The Sacred Yes

Talks given from 1/11/78 to 30/11/78

Darshan Diary

CHAPTER 1

1 November 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Veet means beyond, nastiko means no – beyond no-saying. The religions in the past have been teaching people a kind of negative attitude. The old religions depend on the don’t: don’t do this, don’t do that. Their whole approach is: How to negate life? They think that by negating life they will be a coming closer to god, and that is just absurd. Life is god – to negate it is to negate god himself.

One needs a great yea-saying heart. And the yes has to be so total that it can contain the no in itself. The light has to be so total that darkness becomes just a part in it. Life has to be so total that death becomes just an episode in it. And when one can say the great yes to all that is – to the darkness, to the light, to the agonies of life and to the ecstasies of life, to the body and to the soul, to the earth and to the sky – when one can say yes to all that is, it becomes a sacred yes. And my sannyas is based on the sacred yes. It is a totally new vision.

No has to be dissolved into yes. The old religions were somehow suicidal. They shrank peoples’

lives. They were escapist. They did not allow love, they did not allow relationship, they did not allow the multiplicity and the richness of life to be lived, to be enjoyed, to be experienced. They taught people to escape from life and its multiple experiences, to move to the monasteries, to renounce.

They were based on no.

Their whole philosophy is contained in no-saying, and the person who was very skilful in no-saying became a great saint in their eyes. He was just a kind of masochist, he was neurotic, but because of the philosophy of no, neurotics became saints; they were worshipped. They were slowly poisoning themselves, because when you say no you poison yourself.

Yes is life-giving. And yes has not to be partial; it has to be total. Yes has not to be something against the no, otherwise it will be partial. Yes has to be so huge that it contains the no in itself. And when the yes is so huge, so enormous, so infinite, that it is capable of containing its opposite, then it becomes a sacred yes.

Sannyas is a sacred yes to life and att that is contained in life. And to live with this yes needs courage!

To live with this yes mew, that one is ready to dissolve into the existence, that the dew drop is ready to drop into the ocean. But the moment the dew drop drops into the ocean it also becomes the ocean. That is the meaning of your name: go beyond no, try to reach to the ultimate yes. That is prayer and that is true religion.

[Osho gives a sannyasin an ’energy darshan’ and says:]

Perfectly good! Start doing one thing that will help your energy very much: exhale deeply, whenever you remember, many times in the day – just a good exhalation, throw the whole air out. And don’t inhale, let the body inhale; you only exhale and the body automatically inhales. No efforts should be made to inhale. Inhalation should be spontaneous and natural, but with exhalation make every effort.

Your lungs are not getting as much air as they need, and that will keep your energy low. Only one third of your lungs is getting air, and that is creating a division in your body and the circulation of the energy is disturbed. Your energy is perfectly good but the circulation is blocked. Just exhalation will help, and after two months you report to me. For two months do exhalation, but don’t do too much –

once in a while. In the day at least seven, eight times you can do it, but never do it in the night; only between sunrise and sunset. If you do it in the night then sleep will be disturbed, mm? because sleep needs a little carbon dioxide in the lungs. If there is too much oxygen then sleep is disturbed.

... Just seven times at one time, only seven times, and at the most seven times in the day, so that means forty-nine times, that’s all. Because if much oxygen goes in that too creates a kind of imbalance: then you will feel too excited; that too is not good. So forty-nine times in the whole day, and that too will be between sunrise and sunset – not in the night, never – and after two months come back. Good.

CHAPTER 2

2 November 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva means divine, samvega means feeling, emotion. God is available through feeling and only through feeling. It is not a question of thinking; and the people who start thinking about god are bound to conclude that there is no god. Their very method prohibits it. It is as if one is trying to listen to music through the eyes. If a person has decided that he will believe in music only when it is heard through the eyes, then there will be no music for him. Eyes can see but they cannot hear. And god is not a question of logic: it is a question of love. It is not through the head that one comes to know god but through the heart, and those who have hearts are bound to know god.

The modern man has by and by lost all track of his own heart. It has become only a physical thing, a pumping station for blood and purification. The spiritual heart is hidden behind the physical heart.

Just as the brain is not the mind, so the physical heart is not the true heart. The mind is hidden behind the brain; the brain is only a vehicle of the mind. In exactly the same way, the heart, the real heart, the spiritual heart, is hidden behind the physical heart. The physical heart is only a vehicle for the spiritual heart, but the modern man is deceived, utterly deceived by the physical heart.

When Jesus talks about the heart he means something else. When Sufis talk about the heart they mean something else. Their heart is not part of physiology; it is something behind the physiology, transcendental to it.

So descend from the head deeper into the heart; and you can easily do it, hence the name. It will not be difficult at all – just a little effort and you will start hearing the heartbeat of the spiritual centre of your being.

Deva means divine, asmito means I-am-ness – divine l-am-ness. It does not mean the ego. The ego is a false self, created by the society; it is not your real centre. Your real centre is almost a no-self, but the feeling of am-ness remains. Even when the ego dissolves and the personality is dropped, then too there is a feeling of am-ness. One still ’is’ though one cannot say ’I am a self.’ Self means separate from existence. One cannot say ’I am separate from self, from existence’ but one certainly

’is’. This is-ness is asmito. It is an experience of egoless existence. And this can be penetrated slowly slowly by becoming aware.

The process is awareness. Just watch your thoughts, your feelings. Everything changes; only I-am-ness remains permanent. One moment it is anger, another moment it is love, but they go on changing. One moment you are happy, another moment you are unhappy; they go on changing but one thing remains eternally there, and that is I-am-ness. That is never lost, not even in deep sleep; it persists.

It is as if I-am-ness is the mirror and on the mirror a thousand and one things are reflected and they go on passing. There is a procession, the whole traffic of the mind goes on by, but the mirror remains. It simply reflects: when it is confronted by anger it reflects anger; when sadness comes, it reflects sadness. One cloud moves, another comes and another, and it goes on reflecting all kinds of forms and shapes. Still, it is neither of them; it is neither happiness nor unhappiness. It is just a mirror reflecting.

That is asmito, that innermost mirror of consciousness, and to find it is to find god. It is the door into pure existence. But first one has to attain one’s own pure existence, uncontaminated by the idea of ego, and from there one can easily slip into the eternal ocean of god.

Sva means self, samvado means communion – to be in communion with oneself. That’s the whole process of meditation. People are divided against themselves; everybody is living a split life. The difference is only of degree, otherwise everyone on this earth is schizophrenic. Nobody is really healthy because health means wholeness and nobody is whole; everybody is divided.

For centuries the society has been using that strategy to destroy the integrity of the individual. It gives you ideals, it tells you how you should be. It never allows you to love yourself as you are. It creates division: you are one thing, the society says you have to be something else; you become two. Your ideal self creates a constant tension in you. Your real self also becomes a burden because you don’t want it; the society says that it is worthless: Drop it. The real is denied and the unreal is imposed. Now this is the whole misery of man: how can one ever be in bliss if the real is denied, rejected, condemned, and the unreal is appreciated, valued?

The unreal remains unreal but it hovers above your head continuously torturing you: You should be this. And you cannot be anybody else other than who you are, so it becomes a heavy burden. You constantly have to deny your reality. That creates a state of split; one is no more in communion with oneself. This conflict is the root cause of all neurosis, all psychosis, all madness.

The healthy and the whole person is one who has accepted his totality with no rejection, who has never condemned anything, who simply lives the w. ay he is, who has no ideals, who moves moment to moment with the reality that he is as he is. He has tremendous respect for himself, love for himself.

He accepts all unconditionally. If he is sad, he accepts his sadness. He doesn’t say ’I should not be sad’; he knows nothing of the language that consists of shoulds and oughts. He says ’If I am sad, I am sad; I have to live it. This is me and there is no other me. This is the only me there is.’ And the moment you accept your sadness a great communion arises between you and your sadness. You are bridged, and even sadness becomes beautiful, even sadness starts making your life rich.

When there is anger the whole person respects the anger. He does not repress it, he does not condemn it, he does not pretend that he is not angry. Whatsoever reality is there, he is totally in communication with it, and he lives with utter acceptance.

This brings miracles in life. When you accept all you become integrated. When you accept all you don’t have any conscious and unconscious division in you; your house is no more divided against itself. When you accept all, through that acceptance a transcendence happens. You are not just the sum total of all that you have accepted; you are something more than the sum total, and that something more is divine.

Once that divineness is tasted then many things disappear on their own accord. Anger simply disappears; not that you drop it, it is no more found. The split person becomes angry. Sadness disappears on its own accord; not that you have done something to change it, to help it go: you have simply accepted. In that acceptance you are no more fighting with yourself. When the fight stops there is a dance, because the energy which was engaged in the fight is there. It becomes a dance, it becomes a song, it becomes a beatitude.

This is my whole teaching, this is what sannyas is all about: total acceptance of oneself and transcendence through that total acceptance. But transcendence is not the goal; it is just a by-product. You are not to attain it, it happens on its own; whenever It happens, it happens on its own.

All that you need to do is to fight with yourself no more. Befriend yourself, fall in love with yourself and that brings harmony, accord, communion.

Deva means divine, nirvano means enlightenment. Man lives in darkness, but the capacity to live in light is there; light can be enkindled. Everything is there which can become light, utter light; but it is only a potential. It is like a seed: when you drop the seed in the soil it has the whole programme, it has the whole blueprint, of the tree. All the leaves that will ever be it has in the blueprint; the shape and the colour and the height... and the flowers and their colours and the fruits. In that small seed all is hidden. If you cut the seed you will not find anything there; it is invisible. But drop the seed in the soil, let the seed disappear, and a sprout comes and foliage and the tree starts growing. And whatsoever will happen – the tree may live thousands of years or hundreds of years and may bring millions of flowers – all was hidden in the seed, it was potential there.

God is man’s potentiality. We are just seeds but we have still not fallen into the soil. Sannyas is the courage to fall into the soil and disappear. Then great light arises, light that is eternal, light that is deathless, timeless. That light is god, and to know that light is to be blissful forever. Man’s destiny is great but he unnecessarily lives in a very impoverished state. Man carries all the treasures of the world within him but he remains unaware and remains a beggar.

So let sannyas become a resurrection. Up to now you have been dead. That’s how millions of people are; you will find them all walking around, dead people. They have not lived because they have not known who they are. Life starts only when you know who you are, never before it. Life is only when there is light inside and you have seen your own being and you have seen your own centre. Millions of people go on living only on the surface, oblivious of the depths and the heights, oblivious of all that they are meant to be.

There is a Russian story: A man died and only when he died did he find that he was alive. Death gave him the idea that he had been alive; death became the contrast. Suddenly he recognised the fact that he had lived for eighty years, he was alive; otherwise those eighty years were nothing but flat boredom.

Sannyas has to become a resurrection. It is coming out of the grave, it is coming out of the flat life, it is coming out of the horizontal process of mundane life. It is changing the dimension from the horizontal to the vertical so that one can move to the heights and the depths.

You carry within you heights of the Himalayas and depths of the Pacific. And when one has known all the possible heights and all the possible depths, then only does one know what a gift life has been. One feels grateful and prayer arises out of that gratefulness.

[A sannyasin is back from the West. Osho suggests some groups for her.]

Much will happen. Just don’t resist and don’t fight. Be in a total surrender so much can happen, so no energy is wasted and no time is wasted.

People waste much energy in resisting. Things can happen very fast but rather than cooperating with me they fight, unconsciously, not aware that they are fighting. It is just their old habits. For their whole life they have been fighting with people; that’s what life is.

A deep trauma is also there because parents have been ordering you and the teachers and the priests and everybody wanted you to obey them, so there is a resistance to obeying. That has become almost built-in.

Here it is not a question of obeying, it is a question of surrender; and these two are totally different.

Obeying means you are there, still there and deciding to obey. Surrender means you are no more, there is nobody to obey or disobey; you have simply become a let-go. And then things can move so fast, unbelievably fast. Things which ordinarily take lives can happen in moments.

So just remember this: for these three months put yourself aside; let me be your heart. Then three months can bring something tremendously significant in your being, and that is needed, and it is time. It is spring too, the season to bloom!

CHAPTER 3

3 November 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva means divine, sambhava means possibility, potentiality – the possibility of the divine. God is not something that is available ready-made; it is your potential. You can actualise it, but you can miss it also.

Man is like a seed: the seed has the potential to become the tree, but only the potential. It is not yet the tree; it can miss also. And millions of people go on missing. They are born as seeds, they live as seeds, they die as seeds; they never bloom, they never become self-actualised people.

Religion is nothing but the science of self-actualisation. It is the method of transforming the potential into the real. It is the greatest art.

We call a man a great artist if he can transform a stone into a beautiful statue. We call a man a great painter if he can transform an empty canvas into a beautiful painting. But the greatest art is to transform your inner potential into actuality.

Man is born as a tabula rasa, empty, a canvas. The painting is possible, but it will depend on you what shape, what form, it will take. It is your choice, it is your responsibility. Don’t take life for granted. That’s how many people are missing, they think just being born is enough. It is not: it is only a beginning of a great journey. The real has yet to happen.

That is the meaning of your name. Become aware that you are a seed. Become aware that the seed has a great potential to become a tree, that it can bloom in a thousand and one flowers, and that unless it is attained the work remains unfinished.

And one cannot feel fulfilled unless it is actualised, unless all that is possible is actualised. When your whole potential has become the real, that is the moment of great bliss. Then one has arrived, and only then is there rest and contentment and fulfilment.

Deva means divine and bella means time – the time has come for the divine. It is the moment.

Whenever one is ready god starts happening. God is already happening, we are just not tuned with all that is happening around us. Once we are ready the music starts entering into our being.

Sannyas means just entering into a different time and a different space. The name of the time is now and the name of the space is here. This is the moment – no other moment – when god is possible. It is either now or never, because all that happens always happens in the now. The mind goes on thinking about that which is gone and that which is not yet and remains in that unnecessary travelling, back and forth, back and forth, past and future. And between the two – past and future –

is this little, small atomic moment from where the door opens into the divine, from where the divine enters in you. So the first meaning: the time has arrived, this is the time. Let sannyas become a new birth.

And the second meaning is a beautiful flower. Man blooms only when he is in contact with god.

The presence of god, the remembrance of god, functions almost like the sun rising in the morning.

When the sun rises buds start opening on their own accord. Just the presence of the sun is enough and something starts happening in the hearts of the buds; they start opening up, they bloom. The presence of god, once felt, becomes a flower in you, a golden flower.

Millions of people die without knowing what was possible, what their destiny was, what great treasure they were carrying within themselves. They never became aware of it and remained beggars all their lives.

No man is born a beggar: every man is born a king or a queen. That’s how it should be, because we come from god and we go to god. All is ours. Each being is a showering, ultimately valuable, but chasing after small things we become small. The man who is continuously obsessed with money becomes like money: a thing, a commodity. Whatsoever we desire, we become. Never desire the mundane. Desire the sacred and you become the sacred, desire heights and you become heights.

Modern man needs a great re-sacrilisation, because these three hundred years in human history, the past three hundred years, have seen a great de-sacrilisation of human consciousness. Religion has been destroyed. Man has been completely conditioned in such a way that even if he thinks he is religious, he is not; his religion has become at the most a social formality. It is a Sunday religion.

He goes to church because he lives with people who all go to church and it is good to be with them, it makes him feel that he belongs. Otherwise there is no desire to go to church. He has completely forgotten the language of prayer.

My effort here is to re-sacrilise, to give you again a glimpse, a taste, of the sacred. And once that taste is there, one suddenly blooms. It is not a gradual growth; it is sudden enlightenment. One moment it was a bud, another moment it is a flower; and all is achieved. In that achievement one comes to know ’I was simply foolish, that’s why I was missing. Otherwise this has been with me always; from the very beginning this has been the case. I was heir to all the bliss that is possible in life! That was my birthright.’ But one has to claim it. Let sannyas become that claim.

Deva means divine, rasika means a lover – a lover of god, a lover of the divine. Religion is a matter of love; it is not a question of thinking. It has nothing to do with logic, reasoning and the head, nothing at all. But it has all to do with the heart, with feeling, with emotions, with love.

Religion is closer to poetry than to mathematics. Poetry has something of the religious in it; mathematics has none. And unless one is a lover, one will never know; the knowing comes through loving. The knowing of god is not ordinary knowledge. It has a very mysterious way of happening.

It does not happen through the conventional, orthodox way.

Science is orthodox: religion is rebellion. Science functions through the conventional method of experimentation, observation, analysis, logic, syllogism; calculation is its method. Certainly it arrives at some conclusions, but those conclusions only make us aware of the material. Only matter can be observed, only matter can be measured, and only matter can be calculated, so the very . method of science prohibits all that is mysterious. God is denied – not that science finds that there is no god, just the very method prohibits god. In that very method you have already decided that there is no possibility of any subjectivity emerging.

And god is subjectivity, god is consciousness. God is not an object: you cannot observe it, you cannot see it there confronting you; it is within you. You can feel it as a stirring in the heart, as a pulsation, a new pulsation of love, as a birth of new poetry, as an arousal of dance.... Yes, those are the ways of feeling god. Love contains all that: poetry, music, dance; it contains all that is non-calculative.

Become a lover and you will know! Love is the only way to know the real. Logic knows the objective, love knows the real; and the real is far more comprehensive. The real contains the objective but the objective does not contain the real. The objective is only a small portion of the real, the visible portion of the real, but the real consists of much that is invisible; and that invisible can only be deciphered, touched, by love.

Sannyas has to become a love affair with god, then only is it true.

Deva means divine, samvedan means sensitivity – divine sensitivity.

Man has become very insensitive. Out of fear man has created great armour around himself, he is continuously defending himself. He does not open his doors, he does not open his windows, he does not allow the sun to come in or the winds or the rains; he lives in a completely closed world.

He has become a monad, windowless; this is the problem. And because of this he cannot know what life is, he cannot know what god is. He never comes out of his cell. He has lost contact with existence.

Sannyas is regaining contact, it is coming closer to existence, dropping your armour, defence strategies, opening your windows... although in the beginning it is painful. It is as if you have always lived in darkness and then you suddenly come into light and your eyes cannot open: it is uncomfortable for your eyes because they have become accustomed to darkness.

Man’s whole being has become accustomed to a closed world, although in that closed world there is no joy; it is all suffocation, it is slow suicide. But there is security, safety; and man has become ready to choose safety with suffocation. He is ready to pay the price of suffocation for safety. And the safety is only superficial because death will come and destroy all safety. Death is certain; there is no way to be safe against it.

Then why not live? Then why not move out? Why not dance and sing? Why remain suffocated?

There are two possibilities: one can be miserable and secure or one has to accept insecurity and joy; these are the two possibilities. Security and misery come together, insecurity and joy come together; because insecurity is life and security is death.

The whole effort here is to pull you out from your closed, self-imposed imprisonments, and if you cooperate it is not difficult. Once you have seen the light and the open sky you will not be able to believe how you lived so long in darkness, and for what. There is nothing to fear! Life is not our enemy, it is our mother. Existence is our friend, we have to befriend it. And the miracle is that if you love life and you live life, then there is no death.

Loving life, living life, one comes to know that it is eternal. Death exists only because you live closed in security and you don’t allow life to give you the glimpse of the eternal. So this is a paradox: the people who are afraid of death are really creating death themselves. There is no death in reality.

Fear of death creates death: love life and death disappears.

It means love-intelligence, love-wisdom. Love has its own intelligence. It is not intellectual but it is tremendously intelligent. It is intuitive, it is a totally different dimension of knowing, and far richer.

Its penetration is very deep. Logic only goes round and round; love simply penetrates to the very core of the matter. Only love can penetrate to the core; logic remains on the circumference. You can know a person logically, then all that you know will be superficial.

You will know his name and you will know his colour and you will know his religion and his country, but all that is superficial. The person is not his name, the person is not his colour either and the person was born without any religion. How to know that person which is hidden behind all these facades and masks? Only love is capable of reaching there.

Love is like X-ray: it penetrates all the superficialities. It simply goes in and knows the person as he is, knows the person in his authenticity. So it is only in love that we come to know. Love is intelligence, and the world is missing love-intelligence very much. It has become very skilful in intellectuality but a totally different dimension, of love-intelligence, has been forgotten. So we are living with great technology, great science, but no religion at all, no poetry at all. We are using each other as if we were things. People have become commodities to be used and discarded. People are no more people; because a person becomes a person only when he is touched by love.

When somebody takes your hand with great love and care in his hand, have you watched one thing happen? Your hand becomes alive immediately; your whole consciousness becomes focused on the hand. Just a moment before you were not aware of the hand. Now somebody has taken your hand with great love and you have become aware of your hand. Your hand throbs with a new life! It pulsates with something which was not there just a moment before. Just a moment before you were completely oblivious of its existence. Now it is there so much! Your whole body has disappeared; only the hand is there.

When somebody hugs you your whole body becomes alive. Those people are very poor who have never been hugged; they are living in a dead body. Nobody made their body alive, hence so much hankering to be touched, the need to get some warmth.

People are living at a distance. Even if people are standing close by they keep a certain distance.

The body becomes alive when love touches it and the soul becomes alive when love moves it. One comes to one’s total expression only in the moments of love, and that is love-intelligence!

That is the meaning of your name; and you have to live it, you have to materialise it in your life, it has become your being. There is nothing else: god is nothing except a person living totally in love-intelligence. That experience of loving in love-intelligence, living in love-intelligence, is the experience of god. God is the ultimate experience of love.

One can forget all about god. If one remembers love one is bound to reach god!

CHAPTER 4

4 November 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Do you know what Joshua means?...

It is the same as Jesus; the real name of Jesus was Joshua.

It means for which the people have been waiting, the awaited one. Deva Joshua means the divine one for which the world has been waiting.

Prem means love; lalit means beautiful. Love is beautiful, and anything else, that which is not love, is bound to be ugly. Love is the basic ingredient of beauty. Wherever love is missing ugliness is bound to be there. Beauty is the body, love is the soul; beauty is the circumference, love is the centre.

So whenever love happens, simultaneously beauty happens. It comes like a shadow following it; it comes necessarily, inevitably. It is not possible that there could be love with beauty missing, it is not possible. It is as impossible as your shadow missing when you are walking in the sun.

Beauty, if it is existing without love, is only an appearance, an empty gesture; it signifies nothing. It is just as if you have painted light, you have painted a candle, but it will not give you light in the dark night.

It only looks like a candle: it is a painting of a candle; It is not real. So whenever there is beauty without love it is only painted beauty. It will not give you solace; and it will not give you joy. It will not give you an insight into the divine. It will not give you any light when there is darkness, and it will be utterly cold because there will be no heart beating behind it which can keep it warm. And whenever beauty is cold, it is uglier than ugliness, became it is a corpse.

So remember that if love is allowed to happen life automatically becomes beautiful, and to live a beautiful life is to live a religious life. To me, aesthetics is synonymous with ethics. To be beautiful is to be moral and to exist beautifully in all possible ways is enough to come closer to god.

The beautiful man cannot lie; lying will make him ugly. You can watch it: whenever you lie, something goes ugly in you, in your eyes, in your face, in your presence. Something becomes restless, something immediately starts shrinking in you. You are no more the same person, flowing, alive, radiant. Guilt has entered, and guilt cripples, paralyses; guilt creates fear, and fear is a poison.

The moment you lie something immediately goes ugly in you, as if suddenly a wound has opened up in you and you are no more healthy, you are ill. That’s exactly the meaning of disease; it simply means disease. Whenever you lie there is disease. You lose your ease, you are no more easy, you are no more restful; you are tense, and tension is ugly. Relaxation is beautiful. The really beautiful person is totally relaxed, but to be totally relaxed one needs to be authentic. Only truth can be relaxing.

So to me ethics is not meaningful. All that is meaningful is an aesthetic sense, a sense for the beautiful, but that is possible only if you imbibe love; you cannot imbibe the sense of beauty on its own. I cannot imbibe your shadow alone; it always comes with you. If I want to invite your shadow I will have to invite you. If you become my guest, your shadow will become my guest.

[The new sannyasin asks: I have the feeling that love is missing and I don’t know how to find it.]

It is missing but soon you will find it! Just pass through a few groups and meditations.

It is always there. When we miss it, it does not mean that we have lost it; it simply means that we don’t know the route to it. It is there, just the bridge is broken. The bridge can be made; it is not difficult. That’s what we are doing here: we make rainbow bridges. It is always there, it is at your very source. You cannot live without it, but you can forget about it, and that’s what has happened.

That remembrance will come – remind me after you have done (the group), mm? Good.

Prem means love, anagara means wild, uncivilised, raw. Love is alive only when it is wild. Love is real only when it is raw because only then is it natural.

The more man becomes civilised, the less loving he becomes, because civilisation is a discipline of calculation and love cannot exist with a calculating mind. Civilisation is an effort to improve upon yourself. There are a few things which can be improved, and there are a few things which are already perfect and cannot be improved; and love is that kind of thing.

The mind can be improved: one can go on improving the mind and polishing it, and one can go on accumulating information; there is no end to it. It is said that a single human brain can contain all the information that is contained in all the books existing on the earth this moment. A single human brain can contain all the libraries of the world. That immense possibility is there. Hence man can be educated as far as the mind is concerned.

But love is already perfect. It is a perfect gift, there is no way to improve upon it. If you try to improve upon it you may destroy it; that’s how it has been destroyed. You cannot teach a fish a better way of swimming – or can you? It is already perfect. You cannot teach a bird a better way of flying; it is already perfect. If you try to teach a fish how to swim and you send her to a school to learn swimming, every possibility is that you will kill the fish. The poor fish will be killed by your education; you will confuse her.

