

[She answers: The Nadabrahma.]

Then the Nadabrahma is perfect; do the Nadabrahma every day. To do it at night will be the best thing, but not just before you go to sleep because then it will create so much energy that it will be difficult for you to fall asleep for two or three hours. So do it at least two, three hours before you go to sleep. If you go to sleep at twelve in the night, then nine is the right time.

Do the Nadabrahma, and after Nadabrahma keep this box with you, put it on your heart and Mm mm!... so that’s very good for me! I will work on you – you work for me! You can do much, mm?

And help a few more people to become related to me so that sooner or later there will arise a small centre, and that will be helpful for you.... And come back!

[A sannyasin who has returned from the West where she took a mala to give her sick father sannyas.

He says: I feel like something very beautiful has happened to me while I’ve been away... I haven’t felt my heart so much before.]

Good! Very few people feel their heart and when they talk about the heart they talk about the physical heart – the pumping system. They don’t know that that is not the heart. The physical heart is just the corresponding spot in the body to the real heart, the soul. The real heart is not part of the physical body at all, it is your spiritual centre – but they correspond.

Just hidden behind the physical heart is that space, that point, that mystics have been calling the heart. And when you start feeling it, it is immensely beautiful. Then for the first time you start becoming aware of something which is not just the body in you. And with the feeling that something more than the body exists in you, there is great joy.

And I can see: the feeling is coming. Help it to come more; be more available to it. Do everything that you feel will be helpful, and don’t do anything that you feel hinders. And only you can judge, mm? You will immediately be able to know when you lose contact with it. If you do something and you lose contact, then that is the thing not to do.

And if you feel that you are doing something and the contact goes deep and it comes with force, the feeling of heart, then that is the thing to do more. You will just have to grope and find out what is right and what is wrong.... And only you can find out because what is wrong for you may be right for another. So no instructions can be given from the outside. And what is right for you may not be right for anybody else; it depends.

The deeper you go, the more individual you become. On the surface we are almost alike; the deeper you go, the more differences come up. And the heart is one of the deepest so there you are unique.

There only you are you and nobody else is like you. So no programme can be given from the outside, no instructions supplied.

So just go on feeling. If you feel that this thing helps then do this thing more. If you feel that sitting with the trees helps, good – follow that feeling. If you feel that being angry hinders then become a little more alert. Now you have something to lose if you become angry. If you feel that being jealous creates a barrier and you forget your heart, now it is for you to choose; then don’t be jealous.

In fact this is how real morality has to be found. When you start feeling something precious is happening then you have to sacrifice many things which are meaningless and which are hindrances.

become part of it. People want to somehow lose their identity. It feels good; it is a kind of alcohol, an intoxicant. That’s the appeal of alcohol. People become intoxicated so that they can forget themselves. Then there are many kinds of intoxicants. The political crowd is an intoxicant. You become a part of it, you become a communist, you lose your identity and it gives you the same feel as alcohol. Or you become part of a religious crowd: you become a hindu or a mohammedan or a christian. You are no more individual and you don’t have any individual responsibility; you are anonymous. If you do something you will not feel any prick of conscience.

And this happens in many ways. It can happen in a group here too... but it was not possible because these people are almost all sannyasins. They are not searching for any intoxicant; in fact they are searching for awareness. They are moving to the polar opposite. Their whole effort here is to become more and more conscious and to become individuals more and more. They want to get free of society, they want to get free of dependence... they want to be themselves.

That is the whole work here. So it will be a different kind of group here; it will not be like... And your observation is perfectly true. In a way it will be a difficult group too because you will have to tackle twenty, thirty people separately.

It is easier for the groupleader if it is a common mass. Then he can talk to the group; the group functions as one unit, it has no separate individual souls. It is easier and convenient for the groupleader, but when the twenty persons are each individuals and each is functioning in his own way, it is difficult for the groupleader. If the groupleader wants to be the leader it is almost impossible

– the group will drive him mad – because you can only become a leader of a crowd. A leader is only possible when there is a crowd.

When there are individuals the leader cannot be a leader; he can only be one who facilitates the process. Yes, he can be the midwife but not the leader. And that’s my whole approach here – that the groupleader has to be less and less of a leader... because leaders tend to convert people into a mass.

It is easier to control a crowd – naturally. When you want to control twenty persons, twenty individuals, it is complicated. When you control a crowd it is very simple: there is only one person, and that person too is anonymous.

So here, groupleaders will not be really groupleaders; the name is a misnomer. Here they will be more a kind of facilitator, cooperating in a process, helping, midwifes, not leading really – just being there, remaining available if they are needed. If some problem arises they can be helpful but they will not be dominant. They will not give commandments. At the most they will only be in the capacity of advisors, and whether the advice is taken or not depends on the individuals.

There will be no effort from the side of the leaders – that if you don’t listen to his advice then you are doing something wrong; no, not at all. If you don’t listen that is your decision; if you listen that is your decision. It is not a commandment. It is not an army and people are not treated like sheep.

That is the greatest humiliation a man can suffer

to be treated like a sheep Here you have to treat

leader. And then the leader can be of more help than he can be as a leader, because then there is no burden on the leader; he is not to lead people. He can be more playful, there is no need for him to be serious. He can be more authentic and he can be more true. He need not pretend, he need not pose. He can simply be there and let his truth help people. He need not be very very dogmatic...

he need not be a demagogue. He can also be a learner, and when the leader is also a learner it is beauty, it is tremendous beauty.

And people learn more when the leader is also a learner because people feel more in tune with the person; they don’t feel humiliated, dominated, directed. When there is no demand from the leader

– that you should listen to this – there is no resistance from the other side. Demand disappears, resistance disappears, and then there is for the first time a kind of rapport... and through rapport comes rapture. Good!

[A group member is returning to the West. Osho reminds her to continue meditating. She says she liked the dynamic meditation best of all.... ]

That’s very good! If Dynamic suits then there is nothing like it, because it functions on all three planes of the being: on the body, on the mind, on the soul.

For example, Nadabrahma: it functions only on two planes – the mind and the soul. Techniques like tm function only on the mind. Any technique that functions on all the three planes of being brings a higher kind of integrity. Otherwise one plane starts lagging behind.

For example, one can do some chanting, jappa, mantra, prayer, but the body will remain uninvolved.

In a christian prayer the body will not be involved, so the body will remain lagging behind and sooner or later there will be a great distance between the mind and the body and the body will start feeling like a burden. That’s why Christian mystics started feeling the body was the enemy. It is not the body that is the enemy; it is the technique that they have used.

If all the three planes function-together and the meditation is such that it keeps all three flowing together in a togetherness, then one never feels any disintegration, any fragmentation. Then body, mind and soul, all are you, and they all go on pooling energy into one centre. And obviously when all the three pool energies into one centre you have more energy and higher possibilities. You can go as far as all your three planes can permit.

If dynamic suits then it is very beautiful. Continue it, mm? Good!

[Osho gives a centre name to another group member who is returning to the West: nirala. It means unique – and that is the quality I want my sannyasins to develop; being unique, being non-imitative...

more and more strong and capable of being themselves. It is difficult because the society wants you to become imitators. the society never likes original people – they are dangerous; the society wants carbon copies.... ]

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 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31