There is a famous Aesop parable about a centipede. A crab saw a centipede and could not believe his eyes. One hundred legs! – how could one manage? Which one to put first and which one next and next and next? You have to continuously remember otherwise they will get intertwined, entangled in each other, knotted into each other and you will fall! The crab must have been a great philosopher. He asked the centipede ’Sir, can I ask a question? How do you manage? – one hundred legs! It must be a constant trouble and puzzle for you. I have been watching you. Just looking at you walking I became so puzzled: which one to put first and which one to follow?’

But the centipede had never thought about it. He said ’I have never thought about it and nobody has asked me about it. I will think about it and then I will tell you.’

He started thinking; but then he could not take a single step! He wavered and fell. He was very angry at the crab and he said ’You fool! Now I will never be able to walk, I will be worried which leg to put down first. It has never been a worry: things were being managed somehow, nature was doing the trick. Now you have made me self-conscious, you have destroyed my harmony!’

It is a beautiful parable. This is what has happened to man.

Love cannot be improved upon, it is already perfect. This has to be understood. You need not learn loving. All that is needed is: forget all that you have been taught about love and you will be able to love.

This is the meaning of your name, prem anagara: wild love, natural love.

Agni means fire, pariksha means examination – a fire examination, a fire test. And that’s what disciplehood is: it is passing through a fire in which you as you have known yourself up to now will be burned, utterly burned. Something will be born out of that death, something immensely superior, superb. But that birth is possible only if death happens first. Initiation means death in the deep trust that resurrection will happen. Initiation means crucifixion in the faith that resurrection will follow.

Hence the orange colour has been chosen for sannyas: it is the colour of fire.

The ego has to be burned to ashes. Sannyas is really what the symbol in the West of the phoenix represents. When the phoenix is burned utterly in the fire, nothing is left; then a totally new life arises. Each death is a beginning; the greater the death, the creater will be the beginning. If the death is total then total will be the beginning. We have to pay by dying; that courage is needed.

To be a sannyasin is the greatest courage possible, because there is no greater adventure in life; all else is trivial and mundane. This is the search for the heights beyond our reach, this is the search for the impossible; but the impossible happens if there is passion enough. If the passion is intense then the impossible also becomes possible; it all depends on our passion.

The passion is there and it has been gathering and gathering. You have been getting ready for a certain great moment and now the time has come, so be ready for it! Sometimes it happens that one has been waiting for it but when the moment comes, although one has been longing for it, one becomes so frightened that one escapes. But to long for the height is one thing and to pass through the journey, the hazardous journey, is another. Longing is a dream, anybody can desire god, but there are very few people who are ready to pay the price. And the price has to be paid by one’s own life; nothing less will do. So it happens many times that people who have been desiring and searching, when they really find the door, they escape.

There is a very famous poem of Rabindranath Tagore, it is a parable, in which he says that he had been searching for god for many lives. He was crying and weeping and his love was great, he was ready to do anything and was ready to sacrifice anything, but god was always far away, far away. He would see him sometimes near a star, but by the time he reached there he was gone!

He was so elusive. But one day it happened: he reached the door where god lived. He was utterly exhilarated, he was ecstatic; he rushed, he ran to the door. He was just going to knock on the door, then suddenly the thought arose in him that if he was really there, then he would be finished! Then what would he do? The search for god had been his whole style of life for many lives! That was the only thing that he knew, that was the only skill that he had learned: how to search for god. If he found him, then what would he do? If he was really there and was found, he would be finished!

Then there would be nothing to be done! He became so afraid, the very idea of succeeding was so fearful that he escaped, and he started searching for him again.

He still cries and weeps and prays and searches and asks people ’Where does he live?’ although he knows where he lives, because he knows that if he goes in that direction he is finished!

The seeker will have to be dissolved in the sought; that is the death I am talking about, that is the fire one has to pass through. Once one has passed through that fire, that door, that frightening experience when one dissolves and starts falling into an abyss... if one has accepted that then one has passed the examination. Then immediately all is joy, all is ecstasy.

[The new sannyasin says: I’m just a little bit worried about when I leave here and I go back to Mozambique. There’s no Rajneesh centre there and no sannyasins.]

You will become my centre... you will become my centre. That’s how my centres start. Don’t be worried! And soon sannyasins will be coming – I will manage it!

[A sannyasin who is leaving says he is confused: Sometimes I think I know and I find I didn’t know at all; I just assumed I knew.]

Learn to live with the confusion. Don’t be in a hurry to conclude. Confusion is not something necessarily wrong. Don’t label it confusion. Labelling is wrong. Sometimes just a wrong label can create so much trouble. It is not really confusion: it is a state of transition, of change. You are uprooted from the old soil and you are searching for the new, and in-between the two there is bound to be this. It is not confusion, it is simply an unsettled, growing state. It is growth, and whenever there is growth one can label it confusion. But by labelling it confusion you have wrongly interpreted it; then you start somehow to solve it. If you call it growth then there is no hurry to solve it. In fact you have to support it: it is growth! If you call it confusion you have condemned it; now you have to find some way to come out of it.

There is no need to come out of it; learn to live with it. Learn to live with all kinds of states that will be coming. And if it is sometimes confusion, what is wrong in confusion? We have been wrongly taught that one should be absolutely clear. Only fools can be absolutely clear, only fools are certain.

It happened once: a great philosopher was saying to his disciples that only fools are certain. A disciple asked ’Sir, are you absolutely certain about that?’ and he said ’Yes.’

Confusion is natural: it is the creative chaos in you. It is out of this chaos that you will be born, it is only out of this chaos that creativity begins. Call it Creative Chaos, don’t call it confusion. Life is a mystery. How can one be certain about it? It is such a flux and everything is changing so fast and has always been changing. How can you be certain about a river? How can you be certain about the form of a cloud? How can you be certain about life? It is the form of the cloud, it is the flow of the river, it is the wind that passes invisibly through the pines. You simply hear the sound; you cannot catch hold of it, you cannot grab it, you cannot reduce it to a conclusion. All conclusions are false because all conclusions are about something dead. Life can never be enclosed in a conclusion, in a theory, in a hypothesis.

Enjoy it, love it, learn to live with it. I know from where the problem is arising: your ego cannot feel rooted, your ego is trembling because the ego needs certainties. With certainty there is safety. The ego is very much afraid of uncertainties; it goes into a panic. It is the ego that is going into panic, it is not you, but you are still identified with the ego, you still think in terms of the ego.

Learn to live with all kinds of things: sometimes it is sadness, sometimes it is joy, sometimes confusion, sometimes it is certainty! Let things happen as they happen and don’t be in a hurry to change them. Let them be as they are and be totally with them. Then confusion disappears but certainty never arises; and that is the most beautiful thing that can happen to anybody. Let me repeat it: confusion disappears; the moment you are not antagonistic to confusion it has disappeared. The moment you start loving it and enjoying it, it has disappeared; it has become mystery. You have transformed it, it is just a magical transformation. The moment you drop your judgmental attitude of

’This is wrong, I should be certain. I am not certain and this is not good’ – it is perfectly good. It is far more beautiful than certainties, because certainties are non-growing and confusion is growing; confusion has a great value. And once you start enjoying it, the beauty of uncertainty, the openness of uncertainty, the adventure of uncertainty and the thrill of the insecure, once you start enjoying it, where is the confusion? It is gone! It was in your interpretation.

When confusion is gone I am not saying that certainty is arrived at. No. If certainty is arrived at you will fall into confusion again, because you will cling to this certainty. And life goes on changing; again there will be confusion. No certainty arrives; confusion disappears and there is no certainty.

There is no confusion, no certainty either. That is the most beautiful state one can be in. That’s from where the doors of the mind open to the divine. Enjoy it and you will be tremendously benefited.

CHAPTER 5

5 November 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva means divine, anadi means beginningless – the beginningless god. God has no beginning, no end. It is eternal.

Prem means love, adi means beginning – beginning of love, and that is the beginning of sannyas. If you can help them to become more and more loving, that’s all, they will become perfect sannyasins.

Everything else is a ritual; only love is real. Initiation into reality means initiation into love.

[A sannyasin couple with two children ask for help with their relationship because the man loves the woman but she feels so repressed she cannot give much love to her husband.]

That’s the situation that almost all human beings are in. We are taught a very repressive attitude, we are taught to repress the negative. It looks very logical not to be angry, not to be hateful, not to be jealous, not to be greedy, it looks perfectly good that you should not be these things, but when you repress the negative automatically the positive is repressed.

You can be loving only if you also allow your hate to surface. They are together: if you repress hate, love will be repressed; you cannot separate them. That is one of the most significant things to understand, and man has suffered much because of that misunderstanding. We have been told that love and hate can be separated. They cannot be separated, they are two sides of the same coin.

Hidden behind love is hate, hidden behind compassion is anger, and so on, so forth. The polar opposite always exists with it so when you repress one, both are repressed; if you express one, both will have to be expressed. And down the ages the society has decided to repress the negative, hence the positive has disappeared. When the positive disappears life is meaningless; then there is no significance.

It is for the first time in human history that man is becoming aware of this phenomenon: that the hate part also needs to be accepted, that it has also to be welcomed, that we are not to reject it in any way. We have to understand that once the negative is allowed the positive will surface.

(To the man) She has repressed the negative. And women are more repressive about the negative because they have been told to have a better demeanour, a better, more graceful personality. Men are allowed a little bit: if they are angry and they shout, it’s okay; but the woman should not shout, she should not be angry, she should not use swear-words, mm? – that is not womanly. At the most she can cry. She can be sad but not angry; man is not allowed to cry but he is allowed to be angry.

So it happens almost always that the women become less loving. In fact they have the capacity to love more than men, but because of that capacity they have all the more capacity to hate too. Once a woman loves you her love is too much; if she hates you, her hate is too much. You can neither bear her love nor her hate. Man is very lukewarm, his love is lukewarm, his hate is lukewarm, because he has many more dimensions, he has many more things in life.

Love is the whole life of the woman. Certainly because of that it has too much intensity. Humanity must have become aware of the phenomenon that if woman is allowed to hate, there will be danger, it will be fire: Repress it. Hate has been repressed; now love is being repressed. Both have disappeared into the unconscious, so at the most woman can show gestures of love.

But this will happen, there is nothing to be worried about. Go through a few more groups. I will give you deeper groups, then I will give you one group for you both to do together, but only later on; first you should do a few groups separately.

After two, three groups I will give you one or two groups to do together; by that time you will both be ready.

But this problem will be settled – there is nothing to be worried about!

[A sannyasin who is leaving says: Oh, I’ve grown to love you!... I feel like a new flower in the garden...

and the wind is going to blow strong.]

There is nothing to be worried about; there is nothing to be worried about, because the wind belongs to the same energy as the flower. Blow with the wind ! The problem arises only if the flower starts fighting with the wind; then it will be difficult. But bow down with the wind, don’t resist it! Learn how to bow down. Don’t be stiff, be relaxed.

Watch grass leaves moving in the wind: so delicate; yet even the strongest wind cannot destroy them. It can destroy big trees, many big trees will be destroyed when the strong wind comes, bu the grass, the small bushes, will not be destroyed at all. In fact, they will be cleaned: all the dust will be gone with the wind; they will be refreshed, rejuvenated. And once the wind is gone they will be back to their same posture. No harm is going to happen to them; they know the secret of life!

The big tree represents the ego: it resists the wind. It is not the wind that destroys the tree; it is the resistance of the tree, it is the fight of the tree. It does not know how to go with the wind, it does not allow a let-go, it does not know the grammar of surrender. It starts fighting. It is proud, it wants to show to the wind ’You cannot destroy me’; then the trouble arises, then there is clash. and once the big tree falls down it will not be able to get up again because the falling has been non-voluntary, the falling has been an accident.

When the small bush falls it is voluntarily going with the wind. It knows how to fall, that’s why it knows how to get back up. In that very surrender it has learned a secret, how to fall; and that is the same secret of how to get up, it is not a different thing. But the big tree missed the point of learning how to fall; hence it cannot get up, it can’t get back up again.

This is the whole art of tao, the whole philosophy of tao, and this is my approach towards life: don’t push the river, don’t even swim. and don’t try to go upstream, go with the river, let the river take total possession of you, and then suddenly the river is your energy and your energy is the river’s energy and both are one, and there is no clash, no conflict. You will come out of the river tremendously refreshed.

There is no possibility of your being destroyed by the wind. You have to learn how to bow down, how to go with the wind; in whatsoever direction it wants, you bend. You should not choose ’I will bend only to the north or to the south.’ It has to be with the wind. Let the wind decide; you simply remain available, vulnerable, and nothing can destroy you.

This is the art of being feminine. This is action through inaction, and that’s how my sannyasins have to be. Then nothing can defeat you, because you don’t want to be victorious in the first place.

How can anybody defeat you if you don’t want to be victorious? You will be so enriched by each experience of surrender that you will be surprised how much one can get out of surrender. Infinite is the blessing of surrender. We unnecessarily go on fighting. So don’t fight, and if you don’t fight, you are the winner. But there is no desire to win; victory comes as a consequence of surrender.

Everything will go on enriching you; no need to be worried. Always trust existence and always trust that deep down it is beneficial, that it is not our enemy, that it is very caring, that it respects you.

How can it be against you? – you are part of it. The whole cannot be against the part. How can you be against your hand? How can you be against your nose? These are your parts! And even if sometimes the hand thinks you are against it, the hand is wrong. It may be that you are trying to take pus out of the hand. It hurts, and if the hand has any consciousness it must have decided that you are an enemy: You are hurting me! But still you are not an enemy; you are simply trying to help. It is your hand, how can you be inimical to it? You are simply trying to heal the wound, to help the wound to be healed; you are trying to take the poison out. But it hurts and the hand cannot understand the whole, the hand cannot comprehend the whole – that is the thing.

Man is a small part of this great existence, and man cannot comprehend the destiny of the whole.

So sometimes when it hurts you think ’It is against me.’ Nothing is ever against you! This is trust: that nothing is against you, nothing can be. ’I come out of this existence and one day I will disappear back into it, so I am just a wave of the same ocean, I am not separate.’ Understanding this, great insight arises and you are relaxed.

Then, even death is not your enemy. Then, again existence is trying to help you. The body has become old, the body has become tired: now you need a new body; existence is just trying to take the old garments away. But you are afraid, frightened, you think you are being killed. You are not being killed! If you remain in this old, rotten body then you will be killed! Existence is trying to give you a new life, a new beginning. So death is nothing but an effort from the side of existence to give you a new birth. It is our short-sightedness that makes us feel frightened. Once you trust, all fear disappears and the whole energy of fear is transformed into the energy of love. Just continue to meditate and I will be there with you!

[A sannyasin said she had enjoyed two groups but not the encounter because she felt condemned for not bringing up hatred. She said in another group she had felt murderous and fearful of it, but in the encounter she was not feeling hate.]

There is nothing to be worried about. In fact, everybody has a murderer in him. It is not something that you have. In fact every man, every woman, is the whole humanity in a miniature form.

Whatsoever can be done by any man can be done by you; it is potentially there. You can commit a murder, you can commit suicide; you can become a sinner, you can become a saint. You can become Adolf Hitler and you can become a Buddha: the whole spectrum, each individual has the whole spectrum.

So never be worried, these are not problems; this is just the spectrum that is available to you. It is like you have a radio, all the stations are available. You have to tune in to whichsoever station you want and then you start functioning on that wavelength. Anger is there, hate is there, love is there; all wavelengths are available. Now it depends on you what you want to be. If you tune yourself into love, love will become available and all else it will recede into the background. It will always remain there; whenever you want to change the wavelength you can.

This is something very important to understand: even a Buddha, if he wants to be angry can immediately tune himself into the anger. It has not died, it is just lying dormant there; it is still available. He will not use it – that is another matter – but if he wants to use it, it is not that it is not available; it is there.

Your potential always remains there. If you don’t use it, it remains dormant; if you use it, it becomes more manifest. The difference between a Buddha and you is not that you have anger and he has no anger. The only difference is that he chooses his anger and you are chosen by your anger. Your anger becomes your master; he is master of his own self. Anger cannot possess him, unless he decides so, but the decision is always his. That is the only difference.

So don’t be worried about that. And sometimes it happens: when you want to bring something out it becomes more difficult, and when everybody is saying ’Come on! Come out!’ one becomes more shrunken.

I think softer groups will bring you more to your reality. So next time you come, remind me in the beginning softer groups. Maybe Encounter was too hard. Kyo was better because Kyo is a softer phenomenon. So next time I will give you softer groups and they will bring up all that is hidden.

Sometimes a persuasion is needed, sometimes one has to be forced, and it is so difficult because each individual is so unique. Now, when I send you to the Encounter, Encounter has a certain structure. They cannot be persuasive, that is not part of their structure. They provoke, they don’t persuade, and maybe that was not right for you, that’s all.

[A sannyasin is leaving and Osho checks her energy.]

I am happy: your time here has been well spent. You have remained available to me, and you have drunk me as much as you could. But this is just a beginning! The basic contact has happened, so now even if you are thousands of miles away it can’t be lost it will remain there. You will be able to feel me as much as you are feeling here. And that is the most important thing: the contact. You are plugged in with me; that is the meaning of sannyas.

Now all that I have is available to you, it will depend on you how much you can take in; the doors are open. So go on drinking even when you are far away. Don’t let the distance create the idea that I am far away: I am not! Once you are open to me, I am not far away, I am very close by. Physical space disappears as love grows. And you have taken the first plunge into it; much more will be happening there. But come back, as soon as it is possible, come back. And help my people.

[Another sannyasin who is leaving says: I’m disappointed not to feel very much in contact with you when... I don’t feel your presence very much and I am a little sad.]

Everybody feels according to his own need, preparation, availability; there is no need to Compare.

Never compare with others, otherwise you will become unnecessarily miserable.

The ways of comparison are always wrong. You are yourself and you have to grow from where you are. How can you feel me the way somebody else is feeling? He has lived totally differently, he has lived in different lives differently, he has followed a different path, his whole past is totally his; nothing is similar to you.

Even if you come to the same experience, still your experiences will be different. It is like four persons moving to the hilltop from four sides: one from the east, one from the west, one from the south, one from the north. When they come to the peak, they come to the same peak, but still their experience of the peak will be different because they have followed different paths.

Somebody has been following a very rocky path.... Those rocky territories that he has travelled, that arduous journey, they have made him a certain way, that journey has created his mind. When he comes to the top he will look through that mind. The other may have followed a smoother path which moved through beautiful valleys and flowers and trees and was not rocky at all, and the journey was a joy. The peak will be the same but the experience will be different and the expression will be different. So when you come to me, you come to me, and you have a whole history; almost the whole past, eternal, is contained by you. It is a totally different and unique past, it is like nobody else’s.

You will feel me in your own way, and you will feel me the way you need me; more or less will not be good. And it never happens in any other way; it always happens the way it should happen. So whatsoever is your need and whatsoever you deserve, you will get. For more one should not ask, otherwise one becomes unnecessarily miserable. And more cannot be given to you. For that you will have to move through a few experiences. And it may not be needed at all; that too has to be understood.

One tree needs more water, another tree doesn’t need that much water, and if you give that much water to the other tree, it will die. You will kill it by giving too much water. One tree needs more sun, another tree does not need that much sun; it needs shade. So everybody’s needs are different.

This is a constant problem, because thousands of sannyasins are here. Everybody’s needs are different and I pay individual attention to you. When I am talking to you I am simply talking to you; the whole world disappears for me, only you are there! And when I look into you I only look into you; there is no comparison with anybody.

Whatsoever your need, it will be fulfilled; that is a promise! But you should not start looking to others and their needs and their experiences and how they are feeling and what they are feeling, otherwise you will unnecessarily go mad, because there are so many people and with so many backgrounds.

There are people who have lived through the heart; they will become very emotional when they come to me. There are people who have lived through the head; they will not be emotional, they will be very rational.

Nothing is wrong and nothing is good; whatsoever is yours is yours, and I have to contact you from there. I have to work on you from there. For those who function as reason, my impact is going to be different compared to those who function from emotion.

And if the emotional person starts thinking about you, he will also become miserable, because he may start thinking ’Am I gullible or something? Why can’t I be more on my own? Why can’t I be more detached? Why am I so influenced?’ He can compare that way; there are people who compare that way, then they become miserable.

Comparison always brings misery. Drop comparing. Your needs will be fulfilled; there is no question about it. But I cannot fulfil others’ needs in you, that is impossible!

CHAPTER 6

6 November 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

And there is not only the sound outside, there is also a garden within. There is a music inside too, and it is far more beautiful, because the outer is confined by time and space. The inner is completely free of all limitations. The inner is eternal music; once one has heard it, one goes on hearing it forever. And the birds that sing outside are separate from you, but the birds that sing inside you are not separate from you; it is your own sound, it is your own song. Take the clue from the outside but enter within, because whatsoever is outside is only a pale reflection. It has no substance, it is just a shadow. The real, the substantial is within.

Deva means divine, vimukto means freedom. There are three kinds of freedom: one is freedom from, another is freedom for, and the third is simply freedom, neither from something nor for something. The third kind of freedom is divine.

The first kind of freedom is against the past. One wants to be free from the parents, one wants to be free from the society or one wants to be free from one’s own rotten past. It is oriented in the past.

It is a reaction against the past, and no reaction can ever bring real freedom; it remains tethered to the source.

For example, if your father was too much in favour of cleanliness and you rebel against him, you will deliberately start living in uncleanliness. Now your uncleanliness is a reaction to your father’s obsession with cleanliness; you are not really free. The father is still dominating in a negative way; he is dominating you as much as if you had followed his ideas. That would have been a positive domination; this is negative, but domination all the same. You will never be free this way. It is your father who is forcing you to live in uncleanliness.

The second freedom, the freedom for, is a projection into the future. It is a desire, and every kind of desire is a bondage. It is destructive to your present because you go on missing the present in the hope that everything will be all right in the future. One wants to be free and to become a painter or a poet or a musician. The freedom is in the service of something else, and whenever freedom is in the service of something else it is no more freedom. How can it be freedom if it is not its own master?

Only the third kind of freedom, which has no connection with the past, no connection with the future, is true freedom, is divine, is beautiful. It releases you into the present: it makes the miracle happen that you simply dissolve into the moment, for no reason at all. It is unmotivated, uncaused; it is spontaneous, and whenever something is spontaneous it has tremendous beauty in it.

Deva means divine, apurno means imperfection. It may sound strange, because ordinarily the divine is associated with perfection... but not so with me!

Perfection means death. Anything that becomes perfect stops living because then there is no purpose left. Life is in imperfection; life is in growing. But once something is perfect there is no possibility of growth. Then there is no future, no adventure; all is finished, there is no point in continuing. Hence I say that life always remains imperfect; it never comes to perfection because it never comes to death. There is no death at all, existence knows nothing of death. Death is a myth, something like a mirage, something we have created.

Because we have created the ego, death comes in as a shadow of the ego. The ego is false and is already dead, hence it is afraid of death. But life is a continuum, it continues, on and on it goes. It is like the rolling waves of the ocean, on and on.... They go on coming; they know no way to stop.

There is no full stop in life. The song never begins and never ends; it is always in the middle.

So my idea of divinity is that of utter imperfection because god is alive, he cannot be perfect. Only a dead god can be perfect and a dead god is no more, no more at all, so a dead god is not a god at aU.

Remember this, because the human ego wants to become perfect, and perfection is not possible in the very nature of things. The moment one becomes obsessed with the idea of perfection one is ready to go neurotic. It is the idea of perfection that has driven millions of people into madness, because they are trying to do something which cannot be done, which is against nature.

There is nothing wrong in imperfection. The idea of perfection is a human invention. Can you find a perfect circle anywhere in nature? It has not been found yet! Circular shapes you can find, but not a perfect circle. Nature knows nothing of a perfect circle; it is a mind idea. And, in fact, you cannot even draw a perfect circle. Once it is drawn it is no more perfect; it is just an abstract idea. Nobody has ever been able to draw a perfect circle; once you draw it, it becomes imperfect.

If you look into Eudid’s definition as to what a perfect circle is, what a point is, what a line is, you will understand: even a line cannot be drawn perfectly, because, according to Euclid, the line can have only length and no breadth; then it is perfect. But how can you draw a line which has no breadth?

Howsoever small it is the breadth has to be there. And a point, according to Euclid, is that which has neither length nor breadth. How can you make a point? It is just an abstract idea, and man has become too attached to his abstract ideas.

Look to reality and try to live the reality and don’t interfere in the reality with your ideas; let the reality be as it is. You are not here to change reality, you are here to enjoy it, to celebrate it. So whatsoever it is, dance with it, sing with it, love it. That’s the way of a sannyasin. Once a person drops the idea of perfection he becomes natural. He becomes utterly in tune with the rhythm of the universe and misery evaporates.

Misery is a by-product of ideals: you want to be somebody; you cannot become that and then misery settles in. But if you don’t want to become anybody in particular then how can you be miserable?

You never failed because you never wanted to succeed in the first place. You are perfectly happy in being nobody. You are so grateful to god in your utter ordinariness; you don’t want to become a perfect saint, a perfect circle. You are perfectly happy as you are, in all your imperfection. This is the way of sannyas, this is the way of tao, and this is the way of sanity.

[A sannyasin, who is leaving, said he had left in the middle of a group because he had so much fear, but it showed him where his fears were.]

They will disappear. Next time you come I will give you Encounter again!...

Good. Continue to meditate and help my people there.

And the fear will go. Next time you come, you will be able to do it. It has surfaced. When for the first time something hidden in the unconscious surfaces, it creates a panic. Now you have done half the group and the remaining half will be possible next time.

I am thinking to make, slowly slowly, two or three Encounter groups: Encounter One, Encounter Two, Encounter Three, so that people can go slowly. It is too much in seven days, mm? It is going too fast into too many things, and fear is natural.

You have done Encounter One!

[A sannyasin who is leaving says: I felt very asleep all the time I’ve been here. I felt really frustrated and... veiled.]

It has been always there; you became aware here, that’s all. You have lived in sleep, but you were not aware.

And when one is not aware one goes on living the same way; there is no trouble. Now you are aware of it; this is the good thing that has happened. You need not be frustrated, you should be happy, because this is the beginning of how things change. First you become aware of a certain thing; that is the beginning, the first ray, but it disturbs your ideas about yourself, hence the frustration.

Everybody thinks he is living a very alert and awake life and when he becomes aware that he is not alert, not awake, that he is fast asleep, the self-image is shattered. And when people go in search of truth and god, or whatsoever they call it, in fact they are not searching for truth and they are not searching for god: they are simply searching for some place, some methods, some ways to enhance their self-image. So this is a problem. If you come into a situation when the enquiry really begins, you will feel frustrated. If you get caught in wrong hands you will not feel frustrated because they will simply console you. They will paint your image more beautifully and they will tell you how beautiful and how spiritual you are and that feels good!

That’s how there are so many pseudo teachers around the world. Their whole trade secret is simply this: whosoever comes to them, they help the person’s illusion to become more consolidated and everybody feels good. When you come across a real teacher difficulties are bound to be there because he cannot support your illusion of yourself; he has to cut your image chunk by chunk, and it hurts.

The first thing that Gurdjieff used to give to anybody who wanted to be initiated was his wrist-watch.

He would tell him, ’Sit in front of me and watch the second-hand moving. If you can be alert for sixty seconds, just for sixty seconds, if you can remain alert to the second-hand moving and keep alert for sixty seconds continuously, not thinking of anything else, never forgetting for a single moment what you are doing, not even distracted for a single split second, you will be accepted.’

And it was so rare, because within five, seven seconds, your mind would be distracted. It was so rare for anybody to remain alert for sixty seconds, just one minute! Now this is very shattering.

When Ouspensky, a great mathematician, world-famous author, went to him, he could not keep alert for more than nine seconds, and then he fell asleep! That’s what sleep is: he started thinking of other things. Suddenly he awoke again but by that time a few seconds had passed. Gurdjieff started laughing and he said, ’You are a great mathematician and you have lived a life of sleep. You are a somnambulist. You are not a mathematician, you are a machine!’ Now, it hurts.... Ouspensky had thought to escape from this man: this man was dangerous. He had simply reduced him into a ridiculous state. He had taken all fame and name away within a second, by a simple strategy.

Now there are many strategies all around here, not as visible; but every group, every meditation, and everything that I am doing and saying will hit you again and again and will make you alert about how asleep you are, how unconscious you are.

It simply hurts, but if you are a little understanding you should be happy, because there are a few people who will not even become aware here that they are asleep. They are really asleep. You are not so deeply asleep, mm? You are just hovering between sleep and wakefulness.

It is just like in the morning one hovers, mm? The sleep is gone but one is not yet awake. One can hear some noise coming from the outside: the milkman knocking on the door, the wife preparing the tea, the children preparing for the school. One can hear little bits floating and then one falls asleep, and then again one hears.... That hovering, that wavering state, that’s where you are, that’s why you became aware. It is good! You are not very fast asleep; you are not snoring! Otherwise there are people – you are nothing compared to them – who are so deeply asleep that they will not become aware that they are asleep. And if you insist too much they will start dreaming that they are alert and aware. But that is just a dream!

You could not dream it either. If you had been able to dream that you are awake, not asleep, then there would have been no frustration. You could not sleep deeply, you could not dream; you are just on the verge. And this is good, because from this point you can be taken out of your sleep forever, just a little more effort. So don’t take it in sadness. Rather, take it in great hope!

Remember Sanai: If one door is closed, ten doors open. And if god takes one thing away from you he gives back to you seventy-fold. If your sleep is taken away, don’t be worried; something far more valuable is on the way. If your image is broken, don’t be worried, because an image is an image; it is not you. Now your true identity will arise out of it. But a little work will be needed.

CHAPTER 7

7 November 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva means divine, agya means order or commandment – a divine order. Man cannot choose god; it is always god who chooses man. Man cannot enquire on his own, it is impossible. The desire to enquire into truth comes from the beyond; it is an order from above, it is a commandment.

And to be initiated is not an ordinary matter. It is a decision to change your priorities, it is a decision to change your path. It is a decision to change your very life and its style. It is not a minor change either: it is a revolution. Sannyas is a revolution. It is not a question of changing a little bit here and a little bit there; it is not patchwork. It is not renovating an old house; it is demolishing the old completely in the hope of creating something totally new. Man cannot have this courage on his own. This much courage needs to have some invisible support. And it is always there: whenever somebody is ready, that support arrives.

An ancient saying says: Whenever the disciple is ready, the master appears. The appearance of the master may look to the disciple as if he has found him. It is just the opposite: it is always the master who finds the disciple. His ways of finding are very subtle, indirect; his ways are exactly the same as the ways of god.

The disciple always thinks that it is he who is choosing. It’s not so; he has been chosen! And once this starts dawning in your consciousness then life has a totally different rhythm to it. Once you understand that the master has chosen you, it is a different matter altogether; then there is no way of going back, it is a point of no return. When you see that it is god who has called you forth, then you can go into any risk; and there are many risks!

Life certainly changes. Life can soar high, as high as one can imagine, but each step is risky, and the risk becomes more and more as you go higher. But once it is understood that god has chosen you then there is no fear; one can go dancing, one can go singing, in any kind of risk. Then the risk is no more a risk; it is simply a challenge, a play; and it is always good for the soul, because it brings integrity, maturity, ripeness. So let this be the fundamental in your consciousness, that god has chosen you, that it is not your decision to become a sannyasin, that it is a commandment from above, that it is a divine order.

[The new sannyasin has done groups in the West and practised as a therapist using Gestalt and Behaviourism, and then meditations.]

Now you will find what you have been trying to find, because Behaviourism cannot give you real insight.

Mm? it is very superficial, and it is very reductive. It reduces man to a very low status, because its whole study of man depends on the study of rats and animals. It always looks at from where man is coming, but the source cannot always explain the goal. For example, by looking into the seed you will not be able to understand the flower, although the flower comes from the seed and it is true that the seed contains the flower; but it is only as a potential. If you cut the seed you will not find any flower there, and that can become enough ground to say that there is no flower, because it has not been found in the seed. The seed has it in an invisible form.

The rat also has consciousness but in a very invisible form. By analysing the rat and its behaviour you will not understand man. It is like studying manure to understand the fragrance of roses. It is true that something comes from the manure, the manure creates the possibility for the rose to be, but the rose cannot be reduced to the manure.

That is the fallacy of Behaviourism: it reduces man to a very undignified status, it takes all dignity from human beings. Then man is just a mechanism and you can operate on him, you can condition him this way and that, just as one conditions a computer. It can help in some ways because there are many men who are still functioning like machines. So it has a point and it can be helpful, but it is not a real understanding, a true understanding of the hidden consciousness which is the centre and the goal of all human endeavour. So it is good to understand Behaviourism, but it is only a foundation; much has to be erected upon it. Only then is the temple ready.

Doing a few groups here, meditating, being with me, you will be able to find your own approach. And every therapist has to find his own approach; unless you can find something of your own, you will not be of much help, because it is not the therapy that helps but the therapist.

When Sigmund Freud analyses somebody it is not Psychoanalysis that helps the person, it is the charisma of Sigmund Freud. In his hands Psychoanalysis is tremendously powerful. It is his presence, his understanding. He pours his heart into it. It is his discovery, it is not something that he has taken from others; hence his heart is beating there! He is totally committed and involved. His involvement, his commitment and the understanding that he has arrived at through his own efforts, and his confidence... that confidence is infectious. When the patient sees the gleam in the eyes of Sigmund Freud, the joy and his utter confidence that it is going to happen, that is the real miracle, that is infectious.

When you are just doing something that you have learned and not discovered on your own, you cannot have that charisma. You are simply doing something. Technically you are an expert, but no technician can be the master, in anything. He can do things here and there and he can help people to a certain extent but miracles will not happen, and unless a therapy is miraculous, it is nothing.

That miracle can happen only when you start doing something totally on your own, when it is your own painting, when it is your own poetry, when it is your own song. Then you are into it and the patient can feel that it is not only professionally that you are interested in him, your interest is much deeper. It is not only that you are interested because he is paying. It is as if your whole life is at stake with him: if he does not get healed, then you will be a failure; then your whole vision will flop.

So it is not a question of the patient being healed, more than that it is a question of the therapist.

And when it becomes such an involvement therapy can do miracles. All kinds of methods are helpful but the real thing is the therapist, the healer; he should have roots and integrity and his own vision.

Learn from all therapies, and slowly slowly a synthesis arises in you, and that synthesis will be helpful. Everybody has to sing his own song!

Sat means truth, viharo means dwelling in – dwelling in truth. Truth is not something logical. I don’t mean by truth a conclusion arrived at by logical, rational methods. By truth I mean the authenticity of being, not imposing anything that you are not, just being that which you are at whatsoever the risk, never becoming a hypocrite.

If you are sad, you are sad; that is the truth in that moment. Don’t hide it. Don’t bring a false smile on your face, because that false smile is going to create a split in you. You will become two: a part of you will be smiling, and of course it is only going to be a minor part, and the major part will remain sad. Now a division has arisen, and if you go on doing it again and again.... When you are angry and you don’t show your anger you are afraid; it may destroy your image because people think you are so compassionate, and people say that you are never angry. They appreciate it and it is so gratifying to the ego. Now, being angry will destroy your beautiful image. So rather than destroying the image, you repress the anger. It is boiling within, but on the surface you remain compassionate, kind, polite, sweet.

Now the division is being practised, people are practising it through their whole lives; then the division becomes absolutely settled. Even when you are sitting alone and there is nobody and there is no need to pretend, you go on pretending; it has become second nature. People are not true even in their bathrooms; even when they are utterly alone they are untrue. Now it is not a question of being true or untrue: it has just become their habit. For the whole of their lives they have practised and, as you practise more and more, the distance between two parts of you becomes bigger and bigger.

When it becomes unbridgeable we call it schizophrenia. When you cannot contact your own other part, you almost become two persons instead of one, then it is severe mental illness. But everybody is divided, so the difference between the schizophrenic and the normal is only of degree. It is not very basic, not of quality but only of quantity.

By truth I mean not to pretend. Just be whatsoever you are: one moment you are sad, so that moment you are sad, and next moment if you become happy there is no need now to continue to remain sad. Because that too has been taught, to always be consistent, to remain consistent. It happens, you can observe: you were sad and then suddenly sadness is gone but you cannot laugh immediately, because what will people think? Are you mad? Just before you were sad; now you immediately start laughing. This is done only by mad people or small children, it is not expected of you. You will have to wait for a certain situation in which slowly slowly you can relax and start smiling and laughing again.

So it is not only that when you are sad you pretend smiles; when you want to smile then too you pretend sadness because of that whole stupid idea of remaining consistent. Each moment has its own way and no moment needs to be consistent with any other moment. Life is a flux, it is a river: it goes on changing its moods. So one need not be worried about consistency. Anybody who becomes worried about consistency will become untrue, because only lies can be consistent; truth is always changing. Truth contains its own contradictions, and that is the richness of truth, that’s its vastness, that’s its beauty.

So if you are feeling sad then be sad, with no condemnation, with no evaluation of it being good or bad. There is no question of good or bad, it is simply so. And when it goes let it go. When again you start smiling don’t feel guilty because just now you were sad and so how can you smile?

Let somebody first tell a joke, let somebody first break the ice and then you will smile; wait for the right moment. That is again hypocrisy. When you are happy, be happy, there is no need to pretend anything.

And remember: each moment has an atomic reality. It is discontinuous from the past moment and it is not connected with the future moment. Each moment is atomic. They are not following each other in a sequence, they are not linear. Each moment has its own way of being, and you have to be that, in that moment nothing else. This is what is really meant by truth.

Truth means authenticity, truth means sincerity. Truth is not a logical thing. It is a psychological state of being true – not true according to some ideal, because if there is some ideal you will become false. If you think that to be like a Buddha is to be true then you will never be true, because you are not a Buddha and you will impose the Buddha on you. You can sit like the Buddha, you can almost become a marble statue, but deep down you will still be the same. The Buddha will be just a posture. And if you have an idea, you cannot be true to the moment, because the idea, is always there and you have to imitate the ideal.

The true man has no ideals. He lives moment to moment, he always lives as he feels in the moment.

He is utterly respectful towards his feelings, his emotions, his moods. And this is what I want my sannyasins to be: authentic, true, sincere, respectful towards their own soul.

[Osho gives sannyas to a woman with Wilson’s disease which affects her balance, and movement.]

Deva means divine, saksho means witness – a divine witness. I know that you are in a difficulty with the body but the difficulty can be transformed into a blessing. There is nothing that cannot be transformed into a blessing. All calamities can become sources for celebrations: one just has to learn the magic knack of bringing about these transformations. The magic art of bringing transformations into one’s life is only one, and that is contained in the word ’witness’.

If somebody has a perfectly normal body he will find it very difficult to become a witness to it. You will not find it difficult, so use it as an opportunity: become a witness to your body. Just watch from the inside all the movements of the body, all the difficulties of the body. And never for a single moment feel that god has been unjust to you, that god is unfair; it is our interpretation. Change the interpretation and let this body become your field of witnessing. So watch, become a watchful.

Doing is not going to help you, only witnessing is going to help you, because doing will be difficult.

You cannot do many groups, but don’t feel deprived; it is nothing to be worried about. If you understand me you may be benefited more than those who are doing the groups, because when you can do something the doer arises, and the doer is an ego; it is a barrier. When you cannot do, helplessness arises, and helplessness is tremendously beautiful because in helplessness the ego can dissolve and the barrier can be dropped. Let this body be a great opportunity, a golden opportunity, and you will feel grateful to god one day that he gave you a difficult body; you will not complain.

So this is your method, the name contains your method: watch and become very detached, aloof, distant. You are not your body; that realisation has to be your work. Start from the body; once you have learned that you are not your body, then the same method has to be applied to the mind, that you are not your mind either. But it is easy to start with the body.

In fact, Yoga postures were invented to create such abnormal postures that you could not become identified with them. Walking, sitting, sleeping, these are normal postures; one is identified with the normal postures. But when you are standing on your head it is not a normal posture; you cannot be identified with it. You have to remain alert, otherwise you will fall. You may break a few bones; you have to be very alert. The posture is so strange that alertness is a must. There are many postures, Yoga postures, that are really distortions of the body. The body is placed in such strange positions that the inside consciousness cannot get identified. Those are methods to dis-identify yourself from the body. Now this is available to you without any effort. You need not go to any Yoga teacher. Your body is born as a Yogi!

[She nods and smiles and bas got the point.]

Don’t feel at all that you have a difficult body – what to do with it? Use it and you will be tremendously benefited. Just become a witness: walking, sitting, cycling, just become a witness. Everything is going to be difficult. I have heard my sannyasins saying that when you go on the bicycle they all become afraid that you may fall any moment! But remain alert, take it playfully, and when you have become very centred and you know absolutely that you are not the body, then start working on the mind. Start with the body because the body is gross, and the mind is subtle. Then put the same focus on the mind: ’I am not the mind.’ You have to do these two things and witnessing arises.

To become a witness is to be free from everything. That is freedom and that is the ultimate goal of human consciousness. The whole evolution is moving towards that freedom, freedom of the consciousness from all confinements. The body is a confinement, so is the mind, and we have to go beyond all confinements, we have to go beyond all containers. We have to become as wide as the sky so that we can contain the whole in our heart.

[A sannyasin says that he has done some groups at Esalen growth centre in the States. Osho suggests some groups here.]

Feel at home and feel relaxed. And remember a few things.... One is: to be with me all that is needed is the art of putting the mind aside. You have a very cultivated mind; it will be difficult to put it aside, but still it can be put aside. You have that capacity too. And once we have learned how to put the mind aside a tremendous change happens. Then you are no more a slave to the mind, and to destroy the slavery of the mind over the soul is the most fundamental step in sannyas. It will be hard but not impossible! So put it aside.

Don’t try to connect with me logically. I am not a logical person and the work that I am doing has nothing to do with reason. Although I talk rationally, I use all possible ways of logic, they are all in the service of something illogical. I use rational approaches just to bring you to the brink from where you can be pushed into the irrational.

All kinds of means are being used here but the goal is to come to a point where you can see reality without thinking about it. That is satori, that is samadhi: to be able to see, to be able to remain conscious and yet without any thought.

Somebody asked an early Christian mystic and saint, Tertullian ’Why do you believe in god? The whole idea is absurd!’ And Tertullian is reported to have said ’That’s why, precisely; that’s why I believe in god. ”Credo qua absurdum’, because it is absurd, that’s why I believe. If it were not absurd I would not have cared at all, because all that is rational is human.’

Reason is a small phenomenon in the human mind. It is not something that is there in existence itself.

Existence functions without any reason and without any rhyme either.

it’s function is

mysterious. It is absurd, and hence the beauty of it! It is good that roses are not rational and that cuckoos are not rational, that trees are not rational and rivers are not rational, otherwise this world would become so drab and dull. Then the rose would be arguing and the cuckoo would be proving something and the river would be writing treatises for Ph.Ds. Then it would be impossible to live here. The rose has no argument; it is simply there, naked, tremendously there with no argument.

You cannot ask ’Why?’ There is no why in existence. It is so, stunningly so.

When the mind remains entangled in its logical structures it remains closed to existence and the ecstasy of being alive. So I am here to destroy the logical structure. But I am not an enemy of logic.

You can use it wherever it is needed: when you are doing some mathematical work you can use it.

Then put it aside. One thing has to be learned: that one should be capable of putting it on and off.

It is a machine and it should not go on continuously. One thing....

The second thing: be in a kind of let-go while you are here. Meditation is not something that has to be done; it has to be allowed to happen. So be a little foolish, idiotic, mad – those are all beautiful words. Dance like a madman. Don’t think ’What is going to happen after this dance? What is going to happen through this dance?’ The dance is enough, and while dancing don’t bring any motivation, any goal, into it. Enjoy it for its own sake, and it becomes meditation.

This is the golden key to transform any act into meditation, just enjoying it for its own sake. Then swimming can become meditation, going for a walk can become meditation, anything; then you have the magic wand in your hands. You can transform anything into meditation. The whole secret consists of a very simple fact: do something for its own sake, with no goal, with no future, and that’s what let-go is. So meditate, dance, sing; don’t judge.

And the third thing is: if I start doing something in you, don’t resist. Resistance comes; it is almost an autonomic reaction because we don’t want to be manipulated. The master has to manipulate.

But his manipulation is totally different from any other manipulation that one can think of. He has to change a few things here and there, he has to break a few doors, unlock them. He has to pour his energy into you. And it is frightening because you have always remained so much your own master. Choosing a master, becoming a sannyasin, means that now you are giving your control to somebody.

So let it not be an empty gesture, really give the control to me, and you will be surprised: things that after many years you have not been able to do on your own can be done within seconds. But it all depends on you! Do not resist, and then eternal bliss will be yours. That is the meaning of your name: that something timeless, deathless starts coming, descending. That is another name for god!

CHAPTER 8

8 November 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva means divine, sugito means a song, a divine song. Life can become a divine song, it has the potential but the potential is not yet actual; it has to be actualised. That is the work of sannyas: to help the potential to come to a realisation.

This is the most subtle art, because man is the most mysterious being on the earth. All other beings are simple, man is complex. All other beings are like single notes of music. Man has so many instruments in his being that he can only be an orchestra, and that is the problem. If he does not become an orchestra he becomes a noisy crowd. Man is not a solo instrument. That is the trouble but that can also become a great opportunity. Never take yourself for granted. Man is basically a surpassing. Each moment you have to grope for something unknown. And remember, the journey is far more beautiful than the goal. Those who know, if you ask them they will say that the journey itself is the goal. So each step has to be lived, loved, tremendously. But still one has to remain open to the unknown, because much more is always possible and there is no end to that possibility. The potential has something infinite in it: you can go on actualising it and yet there is much still that has to be actualised.

Many milestones will come on the road, but the goal, never! So you can have a few resting places on the way, but remember: in the morning you have to go again. Never make your house on the road. All the houses on the road are nothing but caravanserais: stay for the night, enjoy the stay, rest, but don’t become attached.

Remember that the innermost core of man is that of a wanderer, a gypsy, and that is the beauty of man. All animals live as if they have arrived; man lives always as if he is arriving. But he never arrives, hence the ecstasy and the thrill.

Anand means bliss, and peter comes from Greek, it means the rock – the rock of bliss. The rock represents the eternal, the non-temporal.

In time everything is a flux. In time everything is constantly changing. In time there is nothing unchanging except change. It is like a river. Hence those who live only in time are found to live in misery, because you start enjoying something and by the time you are really getting in tune with it, it is gone.

And everything moves so fast that you cannot stay with anything. Everything goes on slipping out of your hands. One feels continuously thrown from this place to that; one is almost like driftwood, at the mercy of the waves. One cannot feel at ease and at home, because all homes are only sandcastles or, even better, just palaces made of playing-cards: a little whip of the breeze and the palace is gone. And you had put so much into making it. It happens so many times in a small life of seventy years that one’s whole life becomes nothing but a long long story of frustration.

The rock represents something that is beyond time, and one should make one’s house on the rock.

Although the rock is beyond it is not impossible to reach it, because it is not only beyond, it is also within In fact the beyond and the within are synonymous. If you reach to your own innermost core you have gone beyond time. Right this very moment something exists in you which is not part of time – neither is it part of space. Your body is space, your mind is time, but there is something within you which is neither body nor mind: that is the rock.

Jesus told his disciple, Peter: You will be the rock of my church. In fact Peter was not his real name; it was given by Jesus, because this disciple whom Jesus called Peter was the only one who knew something beyond time. He had that tremendous trust in the master. It was not a question of mind-belief, it was a contact between spirit and spirit. He was the most faithful one. Hence Jesus said: You will be the rock of my church. To translate it rightly it means: only the eternal can be the right foundation of any temple anywhere. The temples and the churches that are made in time are not real temples and real churches.

Here we are again trying to make something out of the eternal. This has been the constant adventure of all those who have known. All the Buddhas of the past have been trying to work out only one single thing: how to help man to go beyond time into eternity.

The moment you are no more in time, you are in god, and to be in god is to make a house on an eternal rock. Everything else will be taken away from you. Death will destroy everything that you create, so before death comes, know something of the eternal life, because that is the only thing that death cannot take away from you, and that is the only way to defeat death.

Anand means bliss, nado means the soundless sound of existence. The Zen people call it the sound of one hand clapping; that is nado. It cannot be heard but still it can be experienced. It cannot be heard because it is not available through one sense. It can be experienced because it is only available to your totality.

Eyes can see, ears can hear; these are specialised parts of your body, they are only parts. But there is a subtle way of experiencing things in which specialised parts are no more in use, in which you function as a total organic unity. Eyes are dissolved into it, ears are dissolved into it; all senses are dissolved into it. You are just like a cloud, with no specialised senses. Then something is experienced; that is nado. Think of the child when he is conceived in the mother’s womb. He has no eyes yet, no ears yet, no nose, nothing. It will take time for those specialisations to develop. But even the one-day-old child in the mother’s womb experiences. That is nado. Experience comes first and then the specialisation. Experience is so complex and so tremendously overwhelming that the child has to develop special senses to classify the experience, to define the experience, to be able to manage it.

The same happens in a reverse process when one goes into meditation: slowly slowly ears disappear, eyes disappear, nose disappears. All senses disappear into a very deep chaos, but that chaos is immensely creative: it is out of that chaos that stars are born. It is immensely pregnant. In that chaos one becomes a Buddha or a Krishna or a Christ. That chaos is the goal of all meditations.

So one is no more a specialised being: in that experience all the senses have dissolved, poured themselves. It is a kind of seeing and a kind of hearing and a kind of taste and a kind of smell and a kind of touch all together. It is tremendous, because all these senses are functioning simultaneously and not in separation. It is the greatest synthesis possible; it is the synthesis we come from and this is the synthesis we have to reach again. The moment it is reached again the circle is perfect. And the perfection of the circle is fulfilment. Then there is nothing left to know, nothing left to desire. This perfect circle automatically produces immense contentment.

Nado is one of the most important words in the East. It also means music, melody, but that too with a very special meaning. When you hear music and you are overwhelmed by it, it is not the music, the noise, that overwhelms you; it is something else that comes in the gaps surreptitiously. It is not the music heard that overwhelms you; it is something unheard that penetrates you. The greatest musician is one who can manage this miracle, who can make available the soundless sound through sound.

The greatest painter is one who can make available the invisible through the visible colours. Those visible colours are only indicators, fingers pointing to the moon. The painting is not really in the paint; the painting is something that has to be read between the lines. So those who focus on the painting miss the whole point. It cannot be known directly; a totally different kind of look is needed. That’s why the critic goes on missing, because his very approach makes him focus on the material part of the painting; the paint, the canvas, the composition, the style and all that. He becomes focused on the material part of the painting and the real painting exists as a non-material phenomenon, just by the side of the material; just as the body is there and just hidden behind the body is the soul. If you focus too much on the body you will miss the soul. That’s how physicists go on missing: they become caught up in the gross. They can’t read between the lines. They can’t see the beauty of the blanks, the intervals.

When you are hearing music there are two things continuously being poured into you: one is the visible, that which is heard, the tangible, the sound. But between two sounds there is a moment of soundlessness, the interval, and that interval is really the music; that is nado. It is just as we write music on paper as a score: those who know how to read it will be able to read it, but it is not music.

It simply represents music. The score on the paper simply represents music, it is symbolic; it is not music itself. You can go on looking at it but you will not be overwhelmed by it. Although it represents, it points to, something tremendously beautiful, in itself it is nothing.

In exactly the same way, music in its own turn is nothing. It is again a score, it again points to something higher than itself. Unless you hear that you are hearing only noise. And modern music has become more and more noise; nado has disappeared from it.

That is the beauty of classical music. If you go into Eastern music then it is just incredible. The whole beauty consists in there being less and less sound and more and more silence. The master musician manages with the least sound, the optimum soundlessness. He uses sound just as a jumping board, and then the ocean of the soundlessness is there. The sound leads you only to the jumping board, and then the real thing happens. If a musician can help one to go into silence through sound then he is really a maestro; only then is he a maestro, otherwise he is just a technician. So is the case with all kinds of art.

Poetry is not the words it is composed of. Poetry is something that is not there in the words but which hovers around the words. You need a very unfocused state to catch hold of poetry. If you become too interested in the words then you may know the grammar, the language, and you may know the metre and everything, but that is only the edifice. It is only the house, not the deity. You become too interested in the walls of the temple and you forget all about the deity.

So nado represents the invisible, which is everywhere. In music it is silence; in poetry it is not in words but in the wordless rhythm that lingers. And it only whispers; it is not very loud. Words are very loud, but nado is a fragrance; it is not even a flower. You cannot catch hold of it: you have simply to allow it to happen to you. You have to be just tuned in to it, available to it, in a passive alertness.

So whether it is music or painting or poetry the goal is always nado; and if nado is achieved, god is achieved.

That is why Zen people tried to go into meditation through many many arts – calligraphy, painting, sculpture, gardening, flower arrangements, archery even. Zen has done something immensely creative. No other religion has been able to rise to such heights of creativity; all other religions have remained poor in that way. And the height consists of only one thing: Zen people became aware that nado can be achieved through as many ways as possible. It is not a question of what you do; it is a question of reading between the lines in whatsoever you are doing.

For example, in archery you are not to concentrate on the target; you are not to concentrate on being successful; you are not even to concentrate on the bow and the arrow. You are not to be a doer; you have to let it happen. You are just there, passively alert, and some unknown energy takes possession of you. Some unknown energy starts flowing through your hands, through the arrow, through the bow, and you are not motivated at all towards reaching the target. There is no question of it; it is as if the arrow on its own reaches the target. But whether it reaches or not is irrelevant; the real thing is that you were not a doer – you allowed it to happen. Whenever somebody allows something to happen, nado descends, and that is the whole secret of meditation.

It can happen walking if you simply allow the walking. You are not going somewhere... just for a morning walk, with no hurry, with no motive; with not even health as the motive. There is no motive at all – it is just for the sheer joy of the rising sun and the birds and the trees and the people and the dogs barking and the street warming up and people starting to move and the trees waking. With just the sheer joy of this beautiful, waking morning you are in a let-go, and you will be in nado!

It can happen in millions of ways. God has no particular way to come to man, all doors are his doors.

But man has to be in a particular situation, a particular milieu, and that milieu can be reduced to simply two words: let-go.

[The new sannyasin says: Oh, what you say is... so overwhelming... so beautiful. I wish I could remember all, but I.... ]

There is no need to remember; it has penetrated your heart! Something to say to me?

[A sannyasin, who is leaving for the West, says: My heart wants to be here but my mind keeps interfering.]

The mind is not the question! Listen to the heart and then manage to be here. You have given enough to the mind; now the time has come to give to the heart!

People are very closed to love.

They don’t invite love towards themselves, and even if love comes they remain closed. And love comes, love comes in a thousand and one ways – it knocks continuously on your doors – but people are very much afraid of love; they don’t invite it in. The fear is that love is a very overwhelming experience. You lose control in love, you are no more the master in love. When love is there you are just a slave; when love is there you are reduced to nothingness.

When love is present you become absent; that is the fear. The ego is very very apprehensive about love so any sign of love coming close and the ego immediately closes all doors, all windows, all possibilities; the ego protects itself against love. Love seems to be like a death to the ego.

But then you feel suffocated, then you feel starved, because without love there is no nourishment for the soul, and without love there is no fresh wind coming in, no sun-rays coming in. Without love you live in a grave. The ego can protect itself against love but then life becomes just a suffocation, a misery, a hell. But people are so unintelligent that they choose to live in a hell rather than sacrificing the ego. And to sacrifice the ego is nothing because it is just a shadow, an idea.

... When love knocks on the door, open your doors, invite love in. Let the love become your guest and you be the host, and it will transform you! It will take you into a totally different world. Every knock of love is in a subtle way the knock of god. To reject love is to reject god; to accept love is to accept god. A loving person is a religious person, and if you can accept love, only then can you give it to others. If you cannot accept you cannot give either; they both go together like incoming breath and outgoing breath.

If you don’t inhale how will you exhale? What will you exhale? First the inhalation has to come; your lungs have to be full of air, then you can exhale. Your soul has to be full of love, then you can exhale.

So the person who accepts love is the person who is capable of giving it to others. They are two aspects of the same event, like incoming breath and outgoing breath.

So love has to become your religion. Love is really the religion. Live in love and forget all other theologies and gods and churches and temples. Live in love and forget all philosophies! And that’s more than enough. It will take you to the ultimate destiny of life.

Meditate while you are here. Learn at least one meditation that you like, and then continue it back home....

CHAPTER 9

9 November 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Prem means love, nikash means criterion. Love is the criterion, the touchstone. One has to test everything in life from the criterion of love. If love says it’s okay, then it is okay; if love says no, then you are going astray. If one simply follows the subtle indications of love one arrives at god naturally, without any effort. There is no need to search for god; all that is needed is to go on judging yourself on the criterion of love. Love is decisive.

The man of knowledge will fail on the criterion of love. That means that knowledge is not wisdom, because knowledge does not release love energy in you. Wisdom immediately releases love energy.

Wisdom expresses itself as love, as compassion. Knowledge may even make you more cruel.

Rather than making you more loving, it may even destroy the love that you already had, because the more the head becomes burdened by knowledge, the more the passage towards the heart is blocked.

Wisdom arises in the heart, and the shadow of wisdom is love. When wisdom arises in you, you will know that the light has arisen in you; others will see only love growing in you, not your light. Light is an interior experience, love is its outward expression. Only the person will know that the light has happened in him, but everybody else will become aware of his love.

Love is the outer reality of the light which is the inner reality. So if you try the criterion of love you will never go astray. Do whatsoever you want to do; always remember ’Is it going to help my love more?

Is it going to make my love more intense, deeper, more valid, more authentic?’ Then it is good, then it is virtuous. If not, then it is evil; it is better to avoid it. It will be destructive to others and it will be destructive to you too.

Destruction or creation, both are double-edged swords. If you destroy others you will be destroyed automatically. You cannot be destructive to others without being destructive to yourself. In fact, to be destructive to others you will have to be destructive to yourself in the first place. Before the anger reaches to the other and burns the other, it will have to burn you; it will arise in you like a fire, like a poison. It will reach the other only later on; first it will be destructive to you.

And so is the case with creativity: if you are creative in your relationships with people, with the world, simultaneously you are creating yourself. To be creative means that one is giving birth to oneself constantly, and that is real life: to be born anew each moment, every moment. Love is creativity, love is virtue, love is prayer, love is freedom. And in the ultimate sense, love is god.

Deva means god, animesh means without blinking the eyes: searching for god without blinking your eyes, looking for god continuously, constantly. Not only when one is awake but even when one is fast asleep the search should continue; it should become an undercurrent. You may be involved in the market-place but deep inside the remembrance goes on. That’s what Sufis call jikr: remembrance.

One has to do many things, life requires them – you have to earn your bread, you have to work –

but still something deep inside you can go on remembering god. And god can only be remembered that way. People try to remember god at a particular time. Every day, early in the morning they will say a little prayer, or in the night going to bed, for two or three minutes they will pray to god and fall asleep. This is not going to help. This prayer remains superficial; it cannot go to the very core. A constant hammering is needed.

It is just like breathing. If you breathe for only two, three minutes in twenty-four hours, you cannot be alive. Breathing has to be there for twenty-four hours; even while you are asleep it has to be there.

You may be in a coma but the breathing continues. Remembrance of god has to become just like breathing.

That’s why many schools, esoteric schools, try to associate breathing with god’s name so the association goes so deep that whenever you take a breath in, a subtle memory remains there that you are taking god in, and when the breath goes out, a remembrance that you are pouring yourself out into god. The ingoing breath is god pouring himself into you; the outgoing breath is you pouring yourself into god. If this can become a silent, continuous process, it transforms, it changes, your whole life. This constant remembrance automatically helps you to drop a few things.

For example, such a man will not be capable of Being angry because anger will disturb his remembrance. Such a man will not be greedy because greed will disturb the remembrance. Atl these things, which become disturbances in remembrance, automatically drop. Such a man will be loving because love helps remembrance; he will be compassionate, compassion helps remembrance; he will be very friendly because friendliness helps remembrance; he will always be ready to serve because service helps remembrance.

So become a continuity of jikr, a continuity of god’s remembrance. Looking at the tree, remember god... looking at the river, remember god. Looking at people, remember god. Looking at your own face in the mirror, remember god. With closed eyes, looking inside, remember god. Remember as much as you can. Slowly slowly it becomes autonomous. Then you need not make any effort, it is simply there, and when it is there, it has tremendous beauty.

This is the greatest secret. It changes your whole chemistry, not only of the body, not only of the mind, but your very being itself is transformed.

Anand means bliss, divo means a small lamp – a small lamp of bliss or a small flame of bliss.

Life can be light or it can remain darkness; it depends on us. We are born with the possibilities, both alternatives are open: we can choose either to remain in darkness or to become light. The way to remain in darkness is the way of desire. The way to remain in darkness is the outward-going way.

The farther you go away from yourself, the more you will be in darkness; the closer you come to yourself, the more you will be in light. And when you are centred at the very core of your being there is absolute light.

The way of desire, the outward-going energy, creates a shadow behind; that shadow is darkness.

The majority of people live in darkness. It is very rarely that a person is intelligent enough to understand the process. And whenever one is intelligent enough to understand the process, one turns, one starts moving inwards. The way inwards is the way of no desire.

Desire means that you will have to go out. Desire means tomorrow, the day after tomorrow; desire means the future. Desire means that you cannot enjoy right now; first you have to prepare, first you have to achieve something and then you can enjoy. Desire means postponement; it is ad infinitum.

The desired moment never comes; it cannot come in the very nature of things because the future never comes. That which comes is always the present. And desire knows no way to connect with the present. With the present only a mind which has no desires can have a communion.

When you don’t have a desire then there is nowhere to go. Then suddenly one falls into one’s own Being, and in that very falling there is great light. The light is there but we are keeping it at our back because we are going outwards. A one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn is needed, and that’s what sannyas is: a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. If we turn, suddenly att is light; and light is bliss, light is delight.

Don’t miss this opportunity. Be converted from the outside to the inside. Change the style of life that depends on desiring and create a new style of life that depends on celebration, not on desiring.

Desiring makes conditions. ’First, conditions have to be fulfilled, then I will celebrate.’ And those conditions are never fulfilled, so celebration never happens. When I say to make your life founded on celebration, it means don’t make any condition.

Celebrate now; don’t say tomorrow. Don’t postpone, there is no need. Atl that is needed to celebrate is already there: you are breathing, you are alive, you are conscious, you are intelligent. What else does one need to celebrate? One can dance right now, one can sing right now. And the more you dance, the more you sing, the more you become capable of celebrating.

Deva means divine, sadhvi means purity, holiness, saintliness – divine purity.

There is a purity in our very being which is virgin. There is no way to pollute it; it is simply beyond pollution, it is simply beyond the touch of the world. Nobody can reach it except yourself; not even the person who is in great love with you can penetrate it. It is not even available to love; it is only available in meditation. It is a virgin being where nobody has ever trekked, reached. And that’s its beauty and its splendour: it is utterly private; it’s privacy is absolute, hence it cannot be dragged into the world of the crowd.

Love brings a purity but that purity depends on two persons. It is a purity of relationship. It is very fragile; it can be here one moment, another moment it is gone. It is very momentary; it is almost like a dream, a fantasy. When it is there it appears to be very real, but when it is gone it seems to be almost as if it had never happened.

But the purity that comes through meditation is eternal. It is not fragile; it is the very rock that cannot be destroyed by the processes of time. Only on this rock can the temple of life be built. In fact, in love also you have a glimpse of this purity, just a glimpse from a far-away place. But glimpses are glimpses. You can see the Himalayan peaks, snow-covered, from thousands of miles away. When the day is clear and unclouded and the sun is bright you can see those snow-covered peaks from thousands of miles away, but you have not arrived yet. It is beautiful to see them that far away, but one moment they are there, another moment the clouds have gathered and they are gone.

So is the case with love: love only gives glimpses. Meditation brings you to the very space, and to attain to that space is to become holy.

Holiness has nothing to do with formal religious rituals, Christian holiness and Hindu holiness; it has nothing to do with that kind of holiness. That is all imposed, cultivated; that is just a facade, a mask.

Real holiness arises in you when you have reached your private territory which is given only to you and only to you; nobody can ever trespass in it. The person who has attained to that holiness is a saint.

All others are pretenders. They may be good people, of great character, of great service to humanity, that is not doubted, but still they are not saints in the real existential meaning of the word. Their saintliness is only according to a certain pattern. So one person may be a saint according to Christians, and may not be a saint according to Hindus. And one person may be a saint according to Hindus and may not be a saint according to Christians. So that saintliness is defined by a particular tradition; it is not eternal.

For example, the Christian saint can drink wine, and there is no problem. In fact, wine was first made by Christian saints and monks in the monasteries. In a few monasteries they still go on making wine.

Now, no Hindu could think of it – a saint drinking wine? That’s his idea of a sinner! The Christian saint can eat meat and there is no problem in it; his tradition allows k. But the Jaina tradition does not allow it at all. What to say about eating meat? – you cannot even eat at night... not even vegetarian food! You cannot even drink water unless it has been purified in every way, because there may be a few germs and they may be killed!

The Jaina monk does not walk in darkness, he cannot go for an early morning walk, because there may be small insects on the road and he may become the cause of their death. There is a certain Jaina sect which keeps a strip of cloth to cover the mouth and nose, because hot air goes out of the mouth and nose, and it can kill small germs in the air. Now these people could not think of a saint eating meat; that would be simply unbelievable.

According to the Christian, the Jaina monk will not look like a saint because the Christian definition of a saint is one who has devoted his whole life to service, who serves the ill, the poor, the blind; service has to be his flavour. The Jaina monk never serves anybody, service is not any part of his sainthood. According to the Christian, those who are not of any service to anybody are pretenders.

The saint should serve, he should be like Saint Francis; he should go and hug the lepers. The Jaina monk will not hug even a perfectly healthy person, not to speak of a leper! He will not even touch the body of anybody else because even to touch the body is sin, even to touch the body is, in a subtle way, to enjoy it; he’s so against the body. And according to the Jaina monk the leper is suffering because of his past sins, he deserves it, so service is out of the question.

According to the Christian, the Hindu and the Jaina are not real saints. The real saint must go to the masses and serve the poor, help the poor, and help just as Jesus did. He cured the blind, he cured the deaf; he even helped dead people to come back to life. This is real saintliness.

If you look into the definition of saintliness you will be puzzled. There are at least three hundred religions on the earth, and they have three hundred different definitions of saintliness. Those are all tradition-bound definitions, not true definitions. The true definition has to be existential, not tradition-bound. It cannot be Christian, it cannot be Hindu, it cannot be Mohammedan.

You have to go into your own innermost shrine and let things happen there, and whatsoever happens from there is saintly. The person who lives from his centre is saintly. Then whatsoever he does or does not, is good.

Love has to be meaningless. Love is great only when it is meaningless. All meaning is mundane; whenever something has meaning it is ordinary.

All that is great has no meaning. Beauty has no meaning, truth has no meaning, god has no meaning, because they are not commodities in the marketplace. A beautiful rose flower – what meaning has it got? It is utterly beautiful but without any meaning. You cannot reduce it to some meaning. It has no purpose, it is simply there. and what meaning has the sky full of stars? No meaning at all.

Meaning is a man-made idea. If man disappears from the earth roses will go on blooming, stars will go on shining, the moon will rise, and all will go on happening, but there will be no meaning.

Meaning was man’s creation. God created the world, man created meaning; and because it is man’s creation, it remains small, trivial.

Somebody asked Pablo Picasso... he was painting and somebody asked him ’What meaning has your painting?’ He was very angry. He said ’Go out and ask the rose flower what meaning it has.

If the rose can exist without any meaning, why can I not paint without any meaning?’ His answer is tremendously significant.

Love has no meaning. Love is a rose flower, beautiful as it is; but it is not a commodity. You cannot evaluate it, you cannot fix its price, you cannot able how valuable it is, what price it has got; it is invaluable. But the paradox is: things which are meaningless are very significant. that is the difference between meaning and significance. A thing may be meaningless – that does not necessarily mean that it is not significant; on the contrary, the more meaningless a thing is, the more significant it is.

The person who simply lives through meanings starts feeling life to be insignificant. He collects money, money has meaning; he becomes very respectable, respect has meaning; he becomes politically powerful, power has meaning. But his whole life becomes devoid of significance. He lives and dies but never comes to know the poetry of life.

The poetry is available to those few who are ready to live meaninglessly, who are ready to live purposelessly, who can enjoy things for their own sake. Meaning means that everything has to be used as a means to some end. When I say that things can be enjoyed on their own accord it simply signifies that each thing is an end unto itself.

Meaningless love can become the foundation of a greatly significant life.

CHAPTER 10

10 November 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Jesus says again and again: Unless you are like a child you will not enter into my kingdom of god.

The child has something which the grown-up loses; that something has to be regained. The child has some qualities of paradise. Once you start growing up you start losing paradise; that paradise has to be regained.

Each child’s story is the story of the whole of humanity too. That is the meaning of the parable of Adam leaving the garden of god. Each child has to leave, because unless you leave it you will never be able to regain it; and unless you regain it, you will never be able to appreciate it.

The child has all that a Buddha will regain, but the child is completely unaware of it. How can he be aware? He is born with it; he is it. Once it is lost, then the understanding arises of what one has lost. Only by losing a thing do you come to know the value of it. You love a person, but when the person dies, then you become aware of what you have lost. When the person was available you were almost in a state of oblivion. One takes for granted that which is obvious.

It is like a fish in the pond. She cannot be aware of the pond and the beauty and the life-enhancing, nourishing, qualities of the pond. Take the fish out and immediately she understands that the pond was her life; now she hankers to go back to the pond. Drop her back into the pond: she will be utterly blissful because she is back. She will be grateful to god. Although she had always lived in that same pond, she had never thanked god.

Each child has that which a Buddha will regain. But when Buddha regains it, it is tremendously beautiful. The child has the diamonds with him but has no way to know the value of the diamonds.

And these are the three diamonds: one, a blissful ignorance.... The child knows nothing; his consciousness is unburdened by knowledge. The second: the child is innocent, he knows nothing of good or bad; he is not yet divided. The third: he is choiceless; he simply moves through the spontaneity of his nature. Hungry, he eats; sleepy, he sleeps. These are the fundamental qualities of Buddhahood with only one difference – that Bud&a is perfectly conscious of these three things and the child is unconscious. Childhood plus consciousness is equal to Buddhahood.

Deva means divine, suli in Hindi means crucifixion – divine crucifixion. And that is the beginning of resurrection. One has to die to be reborn, one has to utterly disappear to be. It is paradoxical, but this is how nature functions: the seed dies and the tree is born. And it happens in many ways, in many subtle ways; it may not always be so apparent. The child dies and the young man is born; the young man dies and the old man is born. In fact, it happens every moment – the past dies; that’s the way life evolves.

So crucifixion is not something that happens once and forever; it goes on happening. It is a constant process of cleansing. The person who really wants to grow has to die to the past each moment so that each new coming of each moment is fresh, young, new. Then life is really exhilarating; then it is ecstasy.

If we go on gathering the past and never allow it to die, life becomes a boredom because the past has all joy. We have lived it, we have known it, we have been through it; now it is a repetition. It is like seeing the same movie again and again and again. The first time it has an excitement because there is exploration; the first time you are excited because there are surprises, the first time you are thrilled because you don’t know what is going to happen, how it is going to end, the conclusion is not given to you and you are curious. But next time it is all dull; you know the conclusion already, you know what is going to happen. Now there is no surprise any more.

That’s how many people are living: dull, bored, dragging, because they know that whatsoever is going to happen has happened already. It is said that many people die at thirty although they are buried at seventy. And the hippies have a point when they say ’Don’t trust a man beyond thirty.’

There is a point to it, and the point is that by the time people are thirty they have already settled; their life has now become a comfortable, safe, secure pattern. Now nothing new will ever happen, now they will go on repeating the same habitual pattern again and again, year in, year out, till they die.

This is not the right way to live. This is not the way a sannyasin should live. The sannyasin has to live each moment as if it were new so that life never loses excitement, so that it always remains a passionate affair, so that there are always surprises happening. And that is the reality of existence: it is never dull, it is never dead. Only the memory of man makes it look dull and dead.

You can watch it in the trees and the birds and the animals. They don’t look bored – never! And their lives have not as much ecstasy as is possible in man’s life. Still they are not bored. The simple reason is that they don’t collect the past, they don’t live in their memories; they live in the moment.

They are not burdened by a great memory of the past. That is a heavy load to carry.

So this is the meaning... become a divine crucifixion. That is the meaning of Jesus’ crucifixion and his resurrection. It may not be a historical fact – it can’t be – but it has a metaphorical reality which is far more significant than any historical fact.

A historical fact is an ordinary event in time. A metaphorical fact is something eternal. The historical fact can be proved, can be disproved. The metaphorical truth cannot be disproved. It is a poetic statement of something that exists as an ultimate principle: it was so before Jesus; it is so after Jesus. Whether Jesus ever existed or not doesn’t matter; it makes no difference to the fundamental principle. The fundamental principle is: those who want to live will have to learn how to die. And that’s what Jesus means when he says: Carry your own cross on your own shoulders.

Carry the secrets of dying with yourself always. Whenever something is finished, die to it. It is finished; forget all about it, unburden yourself of it. Come out of it just as the snake comes out of the old skin. Memory is just an old skin, and if one is capable of coming out of it, one is a sannyasin.

Then one is in meditation. Then resurrection goes on happening, and resurrection is eternal life.

Anything to say to me?

Prem means love, laghima means power to fly. Love gives wings, and only love can give wings.

Everything else keeps you crawling on the earth. It is only love that makes you able to fly, it is through love that you can take off. It is only through love that one can reach to the ultimate. It is a flight from the alone to the alone. And remember, it is a flight, and to be ready to fly one has to unburden oneself of many things. Love gives wings, but if you have many many stones around your neck then even wings won’t be of much help.

So two things: first, one has to grow in love – the positive part. And second: one has to drop all kinds of prejudices, religious, political, social. One has to become unknowledgeable, one has to learn how to exist in a state of no-knowledge. In short, one has to become a child again.

The child is in a constant wondering because he has no knowledge. As you become grown up you stop wondering because you think that now you already know; there is no need to wonder. This is utter nonsense. No knowledge is really enough to destroy wonder; on the contrary, real knowledge helps you to go deeper into wonder.

A great scientist, Eddington, is reported to have said, ’When I started researching in the world of science I used to think that the world consisted only of things and that sooner or later we would be able to know all that is.’ But in his old age he said, ’I came to see the point that it is not possible to know all that is, because the world resembles more a thought than a thing. Reality is very elusive and mysterious.’ He said, ’I started as a scientist, I am dying as a mystic.’

And the same was the case with Albert Einstein. He lived as a mathematician, he died as a mystic.

It is reported that just two or three days before his death, he was saying to people, ’If next time I am given the chance to be born again, I would not like to be a physicist or a mathematician; I would like to be a plumber.’ He means that he would like to live the ordinary life of a very ordinary man. He would like to function from the state of no-knowledge. As Albert Einstein went deeper and deeper into the reality of existence he became aware that it is infinite, that it is inexhaustible, that it is beyond our capacities to comprehend it and that it is going to remain so. We may know much, but all that we know will simply make us aware that much more is there yet to be known.

The person who wants to go into the ultimate has to unburden himself of all knowledge; then one becomes weightless. Love is the positive part in growing wings. The negative part is meditation, dropping knowledge.

So grow wings of love and grow deeper into meditation so that all unnecessary luggage can be dropped.

[Osho gives someone sannyas.]

Just raise your hands, close your eyes, and feel like a tree, solitary in a field. It is sunny, it is windy, the tree is delighted and dancing – become the tree. If the body starts swaying, cooperate with it.

Just feel these hands as your branches. It is really windy and sunny. Forget the human body.

Veet means beyond, sandharsh means conflict, struggle.

The greatest calamity that has happened to human beings is an inner division. Man has been divided, he no more functions as a unity. This has been the greatest trick played upon man, a great conspiracy of the politicians and priests, because this is the only way to keep man a slave.

If a man starts fighting with himself then he becomes impotent to rebel; he is castrated. This is a psychological castration. His whole energy becomes involved in inner conflict. He has no more energy to fight with society, with the state, with the people, with the crowd and with all kinds of superstitions. Then he is so weak outside that he accepts. He has no more will to fight, his inner fight is too much. This is a psychological trick.

If a man is one inside he will not tolerate anything that is inhuman; he will not tolerate anything that goes against his intelligence. He will not tolerate anything that is stupid, superstitious, howsoever long its history and howsoever respectable it may have been considered in the past. The man who is one will be able to see through things, and not only able to see, he will be able to act according to his intelligence.

But man is a house divided against itself. And the way that he has been divided is so subtle that it is a!most difficult to understand, to comprehend. Many things have been condemned, and those things are things natural to man. The moment you condemn something natural you create division in yourself. You are against your own nature: the split arises. Now there is never going to be any moment of victory, because nobody can win. Neither you can win – because you are also part of your being – nor the thing that you are fighting against can win, because that too is part of your being. It is like making your left and right hand fight, wrestle: nobody can be victorious because you are behind both. So it is only your energy being dissipated in an absurd, foolish fight.

My sannyasins have to learn how to get out of this conspiracy. Accept yourself in toto. All that is natural is good, nature is good. And if there is ever a choice between nature and the moralist, choose nature and forget all about the moralist. If there is ever any fight between the natural and the ideal, drop the ideal immediately; it is worthless.

Listen to your nature, and slowly slowly you will be able to become one again. And the day one becomes one, life has a totally different meaning. It is vital, it is capable of rebelling, it is capable of asserting itself, it is capable of being on its own, it is capable of risking. And only the person who is a unity, who has integrity, will be able to reach god, because the journey is long, arduous. It needs great integrity. The people who are falling into parts cannot go on that journey. Their whole life is wasted in keeping themselves together somehow.

Anand means bliss, devi means goddess – goddess of bliss.

And this is our reality. We are born to be gods and goddesses but we never claim our destiny. It remains unclaimed. We never search for our treasure; it remains there waiting and waiting for us.

We remain beggars because our whole search goes on in the outside world; we never come home.

And god is not there somewhere outside to be found: he is your innermost core, he is your life. Once god is felt in one’s own being then he is everywhere, but only then, not before that. If before that somebody thinks ’Everywhere is god’, that is just imagination, fantasy – religious, good, but just a projection of a dream.

The first contact has to happen within, the first taste has to happen within, and then it goes on spreading. When you have tasted your nectar inside and you open your eyes, it is all over the place.

It is in the green leaves and the red roses, in the stones, in the river, and in people; it is everywhere.

One who knows god, knows him everywhere, and then to live is to live in paradise.

This is the right moment to have come. This is the time to drop everything else and go within.

The West has completely forgotten that at different stages of life different kinds of education are needed. We send a child to school to learn the ways of the world because he will have to live in the world, he will have to survive economically. He has to learn mathematics and geography and history and all that because it will be helpful for him to find a job. We send him to school, to college, to university, so that he is equipped, so that he is efficient in attaining a certain standard of living.

That is a need.

But when a person is getting old, the world is disappearing, death is coming close and one is to enter into another dimension, then another kind of education is needed. Just as one prepares for life, one has to prepare for death too. The journey of life is a very small journey and the journey of death is very great. When one is going on such an unknown journey, much preparation is needed.

That’s what sannyas is: it is a preparation to encounter death, to know death, to go through death without fear, without clinging.

If one is ready to go through death without fear, without clinging to life, one transcends death, one comes to know the deathless, and that is god.

Life should be divided into two divisions. Just as children go to school to learn about how to live, after a certain age, after fifty, each person should go to some other kind of university, some esoteric school where he can prepare for the long journey, the long pilgrimage of death. That has been the way in the East.

We divided life into four sections. Thinking that life consists of a hundred years, hypothetically, we divided it into four. Twenty-five years, the first part, is for education, education for life. The second part, twenty-five years, is to live in life as a householder, as a husband, as a wife, mother, father, to experience life in all its ways. These years are to help your children to grow, are to protect your children, to send them to university so they can be ready. But after the fiftieth year one has to start thinking, now the time is coming to leave. One has to prepare to leave.

Up to seventy-five, the third stage, one is preparing to leave, getting ready for sannyas. And after seventy-five, the last twenty-five years, is the state of sannyas. One is now ready to face god.

One has lived; now one meditates, prays, purifies oneself, becomes a witness to one’s body, to one’s mind, so that one can see something deep in one’s own being which is neither the body nor the mind. Because death will take only the body and the mind, and if we can know that we are something separate from the body and the mind, then death is not going to disturb us at all. This was a very scientific division of life.

So this is the time for you to prepare, and it is not late yet.

[A sannyasin couple ask about their relationship: We get possessive and jealous and passionate.]

Mm mm. It always happens... it happens to every couple, because man as he is right now is not yet capable of loving. So he can start love, that is simple, but as things start going deeper, problems start arising. So alt loves in the beginning are immensely beautiful but sooner or later troubles arise because troubles are there in each human being.

He (the boyfriend) is hiding them. When you fall in love, you don’t show them, you simply hide them; you show only the beautiful parts of your being. But the ugly parts are there! Sooner or later they will start asserting themselves, and when they do then there is conflict.

Love is a good therapeutic situation: it makes you aware of your neurosis. And if both persons are willing to use the opportunity to grow, then there is no problem. Then love can become one of the greatest growth situations. It is.... For example: when you feel possessive, rather than becoming trapped in the unconsciousness of it, make it conscious, deliberate. Discuss, don’t hide; bring it out, express. Both meditate together on it and see the stupidity of it.

How can one human being possess another human being? And if you love the other person, how can you be possessive? They are contrary, contradictory. We can possess things; we cannot possess persons. The effort to possess a person is to reduce him to a commodity, to a thing, like a chair or a car or a house. This is insulting, humiliating, to the other, and naturally the other feels offended and he starts reacting. He will start trying to become more free, and the more he tries to become free, the more possessive you will become, and so on, so forth; then it is a vicious circle.

This is the rock onto which marriages come and are shattered; beautiful beginnings but always a tragic end. A little more understanding and there is no need for the tragic end, love can go on becoming more and more beautiful every day; it can end in a crescendo of beauty, joy. It doesn’t happen because we are not really alert to what we are doing. So decide one thing: that it is not only a question of love, it is a therapeutic situation to grow in.

And help each other. (to the man) When she is possessive don’t start reacting, because that will make her more possessive. Rather, help her to bring her possessiveness to the surface. Cool down, sit silently together for one hour. Turn the light off, burn incense. Just sit silently together, meditating over it, what it is, how it comes up.

(to the woman) Because it is not only your question. Sometimes it comes from him; then again, you have to understand it and meditate over it. Sometimes small things happen and you start nagging, and he starts feeling offended. He wants to dominate and you defend yourself. Att these small things are not really small; they are only apparently small. Deep down is the effort to dominate the other, deep down is power-politics. Meditate and see what kind of foolish games we go on playing.

I’m not saying to change these things immediately, because change won’t help: only understanding will help. If by understanding they drop on their own accord, then it is good. If you forcibly change

– you say ’Okay, I will decide not to be possessive’ – that is not going to help. You will simply go on repressing and one day or other it will explode. So that is not the way.

That’s what people go on doing. When they come to see that possessiveness brings misery, conflict, they think ’Why talk about it? – change it! What can I do by .... ? how can I change? I can repress, that’s the only possible way!’ So you don’t take any note of it and it goes on accumulating; then you are sitting on a volcano. One day it erupts out of all proportions; and the situation had been just a small thing. You are surprised, he is surprised: ’Are you going mad or something?’ because the situation did not demand this. It was so trivial yet you exploded! It was just a spark; you had gathered too much ammunition in you. And he will go on doing the same. This is what all couples are doing all over the world.

Make it a therapeutic relationship.

(to the man) And you come and go too fast so you cannot do any groups; otherwise they would be very helpful. So next time you come be here at least for three weeks so you can do a few groups separately. They will make you aware of many things. And then do at least one or two groups together – that will settle things.

There is nothing to be worried about. These are natural phenomena, human.

[A sannyasin has just completed individual therapy. The therapist said it was very difficult to get him to open. The sannyasin said that he felt very stuck. He works in the ashram bakery and enjoys putting his total energy into that, but when he is not at work he feels more and more stuck and isolated.

Osho checks his energy.]

Good. There is nothing to be worried about. You are deliberately stuck, so the problem is very simple. You have decided to act this way. Any moment you can drop it; nothing else is needed. This is your choice. If you want to remain stuck there is no problem in it, then don’t make a problem out of it. Remain stuck, enjoy it. If you want to drop it, it is very simple. It is not that you are entangled in it; it is just the way you have decided to be. It is so simple – that’s why they (the therapists) were in difficulty. If it was something that was like a compulsion in you, they would have broken the ice.

they would have penetrated you.

It is like a person who is awake and pretending to be asleep. Now you cannot wake him, it is impossible to wake him because he is already awake; he’s simply pretending to be asleep. What can you do? If he is asleep he can be wakened. It is simple then: you just shake him or bring a bucket of cold water. And that’s what they were doing, they tried everything; but you are not asleep!

You are perfectly alert but you are pretending to be asleep, you are enjoying the pretension.

So you need not go to any group. Enjoy – if you want to remain stuck.... If you are fed up with it then simply drop it like that. There is no problem in it; it is very simple.

And don’t be worried – put your energy into your work. That is good because you have too much energy. If you don’t, it will create troubles for you. It is perfectly good. Put your energy as much in the work as you can, and enjoy it. And don’t make any problem out of it, it is not a problem at all. If you want to remain in bed with closed eyes, you are free to. Whenever you decide to get up you can get up; you don’t need any alarm.

That’s what therapy can do. The therapy always fails with a person who has no real problem. It is as if you don’t have a real problem and you go to the doctor. He gives you this medicine and that; nothing will help because the problem in the first place is not there; there is no disease.

You are perfectly okay. Put your energy into the work and forget all about it. It is nothing to be worried about. It is finished. I declare that you are out of it! And don’t torture my therapists any more!

CHAPTER 11

11 November 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Veet means beyond, marga, in Sanskrit, means the way... beyond the way.

The outward journey needs a way, the inward needs no way at all. If you want to go to the moon, there is distance, and the distance has to be covered by a way. But if you want to go into your own being there is no distance at all; you are already there. So it is not a question of travelling, it is only a question of recognising that ’I have already arrived.’ Truth is beyond all paths because truth is already the case. It is not a question of achievement, it is only a question of remembrance: just a little more awareness and one is back home. And then the whole thing looks so absurd! How had you been missing it for so long? It looks so ridiculous – that it was already there, always there, and yet you were searching for it. It is really hilarious. The first thing that happens after a person becomes enlightened is a tremendous laugh, laughter at the whole absurdity of all search.

If this is understood, and this is only a question of understanding, not doing, but only of understanding, then this very moment, the transformation.

Sannyas is not a gradual process: it is sudden enlightenment. It is not a process in time; it is a jump out of time. It can happen in a split second... in fact, time is not needed at all. So let this moment become a new birth, it is, and from this moment start living not as a seeker and a searcher but as one who has arrived. Relax. There is nowhere to go, nothing to find, you are not to become anybody else. Relax into your being and start enjoying it. That moment-to-moment enjoyment of one’s own being and the existence that surrounds one is meditation.

Deva means divine, nirdosh means innocence – divine innocence.

And that is the greatest religious quality. No other virtue is as valuable as innocence, because it is only in innocence that god can happen. The knowledgeable mind goes on missing god because he thinks he already knows. That becomes a barrier. He has already concluded; he has not waited, he has not been patient. He has not allowed god to enter his being. And he has concluded: either that god is or that god is not. The person who has concluded is no more innocent and is no more open either; only innocence is vulnerable. And the person who has already concluded is dishonest, insincere. How can you conclude without knowing? The person who has concluded is living in a lie.

He may go on believing that he knows the truth but his truth is nothing but a lie, a falsification.

Truth can only be based on one’s own experience; it cannot be based on anybody else’s experience.

Jesus may have known god, Buddha may have known, I may have known, but that cannot become your conclusion. That will be borrowed, that will be cheating, and one cannot cheat on god. One has to remain alert that one has not known yet.

To function from that state of non-knowing is innocence, and innocence is tremendously beautiful.

It is vast, open, available, ready to inquire, to go on any investigation, to explore. And it is only in innocence that one day the ultimate descends. Even then the innocence is not destroyed, because when the ultimate enters you, it is so big that you cannot reduce it to a conclusion.

That’s why Buddha remained silent. He would not say whether god is or god is not. You ask him –

he will smile and keep quiet. It is so big that to say anything about it is to reduce that unlimitedness to a very limited statement. That is sacrilegious. In that way Buddha remains one of the most unique enlightened persons of the world. . . so utterly honest that he will not answer even fundamental questions which every religious person is seeking and searching. He will simply put aside all great questions. He will say ’Don’t bother about them, please learn how to meditate. Be silent and you will know. Be still and you will know. Don’t ask. Even if I say, it is useless... not only useless, it is harmful. If you cling to it then you will never know on your own.’

That’s the meaning of your name. Drop all conclusions, become a child again, and from that things start changing. Life again becomes a wonder, a mystery. Life again becomes full of awe, poetry, beauty. One is again thrilled, one is no more bored, and there are surprises on each step. Those surprises are ecstatic....

Deva means divine, siddho means arrival – one who has arrived. Sannyas is an arrival. It is not a ritual, it is not a formality, it is getting involved with me. It is the greatest commitment one can make, although it is made playfully, there is no seriousness involved in it. That’s the paradox of it. And all that is great is always paradoxical. It is a non-serious commitment but it is a commitment all the same. One has to go into it laughing, dancing, singing, because to me the sense of humour is one of the very fundamental religious qualities. If you cannot laugh totally you will never be able to love or pray. If you cannot be playful in life, it is impossible to be Prayerful. Prayer is the ultimate form of playfulness.

Deva means divine, parinamo means consequence.

There are things in life which cannot be made into goals, and those are the greatest things, the most valuable; those are the ultimate values of life. You cannot make a goal out of them, they happen as a consequence. For example: happiness cannot be made a goal. If you make a goal of it you will become more and more unhappy. You cannot go directly in search of it. Happiness is a consequence, it is very indirect. Playing on your guitar.... You are not searching for happiness; you are playing on your guitar and you are absorbed in it, and suddenly it comes as a consequence.

You were not even thinking about it; you were not searching for it; you had no motivation in it; you were simply playing your guitar. Not even a lingering desire was there for happiness, but you got absorbed in your music and it came. It is a consequence.

So those people who start searching for happiness directly remain miserable for the whole of their lives. A painter may have it when he paints and forgets himself completely. When the painter disappears and there is only painting, happiness comes. It happens. It happens to the dancer... it happens to anybody who is capable of totally losing himself in some activity. But it always comes when you are absolutely unaware of it; it takes you by surprise.

And it is not only so about happiness, it is so with love, it is so with celebration, it is so with meditation, it is so with god. They are all consequences, not goals. You cannot desire them; desire them and you will miss them. Desire becomes the great barrier. But they happen whenever you are lost, absorbed, drunk with some activity, whatsoever it is. Digging a hole in the garden, if you are really totally absorbed in it you will feel great joy arising in you, great meditativeness. And suddenly you will feel yourself surrounded by a new climate of love. And one day all these qualities take you higher and higher and higher, and the ultimate is god. God is the sum total of love, beauty, celebration, meditation, prayer, gratitude. God is the apex, the peak of it all.

But remember one thing very fundamental – it is a consequence.

Prem means love, vedano means pain – pain that comes out of love. It is a sweet pain. It is no ordinary pain. It is the pain that brings growth, it is the pain that brings new birth. It is a pain that is far more valuable than all pleasures put together. But the basic condition is that it should come out of love; then it is purifying. Then it cleanses you, then it is a fire. And if one is ready to go through it, one comes out of it pure gold.

Not all pain is good. Pain is destructive if it doesn’t arise out of love; it is poison. But the miracle of love is that it transforms even the poison into nectar: that is the very alchemy of love. If love touches even darkness it becomes light. If love touches death it becomes life. If love brings suffering then hidden behind it are great blessings. So whatsoever love brings has to be accepted in great gratitude. It brings pain in the beginning because man is not yet ready. Much has to be dropped from his being, many things have to be cut. Man has to be peeled, and it is painful because we have lived with a certain identity for so long; now chunks of that identity start dropping.

It is not accidental that many people have decided not to love or, at the most, pretend to love. It is not accidental that many people have chosen sex as a substitute for love, many have chosen marriage as a substitute for love. Many have chosen new objects of love which are not dangerous – money, power, prestige – things. But there are very few people who really love.

The fear of love is that it brings great pain, it brings great agony. It throws you into the fire of purification, but that price has to be paid, otherwise man remains mundane, never becomes sacred.

Man remains a seed and never becomes a tree. And the seed will never know the spring, remember.

Spring will come but the seed will never know the spring. It is only the tree that can know the spring and the joy of spring... the glory and the splendour.

Choose love even if it brings pain. Choose love even if it brings death, because death through love is resurrection. Choose love whatsoever it brings and whatsoever the cost, and you will never be a loser.

Deva means god, ajij means friend – god, the friend.

God has been thought of in many ways down the ages: as father, as mother, as husband, as beloved, as a child. But the best way is to conceive of god as the friend, because friendship comes very close.... It is something that is not of the ordinary, mundane rut of life.

When you think of god as a father it is bound to be that you will project your own father onto him and all the traumas that are associated with your father and the father-fixation. If you think of him as your mother, that too is a biological relationship. Friendship is utterly non-biological. If you think of god as your beloved, your woman, again it is a biological, sexual relationship.

Friendship is the only relationship which has no connotation of biology.

Friendship is utterly

luxurious; it is not part of nature. It is not needed for survival: it is a pure sharing. It has no motivation. You don’t need anything from the friend; you simply meet the friend. You are happy that the friend is there. Just his being is enough of a fulfilment. You don’t use the friend as a means to something; the friend is the end, he is not the means.

This is all involved when you start thinking of god as your friend. And when you think of god as your friend you need not be self-condemnatory, you need not think of yourself as inferior. You need not think of god as superior, high and far away. It is more human to think of him as a friend. He comes closer, you become equal, and love can arise only between equals. If god is very high and man is very low then a bridge is impossible. If god is all purity and man is all sin then the bridge is not possible at all, they cannot be bridged.

Think of god as a friend and then all inferiority and superiority and all those complexes disappear; and that is tremendously helpful. If you can think of god as your friend, then just as a corollary to it you can think about your friend as god, and that is of tremendous significance.

Prem means love – that’s what you have missed in your life and that’s what you are seeking and searching for.

If love is missed one starts feeling very empty. It is only love that gives you a feeling of fulfilment.

And if love has not showered in your life then you can manage to live but life is not much of a life. It is more or less a drag. One can manage, but it is an empty gesture; there is no substance in it. It is a formality. It is just that one is not dead, that’s all, but the joy of living and the thrill of being here in existence is not there. And it is only through that joy that one comes to know beauty, truth, god.

All that you need is a jump into love. That is going to be your therapy. So while you are here befriend as many people as you can. Be loving to people, become available. Don’t be afraid and don’t be shy. Don’t hide yourself, because if you hide yourself then others start hiding themselves. If you shrink back, immediately the other reacts and shrinks back. Open yourself, come closer to people.

You need a certain warmth, and once that warmth is around you, your heart will start pulsating with a new energy. And that is possible, there is no problem in it.

But if one has lived long enough without love then it looks almost impossible. From where to begin?

How to be friendly? How to be loving? But in this commune it is possible, because the whole milieu of the commune is that of love. If it cannot happen here it cannot happen anywhere else. So don’t miss this opportunity. Mix with people, drop your defences and don’t be afraid of coming closer to people. They are just like you: just as you are lonely, they are lonely; just as you are pulling on in your life somehow, they are pulling on in their lives somehow.

So don’t be worried that somebody will look at your emptiness, will see that you have nothing inside you and that that will be very shattering and your image will fall to the ground. No need to be worried.

At least here with my people nobody is trying to carry any image. People are trying to be authentic, true, sincere, as they are in their utter nakedness – they are trying to be true.

So you just remember that. And do a few groups, they will help you to unburden, a little bodywork, and things will settle.

The East represents a few things: one is the inward journey. The West is extrovert; the East is introvert. The West explores others, the world; the East explores oneself. The East is just a metaphor for going inwards. The more you go inwards, the more blissful you become, and when you reach to the very core of your being, bliss explodes.

And bliss is not ordinary happiness that comes and goes. It only comes and never goes; it is eternal.

Shantiprem.... It means love for peace, love for silence.

Man ordinarily loves fight, conflict, struggle, violence. That’s the ordinary love of mankind. It is destructive because it is only through destructiveness that you can attain to a strong ego. The more you destroy, the more you can become an egoist.

But that love is a wrong love; it is suicidal, it poisons you. It does not bring to your life anything of the eternal. It brings misery to others and to you, it brings anguish, anxiety, to others and to you; it creates hell. Whenever love goes wrong hell is created. Hell is nothing but love gone bitter/sour.

The right kind of love is that which longs for peace, for silence. Once you have fallen in love with peace and silence your life will take on the flavour of creativity. And you will not only be blissful, you will become a blessing to others.

That’s all meditation is about: love for peace, silence....

CHAPTER 12

12 November 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Veet means beyond, nishedh means negation – beyond the negation, beyond the negative, beyond the no.

The mind exists as a no, the heart exists as a yes. That’s the difference between the mind and the heart. The whole climate of the mind consists of nos and nos. It cannot say yes, it is impotent in saying yes. If sometimes it has to say it then it is only reluctantly, out of compulsion. If it is cornered into saying yes and it finds no other way to get out of that comer, it says yes. But that does not come in deep acceptance, it does not come as a celebration; it cannot welcome it. It is only arbitrary, it is provisional, tentative. And whenever the opportunity arises it will immediately say no again. That yes was just a strategy to protect oneself. It was just a defense measure, armour. But behind the yes was the no, so whenever the right time is there and the mind can have its say, it will drop the yes and will say no.

No is natural to the mind. And in the same way yes is natural to the heart, it lives in the dim; of yes; the flower of yes grows in the heart. No is almost impossible for the heart to say. And even if it has to say it sometimes then it is reluctantly; then it is arbitrary; it is not natural. And as the moment arrives it will immediately change into yes.

Man can live in three ways. One is: man can live only as the mind. Then he lives as a nihilist –

negative, anarchic, destructive. Or man can live as a yes in the heart, but then man lives as gullible, ready to be exploited, deceived, manipulated, vulnerable, defenceless. Both ways are half-half, and to live half is to live wrongly.

The third way is the right way: to live as a totality. Use the no when it is needed, but remember it has to come from the head; it should not be imposed on the heart. And use the yes when it is needed, but it should not come from the head, otherwise it will be phony. And this is a great balance. So when you are encountering the outer reality, the world of objects, use the mind with all its doubts; they are perfectly beautiful there, they belong there. But when you are in love, in friendship, when you are singing a song or dancing a dance or just holding the hand of your friend and sitting silently, then put the whole mind aside. Then be yes. And the man who knows how to use both without being caught in any is the total man.

But the beginning of the journey has to be getting beyond the mind, because that is where everybody is hooked. The society forces everybody to be hooked with the no. So first, get out of the no, let the yes become alive, flowing, dynamic, and then the third stage – then go beyond both and be that one who can contain both, who can use both, and is never used by any. That is freedom, that is sannyas.

[Prem Passana: insight into love. That is one of the greatest experiences, says Osho.]

One can love without any insight, then love remains superficial. Millions of people love without understanding what love is. And unless one understands love it remains a very very superficial phenomenon, it only touches your surface, it never goes deep into your being. The insight paves the way for it to go into the core. So there are millions who love and yet go on missing the incredible ecstasy that can come out of love, because they never search for any insight into it, they never meditate over it. Love plus meditation becomes insight.

There are others also who have great insight but no love. Then their insights remain intellectual; they can understand many things about the world of objects but nothing about themselves. They can understand the whole existence except for themselves. They will be able to know how to go to the moon but they will not be able to know how to go into their own hearts. They will be able to communicate with the far away planets but they will not be able to communicate with their own wives or their own children.

So there are people who have great insight but without love. Then it remains intellectual, logical, rational, mathematical, and life is far more than that. And on the other polarity there are people who love, but they never bring any meditation to it. Hence love remains superficial, just a kind of enjoyable occupation, that’s all... a merry-go-round, fun.

If both these things can come together – if love and insight, love and awareness, love and meditation can join together – then the highest synthesis is born. Then one is capable of going into the very heart of the matter. And to know the very heart of one’s own being is the beginning of wisdom. Then you can know the stars and the harmony of the stars and you can know all that is, because man is a miniature. All is represented in man in a smaller form on a smaller scale.

Man is like a drop. If you can understand the drop, you have understood all the oceans. A single drop carries the whole formula of H20, and that is the whole biography of all the oceans that have ever been or will ever be – past, present, future. So is man a drop of consciousness. A love insight reaches to the core of this consciousness and reveals all the mysteries.

Deva means god, sambhava means possible – god is possible. That’s the good news, the gospel, the gospel of all the awakened ones: that god is possible, that one need not be in despair, that one need not feel hopeless, that man is not alone, that man is not accidental, that man is not just a by-product of some blind forces. God is possible and god is happening. We are on the way to god.

That’s the definition of man: the being who is on the way to god. You may go astray, you may delay, you may postpone, but still one day you will have to arrive, sooner or later. One can take one’s own time because infinity is available, there is no hurry. But one day or other one has to come, because that is our destiny.

God is not something to be seen; god is something one becomes. It is an unfoldment of your own being. It is hidden in you; it has to be manifested. It is not something alien, foreign, to you that is going to happen to you; it is your innermost nature. But we are unaware of it. We are not aware of the house in which we are living, we are not aware of the host we are. Man’s life consists almost of a kind of somnambulism, sleep-walking.

The decision to become a sannyasin is basically a decision to be awake. And just the very decision

– that you want to be awake, that you will put all you have to be awake, that you will strive intensely to be awake – becomes a great beginning. That very desire to be awake brings you out of sleep and dreams.

But remember always: god is possible and he is always by the corner. You can just grope a little and find him. He is not far away, he resides in you. He is the kingdom of the within. You are he.

CHAPTER 13

13 November 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva means divine, sandip means a lamp – a divine lamp. The light is already there – it has not to be created; it is inborn, innate. But it has to be discovered. All that is needed is a deep penetration into one’s own being. One has to make an arrow of one’s consciousness so that the arrow can go to the very target of one’s heart, and there is the light of all lights. Once that light is known you are no more part of time, then you are part of eternity. Time exists in darkness and time is death.

You will be surprised – in Indian languages the word for time is ’kal’. It is also the word for darkness, it is also the word for death; the same word with all three possible meanings, because time is darkness. Light is beyond time. And time is death, because within time one cannot exist forever. It is only a momentary phenomenon. Within time things are only reflections, not realities.

It is just as if you have seen the stars reflected in the lake, just a little wave comes and all those stars are gone; wind comes and the surface is disturbed and all those stars are simply no more there.

So is the case with time. Time only reflects reality, it cannot give you the real; it can give you only dreams and fantasies about the real. It is very dark, everybody is groping in the dark, and those gropings we call desires; those gropings we call longing, ambitions.

But the point to go beyond is within. It is already there, so it is not a big problem to reach it; it is a simple process. Just as we go out, the same process has to be used for going in, only with one difference: the direction has to be changed, just the direction. Otherwise the process is the same, outgoing, ingoing. It is the same process, just your direction will be totally different, it will be diametrically opposite.

The change of direction is all that sannyas is: it is the beginning of an inward journey. It is the search for the light within.

You have the instrument for great music within you – and that is what love is.

Man is born with a great music, but we go on remaining occupied with the outside noise. And because of that occupation, the constant chattering mind and all kinds of stimulants outside provoking us, challenging us, slowly slowly we totally forget that something immensely beautiful was inside our being – the still, small voice. It is very delicate, it is very subtle. If one remains gross one cannot hear it. One has to tune in to it to hear it. Man is a musical instrument and one has to learn to play upon it.

Life should not be taken for granted. It is an art. One has to paint it like a painting, one has to sculpt it like a sculpture, one has to play upon it as one plays on a musical instrument, one has to make a song of it. It is multi-dimensional art, and the more you are available to different dimensions of being, the richer you become.

The old idea of a religious person was not that of multi-dimensionality; it was linear, one-dimensional.

The old monk living in the monastery, just going through the same ritual every day, reading the same Bible, repeating the same prayers, worshipping.... It was almost mechanical. Day in, day out he would do it, for his whole life he would do that. It was very very poor.

My idea of a religious person is multi-dimensional. He should be creative. He should live in as many ways as possible and he should move into as many creative directions as possible. He should become explosive. The old idea of a religious person was implosive. They were closing themselves within themselves. They lived a closed life, windowless. My idea is of explosion... not like a bud with closed petals, that is implosion, but like a flower, with opening petals, and petals that go on opening, that go on opening, that go on opening. There is no end to that opening, it is an infinite opening.

So create music, create poetry, create dance and as many things as you can imagine, you can dream. Materialise them, realise them. The more you create, the richer you become. And only a rich soul can know god, only a very rich soul is worthy of knowing god. Otherwise what have we got to offer to him?

Become a great musical creativity, become a melody, a rhythmic dance of life energies, a celebration.

It is only love that makes a person creative. It is only in love that one starts overflowing into existence, because it is only in love that one has something to give and share. The person who has not known love can’t be creative; he can only be destructive. It is the same energy. Joined together with love it becomes creative; disconnected from love it becomes destructive. The world can be a totally different kind of place if people are allowed and not hindered from loving. If people are given a climate of love, a milieu of love in which they can easily grow into loving beings, the world can become the very paradise. World wars won’t stop unless and until we have released love energy.

Now only love energy can be the survival for humanity’s future. Only a love explosion can be the antidote to the atomic explosion; otherwise man is already coming closer and closer every day to a universal suicide.

We have forgotten how to love and we have created so many destructive weapons that it is almost impossible to survive unless the miracle of love happens on the earth. The situation is like this: in a room there are all kinds of ammunition and you have given a child a matchbox to play with there. You are just hoping that nothing wrong will happen but there is every possibility, because the matchbox is there, the child is there, the child’s curiosity is there. He will open the matchbox; he cannot resist.

He will try to do something with the matchbox, he cannot resist. And the explosive ammunition is all around the room. It is almost impossible to avoid the accident. This is the situation: man is almost retarded as far as the heart is concerned, and he has great powers released by science. Unless in the same proportion we can release man’s love – his poetry, his capacity to enjoy, live, celebrate –

it is impossible to survive.

But this is one of the fundamentals, that whenever you find a destructive person, don’t be angry with him; feel pity for him. Even people like Adolf Hitler need to be pitied; they need compassion.

Their energies have turned sour and bitter and poisonous because somehow they missed what love is. And the society is such that it creates hate and prevents love. It creates competitiveness and preVents camaraderie. It teaches you how to fight, it never teaches you how to befriend.

My whole effort here with you people is to do just the opposite: to release your love sources, to ignite your love flame. And once that is there then it takes care; then your life will become creative on its own accord.

[A sannyasin who is leaving for the west asks if she should stay at home and look after her husband and children, or work – she used to be a group leader.]

So it is not a financial question at all?...

It is just for your growth?...

I think there is no need to work, but you can help the centre there. Devote your time to the centre, whatsoever time you can give. And if they need it sometimes, you can lead groups there.

But don’t make it a whole time thing... so the family is not neglected.... The family should not be neglected... because once children are neglected they will become accustomed to it, but they will become hard and for the whole of their lives they will suffer from the lack. If they have not been cared for they will not be able to care for others.

This is a great problem that is facing the modern society, particularly in the West. If the father goes to work and the mother also goes to work then the children are almost orphans. And the presence of the mother in the home cannot be substituted by anybody else. It is not only a question of physical caring; it is a question of spiritual nourishment.

So you cannot give the work to somebody else who is paid for it. Then it is totally different, its quality is different; there is no love involved in it. So, on the surface everything will be taken care of but deep down something will be missed. And the children may not ever become aware that they have missed something. but the whole of their lives will show it. That’s what is happening on the psychiatrists’

couches and in the mental hospitals. Out of four persons, three persons are mentally disturbed and the fourth is also suspicious.

And love is the greatest therapy. So you will be running therapy groups for the children of some other mothers who have not loved them. And then some day your children will need therapy groups from somebody else! No need to work – take care of them. But you can devote.... For your own growth it will be good, you can devote some time to the centre.

[A sannyasin had previously written to Osho to ask whether he should stay or return to his wife and child in Thailand and start a centre.]

You start a centre there – that will be good for your growth, too. Rather than encountering your own problems, it will be better for you to help others to encounter their problems. And side by side, your problems will be solved. Because problems are the same. There are not many problems in the world. I have listened to thousands of people and their problems can be counted only on the fingers of one hand; there are not many problems. They say there are only three jokes in the world and all other jokes are just a little bit changed here and there; so is the case with problems.

But it will be good for you. Start the centre, start helping people. Helping them you will become aware of the ridiculousness of your problems, of the sheer meaninglessness of your doubts. Doubts can be meaningful if you have anything to lose, but you have nothing to lose – that’s why they are ridiculous. It is like a naked man who will not take a bath because, if his clothes become wet, where is he going to dry them? He is naked, he has no clothes in the first place, but he is very much afraid.

Man has nothing to lose at all, so why be unnecessarily distrustful? If you have something to lose, it’s okay; somebody may cheat you. The irony is that those who have something are very trustful, because when they have it they know it cannot be taken away. Those who don’t have are very distrustful because they are afraid it may be taken away. In fact, they don’t have. They may be exposed, and then the inner misery and the emptiness... and it frightens. Those who have, can trust, because they know you cannot take it away from them. It is their intrinsic core, it cannot be separated from them. Their richness is in their very being, it is not something that they have; it is what they are. Nobody can cheat them, nobody can take it away.

This is a very ridiculous situation, but everybody is more or less in it. We are unnecessarily worried.

Death will come and everything will be gone, so what does it matter? If somebody cheats and steals something from you, what does it matter? It is not yours. You came empty-handed and empty-handed you will go. So meanwhile, if somebody unburdens you, feel thankful that you will be travelling light!

But my feeling is also this, that you learn a few groups, a few techniques and start a centre.

CHAPTER 14

14 November 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Veet means beyond, santap means anguish – beyond anguish.

Anguish is one of the most

fundamental problems of the human mind. Man exists in anguish, man is anguish, a constant anxiety, a constant feeling of falling apart, a constant fear of being torn. No other animal in existence lives in such anguish. All other animals are at peace with themselves, except for man.

It is the agony of man but it is also the possibility of a great ecstasy. It depends how we use it: we can be destroyed by it if we remain in it; we can be very creative about it if we go beyond it. And it cannot be solved; one can only go beyond it. There is no solution. The more you try to solve it, the more puzzling it becomes, because it is something very fundamental to human existence itself. It is not an accidental problem; it is not something from the outside, it is something inside. And this is the problem: man has a past and also a future. No animal has any past, any future, they simply live in the present. Hence they are not tom apart. Although they are utterly unconscious – they don’t know where they are – they are exactly where Buddhas are, unconsciously there.

Man has become conscious. Consciousness means self-consciousness. Now he can look back.

He is a Janus: he can look back, he can look ahead. He can see the past and the pull of the past.

He can imagine the future and the pull of the future. And between these two pulls arises anguish: to be this or to be that, to remain confined to the past – that is comfortable, convenient but without any adventure, without any thrill – or to go into the future and forget all about the past. It is tremendously thrilling, sensational, but it has no security, no convenience, no comfort; it is risky. And man wants both together: adventure without any risk. That is not possible, adventure ss with risk; it comes in the same package. And convenience has no risk, but then life is boredom. Man has been trying somehow to manage both together, adventure and security, and it fails, it always fails and it is always going to fail. This is the anguish. How to solve it?

The majority solves it by becoming conventional, orthodox, traditional, belonging to a religion, church, political party, this and that, remaining in a clear-cut defined world, never going beyond the boundaries, never taking the risk of being alone, never doing anything that is non-conventional, non-conformist, remaining part of the crowd, never becoming individual. But it is boring, utterly boring. That’s why you see so many people totally bored, doing all kinds of things but with a tremendous boredom, moving like robots, with no love, no romance, with no poetry, no music. They have forgotten how to dance. They don’t see anything worth dancing about, they can’t sing because they are missing significance in life and only significance can become a song. So they have settled for security, but security means death, security means boredom and security means staleness.

Very few choose the other path – the artists, the poets, the musicians, the mystics, but that is a very small minority. And they are also always in trouble because they are always in a kind of rebellion, continuously fighting against the society, troubled by the society, tortured by the society, rejected, condemned by the society. Even people like Socrates are treated as if proved by the society to be criminals – the greatest and the highest! Even Jesus is thought to be only worth crucifying! But these few people have joy. Each moment their life is a new beginning, a new sunrise. They are continuously renewing themselves. These are the real people, far and few between, but they are the real people.

One has to go beyond the security, beyond the comfort and the convenience, that the society can provide. Of course it provides it at a great cost: it takes your soul away and it gives you comfort and convenience. It gives you the warmth of the crowd but destroys your individuality. That is now way to go beyond anguish.

The artist, the musician, the poet, they also remain in anxiety and anguish; they also cannot go beyond. They have chosen the other part, the other polarity, but they are constantly worried about whether what they are doing is right.

Only the mystic knows how to go beyond.

So these are the three types of people in the world: the conventional, the anti-conventional and the transcendental. And that is the meaning of your name: the third, the transcendental, Veet Santap, going beyond the duality, going beyond past and future, going beyond all kinds of divisions, going beyond schizophrenia. Then again man is back in the world of animals and birds and trees. That is the meaning of the parable of the Garden of Eden: one is back in the garden but with something immensely new, very much enriched. Adam came out of the Garden of Eden almost like an animal.

When Jesus goes back into the Garden of Eden he is a Buddha; he has attained. He goes back tremendously conscious; when he came, he came unconscious.

The whole wandering on the earth is between these two people, Adam and Christ. Everyone is an Adam and everybody needs to be a Christ and unless everybody becomes a Christ, anxiety persists, anguish remains. To be beyond anguish is to be a Christ. That is the meaning of Christ-consciousness and that is the meaning of sannyas.

Deva means divine, madhur means sweet – divine sweetness. Religion has become very bitter.

It has been poisoned by the priests. It has become bitter because it has become life-negative: it denies life, it rejects life. It is bitter because deep down it is suicidal. Man has urges in him: one is eros, a love for life, the other is thanatos, a love for death. Both are there, and one can choose one’s life either as eros or as thanatos. If you choose your life as eros you will have a tremendously ecstatic journey; it ends at the apex of joy, god. If you choose thanatos then you will only shrink and die and slowly slowly your life will become more and more close to death.

But that’s how it has happened in the past. The saints were worshipped if they were almost dead; the more dead a saint was, the more saintly he was thought to be. If life has no value then of course, the person who has renounced all life, an joys of life, all beautiful experiences of life, certainly he is a saint. In fact he is nothing but a psychological case. He has chosen death against life, although he calls his, death religion, god, renunciation... beautiful words, just to act as a camouflage; behind the words there is nothing but a corpse. The man has chosen not to live. And why do people sometimes choose not to live? Because living is risky and dying has no risk.

Living is always risky, because living means to live with the unknown. Dying is very very secure. In fact a man is never so secure as when he is in the grave. Nothing can happen to the person who is in the grave. Nothing can ever happen: no accident, no mistake, no misfortune. That’s the security of the grave. And people have longed so much for security that they are even ready to die for it.

Long for insecurity because that is the longing of life. Search for insecurity and the untrodden paths and go into uncharted seas, because that is the way of god. And then religion is no more bitter. It is as sweet as honey, it is as sweet as nectar.

I teach a life-affirmative religion. I am tremendously in love with life and I would like every sannyasin to be in absolute love with life. Let it be a love-affair with life and you will find immeasurable treasures.

Deva means divine, sandipa means a lamp – a divine lamp, a divine light. The lamp is inborn, it is another name for our heart. It is already there, burning bright, but we have not looked for it. A turn-about is needed. We are looking outside, we are standing on the windows of our senses and looking outside. And the world is beautiful outside, no doubt about it. It is tremendously beautiful, but nothing compared to the inner world. In comparison to the inner it is just pale, just a reflection, just an echo, but those who have not seen the inner, for them this is the only world and there is no comparison.

[He tells the lovely story of the two Sufi saints, Rabiya-al-Adabia and Hassen. Hassen, enjoying the beauty of an early morning, birds and flowers and their fragrance, called to Rabiya to come out and see.

’You come in’ she called. You are seeing the beauty of the creation – I am seeing the creator himself!’]

A simple anecdote but Rabiya turned it into a tremendously beautiful parable. All that is needed is a turn-about, a coming-in, and great light is already there, great life is already there, great love is already there. All that one ever needs is there. Let sannyas be your turn-about!

Deva means divine, madir means intoxicated – intoxicated by the divine. God is the greatest intoxicant there is, the ultimate in drugs. In fact man has been searching for drugs not knowing why. He has been searching for drugs as a substitute for god. He is tired of his ego, he wants to drop it but he does not know how to. Drugs help a little bit. At least for a few hours he can forget it if he cannot drop it, and that forgetfulness gives him joy.

God is the ultimate drug. It does not help you to forget the ego; it simply helps you to drop it. It disappears. As god enters one’s life the ego disappears, is never found again, and with the ego go all the anxieties, all the problems, all the worries, all the nightmares. And when all these nightmares and worries and anxieties have disappeared, so much energy is released in one’s being that one is simply turned on by that energy. That is intoxication. One is simply always high – one is flying! Even if one walks on the earth, one’s feet no more touch the earth. One remains in the world and yet one is far, far away from it.

Seek god, not as the idea of some theologian, not as the idea of some religion, but seek god as your deepest thirst for intoxication... seek god so that you can dissolve into it. God is not an idea, is not a person either: god is the totality of all that is. And god is available. All that is needed is an insight into reality, into the totality, of all that is. And once you start penetrating god in different ways... Looking at a rose flower become intoxicated; let the rose relate something to you, be in a communion. Watching stars in the sky, be in tune with them. Seeing trees dance in the wind become a tree and dance, or seeing a river move, be moved. Remain available to beauty, to music, to poetry.

Remain available to all that is available, and much is available.

We are not in a poor world; the world is immensely rich. If we cannot see the richness of it, it is something to do with our own deadness, blindness, insensitivity, but it has nothing to do with the world. The world is really psychedelic: there are rainbows and rainbows all around; it is very colourful. So start connecting with the world in a poetic way. The way a lover approaches his beloved, approach the world, and you will find god.

There is no need to go to the churches or to the temples or to the mosque. All that is needed is to go closer and closer to nature, to trees, animals, people, stars, rocks, rivers, and suddenly doors start opening.

And one door opens and immediately a thousand more open. The first door is the thing. Something clicks and you are available, and god starts pouring into you, as wine. Then life has a totally different quality to it... it is pure ecstasy....

I would like you to become pure ecstasy – madir – utterly intoxicated, in such love with life that the ego disappears.

[Osho gives a sannyasin a name for a new centre.]

Svagat. It means welcome. And the world of my sannyas welcomes everyone, with no barriers –

barriers of caste. religion, nationality, sex. Sannyas believes in one earth and one humanity. All the religions belong to us but we don’t belong to any particular religion. So let that be the name for your centre: Svagat.

CHAPTER 15

15 November 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Anand means bliss, nijo means individuality. Individuality is your essential core. Individuality is not your personality. Personality is given to you by the family, the society, culture; individuality is that which you bring into the world – that is your original face. The individuality gets lost in many layers of personality, and a man has many personalities. You have one personality with your father, another with your mother, another still with your wife, another with your child, another with your servant, still another with your boss. You have many personalities, you have many faces, because you need different faces with different people in different situations.

So personality is just a changing flux around you. It is like the surface of a lake, continuously wavering, waving, rippling. It is not its depth. It is constantly at the mercy of the winds. The personality lives through the stimulus it gets from the outside; it is a stimulus-response. And people have completely forgotten about their individuality.

The whole work of meditation is to help you to recover it, to reclaim it – your original face, your originality, your nature, your essential nature. And that is what god is. God is everyone’s essential core. The personality is Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian, Communist, Fascist, Socialist; the personality is white, black, Chinese, Indian, German. It has so many colours, it comes in all shapes and all sizes.

But the individual core is nothing but god... the taste of totality. And it is always there. However many layers there are, they don’t destroy it. Millions of layers can be there but the treasure remains intact. Whenever you start penetrating your layers, whenever you start peeling your onion, one day suddenly you find the essential core. That is freedom, that is bliss, and that is the only way to be really alive, ecstatically alive.

Sannyas is a search into the individual, beyond the personal. The individual is universal.

Anand means bliss, atita means of the beyond – bliss of the beyond, transcendental bliss. Happiness is of the earth. It is earthly, hence it is momentary. And in the wake of it there is always unhappiness, because the earth exists in a kind of duality. Everything is a dichotomy: light and darkness, happiness-unhappiness, pleasure-pain, life-death.... On the visible plane everything is dual, polar, diametrically opposed to something; this is the dialectics of existence. But beyond the duality there is also something transcendental which is one, undivided. That is bliss. It has no opposite to it.

It happens only when one has gone beyond happiness and beyond unhappiness. How to go beyond happiness and beyond unhappiness? Everybody wants to go beyond unhappiness but nobody wants to go beyond happiness, and that is the whole crux of the matter. If you don’t want to go beyond happiness you will never be able to go beyond unhappiness; they come together. People want happiness, and just hidden behind it comes unhappiness. And they are always in the same proportion: the more happiness you have, the more unhappiness you will have. They always balance each other. The more you laugh, the more you will have to cry; the more you love, the more you will have to hate. They always balance.

So one who really wants to go beyond this continuous conflict of the dual has to see the pint that if you cling to one pole, the other pole is bound to remain there. So don’t cling to either – just become a witness. When happiness comes, witness it. Just be a watcher, unentangled, untouched by it. It is there; take note of it. Say to yourself, ’Happiness is there but I am not it. I am just the watcher, the mirror that reflects it.’ Don’t get identified with it and that is the secret key.

So when unhappiness comes, you use the same key again. Unhappiness is there, take note of it: ’I am just a mirror reflecting it. I am not it. I cannot be it.’

When one has become a witness to happiness and unhappiness, that witnessing leads to the transcendental. Then one goes beyond the two and becomes one. And that oneness is bliss.

And that is the goal of all life: how to go beyond the two, how to go beyond the conflict, how to go beyond this constant division in one’s being. To attain to one is to attain to god. That one is called god, another name for that one.

Deva means divine, magan means utterly absorbed, intoxicated, drunk – drunk with the divine, intoxicated with the divine, lost in the divine.

Man can exist in two ways. One is the way of the ego: separate from the whole, defending his own territory constantly, defining himself in separation like an island. But that is the way of misery, the way of anxiety and anguish, because it is absolutely unnatural. Man is not an island; nobody is, nothing is. We are all joined together: it is one universe. That is exactly the meaning of the word

’universe’; uni means one. It is not a multiverse; it is a universe. We are all one, howsoever separate we appear; that is only an appearance. One should not be deceived by the appearances. We look separate but we are not separate. We cannot be separate; separation is impossible.

One tree looks separate from the other tree but they are joined in the same earth, they are joined with the same sun, they are joined with the same air. How can they be separate? They only appear to be, otherwise they exist in the same ocean of life. The ocean may not be so visible, but it is there.

If the sun simply disappears tomorrow morning, forgets to rise or changes its route, all life on the earth will immediately cease, immediately. We will not even have time to discuss it. We will not even have time to be aware of what has happened. And it will not only be man who will disappear – the birds, the animals, the insects, the trees, all life will disappear. Life exists as one vibe.

To see it and to start living it is sannyas. To start feeling it is sannyas, and that is another way of life, a totally different kind of style. It is not of the ego, it is of unity with the whole. Sannyas is a step beyond the ego into the whole. It is to be drowned into the whole, absorbed, and immediately a great blessing arises. All anxiety disappears. Anxiety is possible only if you are separate. If you are not separate, how can anxiety be there? – there is nobody to be anxious about. And then there is no fear, because you are not there to die.

If you are one with the whole then there is no death; the whole never dies. It is only the parts who come and go, it is only the waves who come and go. The ocean remains, abides; it is eternal. And when you are one with the eternal, where is the fear? Where is anxiety? Where is anguish? When you are not separate you don’t have a private goal, hence there is no anxiety of whether you will make it or not. There is nothing to make, nowhere to go. Then one is utterly herenow.

To be with the whole is to be herenow. If you are separate you cannot be herenow; you will have to think of tomorrow. You will have to manage, you will have to plan, you will have to project, and, certainly, when you project fear is always lurking. You may be able to manage it; you may not be able to manage it. You are so tiny and the universe is so big; the fight is doomed to fail. You cannot fight with the whole. It is trying to go upstream and wasting your energy.

Those who know, if you ask them, if you ask the awakened, they will say ’Drop all fight and go with the wind like a dry leaf, with no private goal of your own. Let the whole decide the goal and wherever it is going it is good.’

This relaxation is sannyas... this let-go is sannyas....

Deva means divine, sanjayo means victory, but with a special flavour to it – not an ordinary victory.

In English there is no equivalent word for it. It can be translated as ’right victory’.

The ordinary victory is always wrong victory, wrong, because it is not really happening; you are only imposing it on the other. It is a coercion, it is violence. The other is silent but will wait for its time.

The other is silenced but not won over. The other is not yet a friend... and this is no way to make friends; this is the way to make enemies. Then what is right victory?

Right victory is totally different. It is out of love, it is through love; it is not coercion on the other.

It is not in any way a rape on the other’s being; on the contrary it is a surrender. When a lover surrenders to his beloved or a disciple surrenders to a master or a devotee surrenders to god or a poet surrenders to the beauty of the world, whenever there is that surrender, it is right victory.

So right victory is a paradoxical phenomenon. It does not come by becoming victorious; it comes by surrender. To be defeated in love is to be victorious.

Deva means divine, abhar means gratitude. And gratitude is real prayer. To be grateful is to be prayerful. Prayer is not a demand, it is not a complaint, it is not asking for something, it is not a desire; if it is, it is not prayer. It is just a thankfulness for all that the existence has done, for all that has been given to us.

Each moment is so precious that it is really impossible to understand how people can remain ungrateful to existence. Each breath is a miracle, and miracles abound. Wherever you look and whatsoever you see is a miracle. The seed becoming a sprout is a miracle. The sun rising in the morning is a miracle. The night full of stars is a miracle. To look into the eyes of another human being is a miracle and there are depths upon depths and you can never come to an end. If you look into the eyes of another human Being you enter into an infinity. Each flower is a miracle and each stone, yet man is insensitive.

That insensitivity is what I call irreligiousness. I don’t call the person irreligious who does not go to the church or to the temple. The irreligious person is one who has lost sensitivity, who is no more receptive to the glories of life, who is no more available to the splendours.

Albert Einstein is reported to have said as his last words, that the greatest and most profound thing in existence is the feeling of wonder and awe. That’s what the real religious attitude is: the feeling of wonder and awe. And when you feel the wonder of all that is and you are full of awe. prayer arises as a fragrance. with no effort. It arises as gratitude, and in that gratitude god is found.

Gratitude is the beginning of god: you start with gratitude; one day you end in god. Gratitude is the direction of god. One need not believe in god. one can do without believing in god, but one should be sensitive to nature, to all kinds of experiences. One should be like a child – full of wonder and awe.

And one should remain alive to this childlike quality so that each moment in life is a surprise. One should never allow oneself to become knowledgeable, because the knowledgeable person loses awe, loses the quality of wonder, becomes insensitive and then is no more grateful.

And the wonder goes on and on, and the splendour goes on and on but there are blind people, millions of them. They have never bowed down to the earth, they have never hugged the earth, they have never kissed the earth, they have never looked at a tree. They have no time. Because of this, humanity has become more and more irreligious. Temples are millions, churches are millions, but it is very rare to find a religious person.

My effort here is not to create a temple, not to create a church, not to create a ritual but to create wondering, that great quality of awe, of love, of beauty, and it all leads to gratitude.

[A sannyasin says: I want to return now to my studio and start painting before my teaching duties take up again.... I have lots of material to work from...

You will be able to do it! This is going to be the greatest thing that you have ever done... because I will be in it, part of it!

And you are growing. Growth does not need much work. All that it needs is a kind of let-go, and that is happening. It is let-go that brings grace, it is not human effort. With human effort we can do only mundane things. That which is great always happens; it is never done. It comes, descends; it is not manufactured.

Growth is a natural phenomenon... just as trees go on growing. All that is needed is that.... Man is no more as natural as trees. So many hindrances have been created by the society, so many rocks; the roots cannot move, and many roots have been cut. So all that is needed is to become aware of the rocks and just becoming aware of them is enough. They are removed by becoming aware of them, because they are rocks of unawareness. They are not material things, so it is not a question of becoming aware and then removing them. Just in the very act of becoming aware they are removed.

They consist of unawareness, so when you become aware they cannot exist; they disappear. And then life becomes a growth. And when life starts growing on its own, there is tremendous joy. And then each moment is unpredictable because you cannot see what is going to happen next moment.

Even while painting you cannot know what is going to happen next moment.

You will be able to know only when it has happened. And then it is not only a surprise to others, it is a surprise to the painter himself, to the poet himself. If the poet is not surprised by his poetry it is ordinary poetry. He has managed it; it has not come from the beyond. If the painter is not ecstatic, surprised, taken aback by his own painting, then it is an ordinary painting; it is not a masterpiece.

But when something great happens the painter is as much surprised as anybody else, in fact, more so, because he has been involved in it, it has come through him, and yet it is not his. A hand from the beyond has reached. He was simply available, he was instrumental, a medium.

And whenever art has that quality, of descending ; from the beyond, it is religion, it is mysticism. It is the way that great things have happened in the past, it is how they have always happened. It is not by manipulation. It is by becoming available to god, just becoming available and saying ’Whatsoever you would like, do with me. I am at your disposal.’

That’s what Jesus said at the last moment ’Let thy kingdom come. Let thy will be done.’ That should be the motto of all painters, all poets, all musicians:

’Let thy kingdom come. Let thy will be done. Let me be removed completely. Don’t allow me to stand in your way. Let me be just a passage, empty, a hollow bamboo’ and then the hollow bamboo immediately becomes a flute on his lips!

Much is going to happen, and you have come at the right moment. It is always a question of the right moment. Sometimes people come to me when the moment is not right, they are not in the mood to receive me; they will come and they will go. And even if I want to give to them, it is impossible, they will not take it. But you came at the right moment – you have prepared for it your whole life. Now miracles will start happening. And your painting is going to become your meditation. You are going to grow through it, and as you grow, your paintings will grow. And as paintings grow deeper and more profound, you will become deeper and more profound. You are on the right track – just go on moving.

It is said that once a man came across Socrates and he asked Socrates ’I am a stranger in these parts. I want to go to the temple of Delphi. How should I proceed?’ He was not aware that he was talking to Socrates.

Socrates says ’Just go on moving exactly in the direction of your nose and you will reach.’ And that’s what I say to you: Just go on moving in the direction of your nose. Your nose is pointing to the right direction, just go on moving and you will reach the temple. The temple is not far away....

[A sannyasin man asks about his passivity: Sometimes I feel like it is a very strong female part in me – just wanting to be passive, receptive and not active. But sometimes I just think I’m lazy....

Osho checks his energy.]

Good... perfectly good. It is absolutely right to be feminine. You should feel fortunate, because this is the quality that one needs in the search for god. One can move towards god only in utter passivity.

One cannot be aggressive towards god. In the East we have a saying: ’God is the only male and everybody else is female.’ It is in deep feminine receptivity that god penetrates. So this is the quality of a disciple, of a devotee.

The problem is arising because of your Western conditioning. In the West the male ego is praised.

To be active is thought to be very valuable. In the East we have learned something more profound.

To know the art of inaction is the greatest thing in the East – we call it tao, wu-wei. And this inaction is not lethargy. Much action happens through it, but you are not the doer. The doer is god, you are just a vehicle. So it is not lethargy. Action will be there but it will come through inaction. And you are ready for that jump.

Rather than feeling it as a problem and making it a curse, accept it with joy and gratitude. this is the quality in the East people try to years to attain, and when they attain it they have already arrived; almost half the journey is over. Then the remaining half is to be done by god, not by you. You have taken your step and you are already there where god can immediately penetrate you. All that you need is to drop this male chauvinistic mind and this attitude that one has to be strong.

There is a strength in being delicate too, a totally different kind of strength. There is a strength that only a woman can have and no man can ever have; that is the strength of love, softness. Man is like a rock and the woman is like water; hence the beauty of the woman and the roundness and the softness and the vulnerability. It is not an accident that the woman has been chosen by nature to be the mother, because only she is capable of being pregnant, because she is receptive!

So don’t be worried about it – it is not a problem at all. It is a blessing and we will use it. And this is the place where it can be used perfectly.... But drop this idea – there is no problem at all. This is the way you should be. The way you are is the way you should be.

Trying to become active and trying to become stronger will be like putting legs on a snake. It is unnecessary, and not only unnecessary, it will hinder the snake moving. The snake is perfectly able to move without legs; legs are not a necessity. You don’t need to be more active. You can simply move as feminine energy. it is beautiful.

CHAPTER 16

16 November 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva means divine, lolit means moved by – moved by the divine, moved by god. God always comes as a great stirring in the heart. God always comes as a tremendous movement in the being, because god is energy and because god is creativity. God comes as a dance, god comes and possesses you.

It is not a subject and object relationship: god does not come as something separate from you. It is not that you are a spectator. No, god never comes that way. God comes as a deep participation in your being. He comes as you – you, utterly moved, transplanted, transported, you as optimum energy. And that’s why the very climate of a religious person is that of creativity; that should be the criterion. If the religious person is non-creative he is not religious. He may be a great ascetic, he may be virtuous, he may be moral, but he is not religious.

The taste of religion is creativity. God is the creator. If god has come to you, how can you remain non-creative? He will express himself in a thousand and one ways, he will flow from you in every direction. He will become a dance and a song and a poem and music.... He will give you a new thrill, a new adventure. Your life will take wings. That is the meaning of lolit.

[A sannyasin family has returned to Poona ’forever’.]

Now become part of the family – dissolve into it! And that is a purpose of coming to me forever, so nothing can hold you from dissolving. Otherwise something back there keeps you holding. Now you have broken the bridge, now there is nowhere to go, so you can be here in a total sense. So now you can dive deeper into me. That’s the beauty of burning all the bridges that one has passed. People keep their bridges intact in case they have to go back. But that very idea keeps them away; the gap remains. So you have done half the work; now the remaining half has to be done: just dissolve into the commune.

It is difficult for the Western mind. the very idea of dissolution is difficult. For centuries the Western mind has been fed and taught and conditioned to keep itself separate, to be an ego, and even modern psychology goes on repeating the same stupid nonsense: that the ego has to be strengthened. The ego is the only problem, the disease. So when it comes to dissolving, the whole conditioning of the mind prevents it. One wants to keep oneself a little separate so that one remains a person, so one does not become anonymous. And to be with me, to be really with me means to be anonymous, to lose yourself so totally that you have no will of your own.

And the miracle is: when you don’t have any will of your own, for the first time you will come to know the real will. You can call it god’s will or your own will but it is totally different from the ego and its so-called will. The paradox is: when you lose yourself, for the first time you are yourself.

And the commune has to be the experiment of losing. It has to be the ocean, and every river that comes to it has to dissolve.

I am happy that you have come!

Prem means love, madiro means intoxicated – intoxicated with love. Love is the greatest intoxicant, the ultimate drug. And it is not chemical, it is spiritual. All other drugs are poor substitutes for it; because people miss the intoxication of love they start searching for other intoxicants. If one starts drinking out of love, then nothing else is needed. Then it satisfies the deepest longing in the heart, it brings contentment. It brings exhilaration, it brings joy, it brings celebration. It brings awareness.

So it is a very very paradoxical state of being intoxicated: on one hand one is utterly intoxicated; on the other hand one is utterly aware.

The most strange experience of life is love. One is no more and one is for the first time.

[People who try awareness without love become dry and desertlike: that’s what monks have done down the centuries, Osho says.]

My effort here is to bring a totally new experiment to humanity: awareness suffused with love, love infused with awareness, love and awareness together simultaneously in a synchronic relationship, as if they are two aspects of the same coin. So as one grows in love, one grows in awareness, and vice versa. But begin with love. It is always good to start with love because it is closer to life, it is all around you. We are born in it. We have been nourished on it. We are still being nourished on it.

Knowingly, unknowingly, god goes on pouring his love into our beings, in a thousand and one ways.

So let this become your climate: love has to be the key word, let love become the wrap-around.

Exist as a centre of love, and in the beginning it will bring great intoxication, it will bring great psychedelic qualities to your being. Trees will be greener than they have ever been, roses will be rosier; everything will become luminous. One feels drowned, taken over, possessed, and then slowly slowly into that very drunkenness a kind of awareness starts arising, a small flame of awareness.

And when love and awareness are together, one is on the right track. Now one can go on following the track – one cannot miss god!

Sat means being, pradipto means aflame – aflame with being. Man lives in the world of becoming.

He lives in desires, he lives in the future, hence he lives in misery. Because it is always tomorrow that he is going to live – when he will have this and he will have that and he will have become this and he will have become that, then he will live. He lives only in hope and that hope is never going to be fulfilled, because life is herenow. Life is being, not becoming. Life knows no shoulds, no oughts.

It is always is. The only taste of life is isness; that is being, that is sat.

But if you remain desiring something in the future, you remain oblivious of being, you remain unaware of your being. And your being is the kingdom of god, your being is light, your being is bliss, your being is consciousness. But you keep it at the back and you go on rushing with jet speed into the future. You roam all over existence like a beggar, completely unaware that all that you are asking is already given! You have it... you are it!

To come back to one’s own being is the whole art of meditation. That’s what meditation is all about: dropping becoming and relaxing into being. And when one is aflame with one’s own being, all is achieved. In fact one comes to know that there was no need to achieve it at all; it was already the case.

Man is a king who has fallen asleep and thinks he is a beggar and goes on begging. Somebody needs to hit him hard on the head to wake him up. Mm, that is the function of a master and that is the purpose of initiation: putting your neck out to be hit, asking to be shocked and awakened.

Deva means divine, prabodh means consciousness – divine consciousness.

Man is not the

consciousness that he feels himself to be; that is only a tiny part. Man’s consciousness can be divided into five layers. The first, the rock-bottom layer, is the collective unconscious. Carl Gustav Jung worked very much into that layer of consciousness; its discovery for the modern mind is through Jung. Although it is an ancient truth in the East, the West was unaware of it – that hidden behind our mind is a layer of collective unconsciousness where we are together, where we are one with the animals and one with the trees and one with the rocks. That layer is one.

On top of it there is an unconscious mind. Freud worked very much on it: that was his contribution to the modern world. The unconscious mind is our individual mind of which we are not aware, but a little effort and we can become aware of it. In dreams we become aware of it, in psychoanalysis we become aware of it, in automatic handwriting we become aware of it, in glossolalia, talking in tongues, we become aware of it. There are many methods by which one can become aware of it; hypnosis is the best.

And if anything goes into the unconscious it immediately starts affecting you; it is very powerful. It is nine times bigger than the conscious mind in which we live. Our conscious mind is just the porch of the palace.

Modern psychology has recognised these three layers but it is still unaware of something more, higher than the conscious. Higher than the conscious there are still two layers to be known. One is the super-conscious, parallel to the unconscious, and the other is the divine conscious or the cosmic conscious, parallel to the collective unconscious – these are the five layers. The East has known all these five layers for centuries.

Unless one becomes aware of all these five layers of one’s being, one has not lived in totality. And one can become aware of the cosmic mind only when one has come to know the other four, when the other four have been explored. In that very exploration, in that very witnessing of other layers of the mind, the fifth arises, arrives.

The cosmic mind is like a mirror, a pure mirror: it simply reflects whatsoever is. You can call it the Buddha mind or Christ-consciousness, it doesn’t matter what name is used. But that is the meaning of your name Deva Prabodh: the ultimate divine mind. Keep it in your heart... it has to be searched for. And once the seed is there the search starts.

If you become aware that in your house there is a treasure hidden, you cannot remain long without searching for it; it will haunt you. If you know that there is a treasure somewhere underground, you will start digging, and sooner or later one is bound to find it because it is there!

Deva means divine, atito means transcendence. Man’s real being is a transcendence. It cannot be reduced to any identity; you cannot say it is the body. It is in the body, and of course it is also the body, but it cannot be reduced to the body. The body exists in it but it is bigger than the body. The body is a tiny part in it.

Ordinarily we think just the opposite: we think that the soul of man is just something inside the body.

It is not so – the body is something inside the soul, a very tiny thing. The soul is vast, it is universal.

It is as big as existence itself; it is another name for existence. So it is not that the soul exists in the body but that the body exists in the soul.

It cannot be reduced to the body; it cannot be reduced to the mind either. The mind also exists in it. It is just a formation of waves in the cosmic ocean of consciousness. Waves come and go, the ocean remains, undistracted by the waves. It cannot be reduced to feelings because they also come and go like thoughts. It cannot be reduced to anything in particular, because it is not a thing; it is a no-thing. It is irreducible. It is only a witnessing, a pure witnessing. It is always beyond whatsoever you are seeing. If you see the body, it is beyond the body because it is the seer. If you see the mind, it is beyond the mind because it is the seer. If you see anything then it is no the seen; it is always the seer. And the seer cannot be reduced to a seeing; there is no way to make the subject an object.

This is the transcendence of consciousness, and to understand it is to understand all that is worth understanding. And to experience it is to have experienced truth, god, nirvana, because then there is no death. The body will die but you will remain. Then there is no clinging to thoughts. Thoughts come and go, they are guests; you are the host. Then one is not worried by success, failure. Then nothing really maKers; all is just a dream world. One can be in it and yet one remains out of it. That is transcendence.

CHAPTER 17

17 November 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Baba has three meanings. One is: the small child, the innocent child, the child who cannot yet speak, because the moment a child starts speaking he is no more a child; he has become part of civilisation. Language is the world of civilisation; it is language that makes man different from animals. If language disappears then man will be just as one of the animals; there will be no distinction. It is language that creates civilisation, culture, philosophy, mind. It is out of the bricks of language that the mind is built.

So a child is innocent when he cannot speak. Then he lives in the world of the animals; he is still in the Garden of Eden. The moment he starts speaking he is no more a child. So baba is the small child who cannot speak; that is one meaning.

The other meaning is a very old man who has again learned how to be silent – the grandfather. In the East the grandfather almost always meant the person who has become a sannyasin, because in the East we had four stages of life.

If life is one hundred years, then each stage has to consist of twenty-five years. Twenty-five years for the student: he will be in the university and he will live a life of discipline. Then the next twenty-five years, for the householder. He will get married, he will have children, he will become part of the world. Then the third twenty-five years is getting ready to leave the world, turning towards the forest; twenty-five years in the world and then twenty-five years is getting ready to get out of the world. And by the time a person is seventy-five he will be a grandfather. He leaves the world, he renounces the world, he goes to the mountains. to the forest. Then he is again called Baba.

Now again he is back to being a child. He learned the language, the ways of the world, and now he has dropped them all. He is again a clean slate. Now he knows nothing. That is the state when Socrates says ’I know only one thing: that I know nothing.’ Then Socrates is a baba; again he is a child. That’s what Jesus means when he says ’Unless you are like small children you will not be able to enter my kingdom of god.’

So ’baba’ is really a very paradoxical word: the smallest child and the oldest man. The circle is complete: the old man is falling back into the source, again becoming a child. Hence slowly slowly the third meaning came out of it: the holy man. So it is beautiful.

Paritosha means contentment, infinite contentment... not just satisfaction but contentment. And there is a lot of difference between the two, not only difference; they are polar opposites to each other. It may not be so in the dictionary but in life it is so! In the dictionary contentment is satisfaction and satisfaction is contentment; they are synonymous. But in life it is not so: they are diametrically opposite.

Satisfaction is a false contentment; it is imposed. It is just a consolation. For example, one is poor. It hurts to be poor and so one starts creating a satisfaction around it of ’Poverty is beautiful, poverty is spiritual,’ of ’Look, Jesus says ”Blessed are the poor in spirit.”’ He means something totally different; he does not mean poverty. ’Look, Buddha renounced the kingdom and became a beggar.’ Certainly he renounced the kingdom because he attained to a higher kingdom, but he never became a beggar; in fact he became the real emperor.

But the man who is poor... And it feels very ego-shattering: ’I am a failure. I cannot succeed.

I cannot make money, have power, prestige. I am falling very short. Life is disappearing and I am just a failure. To hide this wound he creates a beautiful philosophy of satisfaction. He says

’Satisfaction is the real thing. Riches don’t bring happiness. It is satisfaction that brings happiness.’

He philosophises, he rationalises, he pretends that he is very happy. But all that is pretension; deep down he knows that it hurts.

If he has really understood then it is contentment. If he had understood that each moment is so joyous, wherever you are and whatsoever you are – poor or rich, successful or unsuccessful, famous or notorious, known or anonymous – wherever you are each moment is such pure joy, such sheer bliss... One who has known it is contented. Then there is no philosophy of contentment around it: it is simply your state.

Contentment arises out of meditation, and satisfaction arises out of the sense of inferiority; one wants to hide it, to cover it up. Contentment arises out of an inner well-being. And satisfaction. You know the wound and you don’t want to see it, so you cover it up with beautiful flowers. You paint it with beautiful colours; deep down the wound remains. In fact it goes deeper; the more you hide it, the deeper it goes. Slowly slowly it will poison your whole being, it will destroy your life.

I am against the philosophy of satisfaction but I am all for contentment, and the distinction has to be understood. The man who philosophises about satisfaction will start clinging to poverty. Even if a chance arises that he can become the emperor he will not become. It will go against his philosophy.

He will become attached to his poverty. He has been proclaiming so many beauties about it, now how can he renounce it? That will be too inconsistent.

But the real man of contentment can be contented as poor, can be contented as rich. He has no attachment. He is not attached to riches, he is not attached to poverty either. He is not attached at all, so whatsoever god brings he is happy to receive it. If he makes him a king, he is a king; if he makes him a beggar, he is a beggar, but deep down he remains the same, unaffected. His joy is not contaminated by anything. That is contentment.

Deva means divine, madhuro means sweetness. God is a taste: it is not an argument. You have to eat him to know him. It is not a hypothesis to be understood intellectually, it is not a philosophy at all; it is a taste on the tongue. And god has to be lived, loved, absorbed. Unless god starts flowing in your bloodstream, starts beating in your heart and becomes part of your marrow, you will not know him.

That’s why Jesus says to his disciples ’What I am giving you is my body – eat it!’ Each disciple has to be a cannibal: he has to eat the master, and not only eat, he has to digest him. And then great sweetness spreads all over one’s being.

That sweetness is eternal. That sweetness has many facades to it. In one sense it is beauty, in another sense it is truth, in still another sense it is goodness, love, celebration. It is a multi-faceted diamond, but the basic thing is the taste: it is sweetness.

Deva means god, svagato means welcome – welcome to god. God is not a goal and god can never be reduced to Being a goal because god is not far away and god is not in the future. God is now and god is here, and god is within you. To make a goal out of god is to miss him. Because the goal has to be somewhere else; there has to be a distance between you and the goal. Time is needed, space is needed. If you create god as a goal, you will put him far away in space and time and that is the way of missing. Because he is already here – wherever you are he is there and he is always there. So the first thing to be understood is: god is not a goal but your very source of being, he is your very ground of being. One cannot search for him, one can only receive him. One can become an opening to him. One can drop one’s defences; that’s all that is needed. No other search, no other effort, just a total receptivity.

That is the meaning of svagato: a total welcome. In whatever way he penetrates you, you will not resist; in whatever form he comes, you will recognise him. You will not create barriers, you will not be walls; you will be all bridges. That is the meaning of welcome. You will be a multi-dimensional bridge. And that opening is sannyas.

Sannyas means vulnerability. It means surrender, it means trust, it means god is, and if you are missing then something is wrong with you. It is not that god is not; something is wrong with you.

Maybe you are keeping your eyes closed. The sun has risen, it is morning but you are still keeping your eyes closed, hence you are in darkness.

Open your eyes – that is svagato, that is welcome. Maybe the wind is there but your doors are closed and you are unnecessarily living in a suffocated, stale room. Open the doors, that is welcome, and the wind comes in, the rain comes in, the sun comes in and god comes in millions of forms. These are all his forms, his ways of coming.

Slowly slowly as one opens up, more and more life starts happening. And when one is utterly open –

not even a single door is closed any more, not even a window, when all the walls have disappeared, one is so open that one is under the open sky – then god is available from all the dimensions. He starts pouring into you from all sides, and not only from without, he starts rising from within you too.

Then it is all god, inside, outside; then god is the guest and god is the host. Then it is god in god’s embrace. This is what Christian mystics have called ’unio mystica’, the mystic union.

Deva means divine, nirodh means cessation – a divine death. That’s what sannyas is all about: the end of all that you have been up to now and the beginning of something you have not even dreamt about the cessation of the known and the beginning of the unknown. It is a discontinuity with the past. This moment, the moment of initiation, is a death and a rebirth. It is a death of the old identity, the way you have always understood yourself, the way of the ego, the feeling that you are separate from existence, the identity with the body and the mind. With one stroke, one has to drop it, in one single blow. And one starts absolutely fresh, from ABC, as if one is born again. And it is very easy to become new, because the question is only of our clinging to the past; the past is not clinging to you. So if you drop it, it is dropped; it is just a question of decision.

And sannyas is that decision. It is suicide, and the true suicide, but out of this suicide begins the journey of the eternal. Out of this death arises a life that knows no end. That’s the meaning of your name.

Deva means divine, ushma means warmth – divine warmth. Death is cold, life is warm. Matter is cold, consciousness is warm. Hate is cold, love is warm. So drop all that is cold from your life and live more and more in warmth. The colour orange represents fire. It represents all that is warm, not only warm but hot too! Live in a hot way.

People are living at the minimum, hence they never come to know the significance, the meaning, of life. The meaning of life is revealed only at the optimum. When one lives really hot, when life is a passionate affair, when it is adventure and risk, when one is not just living half-heartedly, then only do the mysteries open their doors.

So avoid all that is cold, search for warmer dimensions of being, and you will be moving towards god, because god is the hottest thing in the world!

CHAPTER 18

18 November 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin had sent Osho some photos of his stone sculptures; stone arrangements.]

I looked at your stone sculpture – beautiful! In the new commune you will have to do a few things.

When the new commune is ready you have to plan a small place for your statues. Just make as many Buddhas as possible!

Life should be a sweet song but man has made it very bitter, very ugly. It has lost all the qualities of music, rhythm, harmony. It has become an ugly struggle to survive, and survival to no purpose at all, just an ugly struggle which leads nowhere, a cut-throat competition, absolutely unnecessary.

Life is meant to be a celebration, not a competition. We need not be enemies here. If we are enemies to each other, that’s what competition means, then if life becomes a hell it is not a surprise, it should not be a surprise. We make it a hell because we make it a conflict; we reduce it to violent struggle.

It is multi-dimensional: one nation against other nations, one religion against other religions, one caste against other castes, man against woman, rich against poor, one ideology against another ideology. It is multi-dimensional, it is very complicated, hence it has lost the rhythm, it has lost the quality of song and dance.

Man is missing something terribly; something has gone really wrong; man has moved astray. Even birds are far more in tune with god than man. Even animals, trees and rocks, are more in harmony with existence than man. And bliss is a by-product, a by-product of being in harmony with existence.

My sannyas is an effort to bring a song to your life, to transform it from the ugly plane of conflict to the beautiful plane of celebration. And that is real revolution: when you are no more an enemy, when you befriend the whole, when you are in love with the whole as it is, when you are not in any need to impose yourself upon it, when you can accept and bless it as it is, and when you can feel grateful for all that god has given, for all that existence provides.... Then slowly slowly a new kind of fragrance arises in you. That fragrance is sannyas. it’s taste is tremendously sweet; it is the taste of nectar.

The old religions were against life. They created more conflict, they made people very serious. My sannyas is playful, and life can be a song only when it is full of play, really playful, when it has no seriousness – sincere, of course, but not serious – when there is a sense of humour, when one is capable of laughing, weeping, dancing, when one is capable of enjoying the small moments and small joys that life brings every day, and in thousands of ways it brings them.

When one is not hankering for great things, extraordinary things, incredible things, when one is not desiring and hankering for exceptional, egoistic highs, but on the contrary one is satisfied with the ordinariness of every thing, then the very ordinariness becomes luminous. Then all ordinariness disappears, then nothing is ordinary. When you are satisfied with the ordinary, then nothing is ordinary, everything becomes extraordinary. Then every small thing contains the great and every small event is historical; it has a tremendous import. And your life goes on becoming richer and richer in songs.

And if man has lived rightly, his death becomes the crescendo, the ultimate song. Then death too is beautiful! And unless death is beautiful a man has not lived rightly. Death is the test, the criterion.

Sugat. It is a name of Buddha. It means well-gone, one who has gone so well this time that he will not be coming back again. Hence it was a name of Buddha. He has lived and learned the lesson of existence; now there will be no need for him to come back to the same school, he will not be born again in the body. The day he became enlightened, the first thing he declared – he looked at the sky and said – ’Gods, now you will not need to make another body for me. Thank you for all those houses that you had built for me in the past, but now I will not need any Other structure. Now the journey is finished. I have come to the end!’ That is the meaning of Sugat: one who will not be coming back again... and this is possible for everyone.

It all depends on how deep we go within ourselves. It depends: if we penetrate the core of our being then we will not be coming back, because life is nothing but a training, a training to know oneself, and unless you know yourself you will be thrown back again and again into the womb. The lesson bas to be learned; there is no way of avoiding it.

And to be initiated into sannyas means to be initiated into the discipline which takes you to the beyond. Sannyas will make you sugat – one who has gone so perfectly that he will not be coming back!

[The new sannyasin asks: What is the essence of beauty?]

It is an experience of emptiness. When you are not, then beauty is. To be absent, to be utterly absent, that is the essence of beauty. And whenever it happens, you come across beauty. To the poet, to the painter, to the musician, it happens accidentally. He is not aware of how and why it is happening. To the mystic it happens knowingly; he is aware of the cause.

One day you see a sunset.... The impact is tremendous, the sky is so colourful; it bewilders you, it creates awe. In that moment of wonder, thinking stops, because whenever there is awe, thinking disappears. They can’t exist together. And when there is no thinking there is no thinker. When the mind is not spinning and weaving thoughts, you disappear, and suddenly you see the beauty of the sunset!

The beauty is not in the sunset, the sunset has simply triggered emptiness in you. It became just an occasion for you to disappear, and now beauty comes out of you and spreads all over the sky.

That’s how it always happens. But the poet naturally thinks that it is the beautiful sunset. He thinks the beauty is there in the object, and it is apparently so. But the mystic knows that it is not so; it is only apparently so.

The mystic knows that the beauty is coming from his innermost emptiness, the sunset is just reflecting his glory; the sunset is just a mirror. The mystic knows that beauty is subjective. the artist thinks that the beauty is objective. But the artist has not yet really known the root cause of it, so he rushes from one experience to another, from one woman to another woman, from one sunset to another sunset, from one flower to another flower, in search of beauty. But the mystic simply closes his eyes and disappears inside because he knows the source of all experiences; he need not go searching all over the world.

And if you search for it outside it is very illusive, because outside is only reflected. The real mystery is inside, in the heart of your hearts! And that centre has no ego, no self, hence one feels tremendous emptiness.

Buddha calls it cessation of the mind, nirvana. Nirvana is beauty – that is the very essence of beauty.

Arihanto means becoming victorious over the inner enemies. The real enemies are not outside; they are inside. The ego, greed, anger, possessiveness, and so on and so forth, are the real enemies, and unless they are all overcome one remains fragmentary, divided, split. one remains torn apart, one remains only somehow together, because greed pulls one on one side and hate pulls one on another side, and anger claims one on another side, and they are so many.... So one moment you go with the greed, another moment you go with the anger, another moment you go with love. But you go on moving in a kind of circle, a vicious circle. Your life does not grow, it simply moves in the same rut: the same anger, the same greed, again and again and again. That’s why life becomes so boring, because nothing new seems to happen.

All these enemies have to be overcome, and when I say ’overcome’ I don’t mean that they have to he destroyed. By overcoming is meant that you have won them, their hearts, that you have persuaded and seduced them into your inner harmony, that they are no more fragments but have fallen into a kind of unity, that a kind of integration has arisen in you.

If anger has to be dropped you will lose much energy, because anger contains much energy. It has to be absorbed, not dropped. If greed is dropped you will miss all life; your life will become impotent, because greed has drive. Greed has to be absorbed so that its drive remains in you. If you totally cut your possessiveness from your being you will lose passion; you will become cold.

So this is one of the greatest problems for a seeker. It is easy to remain divided, because that is how one normally is, but one does not grow. The polar opposite is to drop all these things; that’s what the monk has been doing down the ages. Cut greed, escape from the world where greed can have any possibility of growing, escape from relationships. When you are not related, how can possessiveness exist? Renounce all that you have so that there is no question of being greedy, possessive, attached.

The monk became afraid of life because he was afraid of these enemies, and in life they are all there. He became an escapist: go to the monastery or to the Himalayas, live in a cave. But just by escaping from the challenges nothing is transformed; greed remains in a seed form. Of course it cannot manifest in a Himalayan cave, there is no opportunity to express itself, but even if you have lived in a Himalayan cave for fifty years and you come back to the marketplace, you will find again that you are greedy. It will remain as a potential, it will wait. It will remain like a seed on a rock.

It cannot grow on a rock, certainly, because it cannot send its roots down, but it will wait. Some time, some opportunity will arrive: the wind may take it to the soil, and once it falls into the soil, immediately it will grow its roots, immediately the tree will start growing. So the monk simply moves into a seed form. All that was there in the marketplace remains in him; it is not true transformation.

Hence I don’t tell my sannyasins to escape from the world. Live in the world and still all these enemies have to be overcome without destroying them, without fighting with them. One has to understand them, one has to go deep into them, watch them, feel them, feel their potential, feel what they can contribute to one’s life; and everything can contribute so much.

The really wise person is one who transforms even poison into medicine. And that’s the whole alchemy of sannyas: all poisons have to be transformed into nourishing medicines. So I am not telling you to drop these things; I am telling you to understand them. By understanding you will overcome. And the state when one has overcome all inner enemies and one has become integrated is called arihanto. It is one of the most beautiful words.

[The new sannyasin says: I’m wondering why I haven’t felt anything more from you than I have?]

You get only that much which you can get at the moment – you cannot get more. You can hanker for more but hankering is not the question. You get only that much for which you are ready, and that’s just fair. You get only that which you deserve; more is not possible.

For more you will have to become more open and more available.

If you open only one window you cannot see the full sky; you can see only a part of the sky, a few stars. But ordinarily people don’t even open the whole window; they simply look through the keyhole.

Then even if you can get a glimpse of a single star, that is enough. But that single glimpse will help: tomorrow you may gather more courage to open a window or the door. Some day you may gather more courage to come out of the room. It depends on how much you open up.

And the opening cannot be forced, because that will be a kind of spiritual rape. And that is not helpful; it is very destructive. It can be done, something can be forced on you for which you are not ready, but you will not be able to digest it. It will be a load, it will be a poison in your system. And secondly: you will become afraid, frightened. You may never come to me again. It is always good to absorb in small homeopathic closes.

And always remember: god only gives you that much for which you are ready at a certain moment, never less, never more. But I can understand – the desire is always for more, and when you see that others are getting more then naturally you become disturbed: ’Why is it not happening to me?’

You will need a little more work. Next time when you come, go through a few more groups, become more available... and it is going to happen. Even this much is good! Feel grateful for that which has happened.

Even if it is tiny, just a small opening, this is the beginning. Much more will be coming.

Madhunad. It means sweet music, sweet sound. The music is there in the heart. It is always there, it is our very life; it is the stuff we are made of. This is one of the greatest contributions of the mystics to the world. Just as physics has arrived at the conclusion that existence is made of the stuff called electricity, in the same way mystics down the ages, in different countries, unrelated to each other, have always arrived at one conclusion: that existence is made of a subtle music, of sound. Now both these findings can be correlated because according to physics sound is nothing but an expression of electricity, and according to the mystics electricity is nothing but an intensity of a certain sound.

In the East there have been certain melodies which can create fire. Just by singing, just by creating a certain sound and vibe, fire can be created. And those are not just stories: music can create heat.

There is a certain kind of music which is war music, it creates heat, it creates a fighting energy.

Modern music, jazz, etcetera, hits the sex centre. It creates heat, it drives people’s sexual energy to unknown peaks. It is sensuous, it is intoxicating.

The ancient music, particularly classical music, Eastern, is just the opposite: it cools you, it tranquillizes you; it brings an equilibrium, an equanimity. Sex simply disappears if you listen to Eastern classical music deeply. In those moments you cannot think of sex, it is impossible; you think only of meditation. Your higher centres of being start functioning; lower centres simply stop functioning. Music can create heat; music can create coolness. There is a possibility that mystics and a physicist can come to a conclusion together; maybe they have been exploring the same phenomena from different sides.

As you go deeper in meditation you will hear this music. Zen people call it the sound of one hand clapping. In India we call it nad; nad means: there is no instrument. There is nobody playing but still the music is heard. It is uncreated music, unstruck music. And this is our very being, but we are lost in the noise of the head and we cannot hear the still small voice within.

The whole work of meditation is to move from the noisy head to the musical heart. And once this starts happening you are on an incredible journey. For the first time you will feel ecstasy arising in you, for the first time a subtle spiritual drunkenness – one becomes a drunkard.

Deva means divine, mouni means the silent one – divine silence, and that has to be the key for you. Become more and more silent, speak less and less... only the necessary. Drop all that is unnecessary and you will be surprised at simply how much energy is saved. Read only very little; there is no need to read unnecessarily, and there is much that is unnecessary which we go on reading. Once you read it then it vibrates in your mind. When you say something again and again, you repeat it, it becomes a groove. When you say something, somebody says something in return; that is a continuous nourishment for the mind.

Speak less, listen less, read less: bring them to the minimum. And you will be surprised that all that you have always wanted to happen will start happening. Meditate more, sit silently more, just with closed eyes, with yourself. Enjoy your aloneness, and that is your way to god....

CHAPTER 19

19 November 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Sarva means all, sambhavo means possible – all is possible. Man is a seed of infinity. Nothing is impossible, and one should not be satisfied with oneself too early, in fact one should never be satisfied with oneself; the fire of discontentment should be kept burning. One should be satisfied with things but one should not be satisfied with oneself. the situation is just the reverse: people are satisfied with themselves but they are not satisfied with their house, the wife, the husband, the children, the car. They are not satisfied with anything in the world except themselves. This is the situation; it has to be reversed.

One should be satisfied with the world as it is, it does not matter much. The house, the money, the things that you possess, in the ultimate reckoning they don’t matter. In the ultimate reckoning all that matters is your being. And because man is dissatisfied with things he has improved upon things; great improvement has happened upon things. If you look back just two thousand years ago, even emperors didn’t have the clothes that beggars have today. Even great kings, great conquerors, could not have this speed that anybody can have today. Man has improved upon things, for a simple reason: he was dissatisfied with things. But he has not improved upon himself.

Buddha lived in the world of bullock carts; we live in the world of jets, but as far as the inner world is concerned, Bud&a lived far higher than we live. As far as the inner is concerned there has not been any evolution. And the reason is that we are not discontented with our inner being.

Once you are discontented, a great thirst, a hunger to grow, arises. And the desire to grow is the greatest thing that can happen to a man, because all else becomes possible through it.

Deva means god, anuvad means translation: translation of god in life. It is bringing god to the earth.

That’s what sannyas is all about: an effort to bring god into the world. The ancient religions were doing something totally different, they were trying to reach god, hence they had to leave the world.

They believed in renunciation, obviously; they were going to god and they had to leave the world.

My sannyasin is not to leave the world. On the contrary he has to bring god to the world. That is a far deeper and more significant effort than the first, more arduous too. It is easier to move to the mountains and feel the presence of the divine. The real difficulty is to feel the presence of the divine in the man-made world, but unless you can feel it in the marketplace, you have not felt it.

In the mountains you will be deceived; in the silence of the mountains it will appear as if you have come to know god’s silence. The music of the winds in the trees and the sound of running water in the mountains will deceive you. It is so beautiful, so exhilarating, you will think that you have arrived.

That is not your achievement; that is the gift of the mountains to you.

Once you leave the mountains and come back to the marketplace, all will disappear as if it has not ever existed, as if it was just a dream, and the marketplace and its noise and its ugliness will simply explode on you and you will be the same, in fact, worse than before, because now your whole system will have become very delicate and will not be able to bear the world.

This is not true achievement. The true achievement is to be in the world and bring god there so that the noise of the marketplace slowly slowly becomes god’s music, so that even in the body the soul is felt, so that even in the very mundane, the sacred is glimpsed.

That is the meaning of your name: translation of god into life, translation of the sacred into the mundane. These are two languages, two different places. The higher has to be brought to the lower, only then can the lower be transformed. Only the presence of the higher will become the catalytic agent for the transformation of the lower.

Girish means goddess of the mountains.

Think of mountains, meditate on mountains.

Just

contemplating on mountains will give you great insight into your being.

We become what we think. There is no need to go to the mountains. Just with closed eyes transport yourself to the mountains, go for an inner journey. Make it as real as possible and soon it becomes real. You will be able to feel the coolness of the mountains, the silence, the greenery, the meditating rocks, the trees, the wind. The very taste will slowly slowly start arising in you.

And explore, go trekking to the mountains inside and you will be surprised by many findings. In the beginning it will be like a dream, a fantasy, but immensely poetic. Slowly slowly it will not be a fantasy, it will become almost real. You will be able to touch the rocks, you will be able to hug the trees, you will be able to touch the water and feel its coolness. And as it becomes real, great meditation will start happening to you.

So start it from tonight. This has to be done at least once every day; the best time is before you go to sleep. Fall into sleep meditating on the mountains. Make it pictorial, not just verbal. Don’t think of the word ’mountain’ but see the picture. Live it rather than thinking about it and fall asleep moving into those beautiful inner realms.

Soon, within a few days, in your dreams also you will start moving into the mountains. And one day in the morning you will be surprised that the flavour remained the whole night with you, that it moved like a subtle current inside you. When it happens you have to report to me.

Ramamurti. It means image of god. Rama is a name of god; murti means image. And every being in existence is an image of god, because god is everywhere, just like the ocean is in every wave.

Every wave is oceanic; so is every form divine. You contain god as much as Buddha does, not even the difference of a single iota.

You belong to god as much as Jesus does; he is not the only son of god. This whole existence is equal: nobody is higher and nobody is lower; there is no hierarchy. It is really communistic: there is absolute equality.

If you look at the essential then all is equal. If you look at the non-essential then nothing is equal. You have one body, the lion certainly has a totally different body and the tree still a different manifestation, but these are non-essential things; these are the differences of names and forms. But the innermost being, that which is formless and nameless, is the same. The name is to remind you who you are.

It has to constantly make you aware that you are divine.

And it is only a question of remembering. We have only forgotten who we are. Once remembering starts, the light starts burning again. From this moment think of yourself not as a sinner, not as somebody condemned, but as a beloved of god. He has created you in his own image.

[The new sannyasin says he walked out of the Enlightenment Intensive group after one day.]

Do a few more. Nothing to be worried about. Everybody sometime or other leaves a few groups.

That is not a problem....

And try to do as much as you can; don’t leave too early. If it becomes impossible then it’s okay, leave.

But you could have continued and within two days nothing like a disaster was going to happen. Up to now nobody has died in the Enlightenment Intensive! It just needs a little effort. The mind wants things easy but there are a few things which are arduous but immensely beautiful to experience.

In fact the moment you left the group would have been the right moment to insist on Staying. Just within half an hour the desire to leave would have left you and you would have settled into the group process on a higher level. The desire to leave comes to everybody, and many times. Each time you win over the desire you reach a higher plane of consciousness.

So please don’t leave the groups as far as it is humanly possible. When you see that you are going mad or dying or anything, then you can leave. But nobody goes mad and nobody dies!

Anand means bliss, nijo means one’s own self – the bliss of being one’s own self; and that is the only bliss there is. Misery arises when one tries to be somebody else, because misery is nothing but being false, imitative, pseudo, phony. Bliss is a shadow of being authentic, true, sincerely your own self. And whenever one sticks to being one’s own self, in that very sticking integration arises; one becomes crystallised. In the world there are a thousand and one ways to pull you out of your centre.

It is in the society’s interest that nobody should be his own self, because that type of person is dangerous; they are rebellious people.

They cannot be easily manipulated; they are not

easily obedient. They are not conformist, they are not orthodox; they live according to their own conscience. If something is right they will obey it. If something is not right they would rather die but they would not like to obey it.

And the society needs slaves, psychological slaves, spiritual slaves.

Political slavery has

disappeared from the world, but psychological slavery has not disappeared; in fact it has become more deeply rooted. Man is a slave inside. His freedom is only on the outside, on the periphery. You are given enough rope to feel that you are free, that’s all, but you are tethered, in a bondage.

That bondage is so psychological and so subtle that one never becomes aware of it. It can be reduced to a single principle: the society teaches you to be imitative. It creates a false self in you.

It says ’Be like Jesus, be like Buddha’; it never says to you ’Be yourself.’ It always gives you an ideal to follow, and whenever you follow an ideal you are going against yourself. You are imposing something like a mask. You are creating a personality.

Slowly slowly the personality becomes a hard crust and the individuality is lost. And that individuality is your real soul. That is nijo, your own self, and it is suffocated. It wants to get out of the personality.

Personality is a cage, an imprisonment. And hence there is misery, because the soul is imprisoned.

The bird in the cage cannot be happy even if the cage is made of gold. What does it matter to the bird whether the cage is made of gold and studded with diamonds and is very precious? It may matter to the person to whom the cage belongs, but to the bud it is just his death. He cannot open his wings again in the sky, he cannot move. He is free no more.

This is the situation of every human being: the personality is a golden cage – the Christian personality, the Hindu personality, the Buddhist personality. These are cages, beautiful cages, very decorated, down the ages polished, decorated. They have become immensely valuable, but the one who is inside is constantly suffering and dying.

Sannyas means a declaration of freedom, a declaration that ’I will be only my own self, whatsoever it is. I will seek and search my own reality – I will not become an imitator.’ This declaration is sannyas, because only through this can one arrive at freedom, can one attain to the skies. And it is possible, because that psychological cage is maintained by yourself: you are the prisoner and you are the gaoler and you are the cage. The whole drama is played by you, hence it is not difficult to come out.

If there were somebody else who had the keys then it: would not be so easy to come out.

You are your own prisoner and your own gaoler. Once you understand this, the personality can simply be dropped as one drops one’s clothes. And to be nakedly individual, to be nakedly one’s own self, is utter bliss!

Prem means love, kalika means a bud, just ready to bloom, just on the verge of becoming a flower.

Man is born as a great potential for love, but it remains a bud, and a very fortunate few transform it into a flower. And unless it becomes a flower, life remain incomplete, unfulfilled. Only when we have released our fragrance to the existence, only when we have shared our whole being with the totality that is, is there fulfilment.

So your name is to remind you that just a little effort, just a little awakening, and the bud can become a flower. All that is needed is a little effort. It is not much work, it is not arduous work either. If one is alert enough it can happen in a single instant: suddenly the bud can become a flower.

So all that is needed is a constant reminding, and that is the function of the name. It will remind you again and again about the bud that has to become the flower, about the seed that has to die and become a sprout, about a drop that has to become the ocean. It can haunt you. It will goad you.

Whenever somebody calls you Kalika, again and again the truth will be hammered into your heart.

CHAPTER 20

20 November 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Madhu means sweet, mati means intelligence – sweet intelligence. There is a great difference between intellect and intelligence. Intellect is bitter, intellect is argumentative, intellect is sceptical.

Intelligence is a totally different affair. It is basically love. It is not negative; it is yea-saying, it is affirmative, it is positive.

Intellect is negative; it is nay-saying. The fundamental structure of intellect is ’no’. And parallel to it the fundamental structure of intelligence is ’yes’. Intelligence is a sacred yes to existence, and to all that existence implies. It is essentially religious. It is intuitive, not logical, not argumentative.

Intelligence is an insight. It is not a process. You cannot learn it, so no school, no college, no university, can give it to you. They can train your intellect and unfortunately they have succeeded in training everybody’s intellect in the world.

Intelligence can only be provoked, not taught. Intelligence arises out of silence, out of utter quiet; it arises out of your aloneness. It is not a question of information either. You are born with it. It has only to be called forth, discovered; it is there. Intellect is of the head; intelligence is of the heart.

Intellect is male; intelligence is female, it is pure feminine energy. And all that is great happens through intelligence. Intelligence is the master, and once intelligence arises, intellect immediately becomes a slave. And then it is a beautiful slave. As a master it is very dangerous; as a slave it is perfect.

When your intellect starts serving your intuition then your life is no more a conflict. It becomes a harmony, and great sweetness spreads all over your existence.

Prem means love, and sheila means virtue. Love is the real virtue. Love is not one of the virtues; it is the virtue. All other virtues arise out of it – compassion, charity, character. All those virtues arise on their own accord if love is flowing in one’s being. And if love is not flowing then the so-called vices arise. So love is the very decisive factor. If love is there all the virtues are bound to follow, and if love is not there, then all the vices – hate and anger and greed and possessiveness. They are all symbols of the absence of love.

So love is not one of the virtues – it is the virtue. And this is one of the greatest calamities of humanity, that we have praised all other virtues except love. In fact the society has been against it, has been very very alert about it, cautious about it. It has not allowed love to have its natural growth.

Love is very stunted in every being because society knows love is a great energy, a great reservoir of energy. If you can possess a person’s loving energy, you possess the person. If his loving energy is given absolute freedom then the person cannot be possessed by the society, by the church, by the state. Nobody can possess him; then he becomes his own master.

Love brings freedom; freedom is another aspect of love. And the society exists on slavery, not on freedom, although much is talked about freedom. But the society’s structure is such that it exploits. It does not allow the individual to have his whole say, it does not allow the individual to be himself, or it allows only conditionally, only so far. And love knows no conditions, love knows no limitations. Hence down the ages all the societies of the world have been very cautious about love; it is dangerous ground. But now the time has come: man has become mature enough to move into the world of love.

And the earth can become a paradise if each individual is given total freedom about his or her love and no conditions are imposed on love. Love freed from all conditions is the ultimate in freedom and becomes the door into the divine.

Deva means divine, pyasi means thirst – thirsty for the divine. The thirst is in everyone; it is inborn, it is innate. We may know about it, we may not know about it, but there is not a single individual who has not got the thirst for god. If the thirst is unconscious then one goes on searching for god in wrong directions, because the search remains unconscious, foggy, confused, unclear. It remains a kind of groping.

In fact, whatsoever we desire is just a groping effort for god. People desire money. Thought about rightly, analysed rightly, it is a search for inner richness: that’s what god is all about. But not knowing what exactly they are longing for they start rushing after money, and money makes nobody rich.

In fact the more money you have, the poorer you feel, because in contrast you can see your inner poverty more clearly. So the richest person is the poorest person in the world. The poor person is not so poor because he cannot feel his poverty yet; he has no contrast. He is simply poor, outside poor, inside poor; there is no way to feel the poverty. But when outside you become rich and inside you remain poor, the contrast is so great that even a blind person, even a stupid person, will be able to feel it.

Hence the moment a society becomes affluent, great search for meditation, for god, starts, because only then do people become aware of their inner emptiness. But the search for money is basically a search for richness. The desire is right but the direction is wrong. It has to turn inwards, because richness is an interior phenomenon.

And so is the search for power: whenever you are searching for power, you are searching for something that will help you to get rid of your inner inferiority complex. And everybody feels inferior, because unless god is discovered everybody is inferior. It is not only a question of feeling, it is a truth, it is a fact, and it hurts! People start searching for power, but they move outside. They can become very powerful, they can become like a Genghis Khan or Adolf Hitler, and still deep down the same inferiority complex continues, in fact becomes more and more dear, hurts more and more, becomes a wound. The real search for power has to be a search for god, because only god is power; all else is an illusion of power.

And that’s how it is. We fall in love – the search is for thou, but that thou cannot be found anywhere else except in god. That’s why all lovers feel disillusioned sooner or later. A man falls in love with a woman or a woman falls in love with a man: the expectations are great. The woman thinks that she has found a god; unconsciously she has been groping for god. Now she hopes that this man is the one she has been searching for, that this man is her spiritual mate, that this man has been haunting her dreams, and she imagines and she hopes.... But sooner or later the reality is there to shatter all her illusions and dreams and all her fantasies, and she finds an ordinary man! There is frustration, great frustration. She feels as if she has been cheated; nobody has cheated her.

Every lover feels cheated, disappointed, disillusioned, but nobody is cheating anybody. We had hoped too far, we had longed too much; we had imposed too many ideas, too many dreams we had projected upon the person. The person was just there, a victim of our projections. Now how long can we carry those projections? They are against the reality and the man has to live his reality. He cannot go on pretending to be what you want him to be; he has to be himself. Sooner or later he has to assert himself, and the moment reality asserts itself the honeymoon is over.

But the real search is for god, the beloved! And unless we can find god, all that we go on searching for remains in vain, a futile effort. And if god is found then all is found. Then you can love people and you can love without any projection, so there is never any frustration and there is never any disillusionment. One never feels cheated because one has never projected anything. Then you live in reality, with reality, as it is, and then great love is possible. Then we can love people with all their limitations, with all their imperfections, and they are beautiful the way they are. In fact, my own observation is that the first love has to happen with god; only then are all other loves possible....

Let it become a conscious search. That’s what sannyas is: searching for the truth of life and existence consciously.

Deva means god, divine, magno means absorbed in, drowned in, drunk with – drowned in god, absorbed in god, drunk with god. God is not a theory, it is an experience. God is not a person either. It is an experience of dissolving into reality. It is an experience of melting into the total like an ice-cube melting into water and becoming one with the river. That melting is the whole process of sannyas. Slowly slowly all that you have will start disappearing; your identity, your clear-cut definition will start disappearing. Only the ice-cube can have an identity. When we are frozen we can have identities, we can have egos. The ego is a frozen phenomenon. Hence the ego is always afraid of warmth, it is afraid of love. Anything that’s warm is a danger to the ego. It remains aloof, away from all warm experiences. The ego is very cold: it can exist only in coldness and it can exist only in darkness, because once it is in the light it starts melting. So the ego is part of darkness, part of a cold attitude towards life.

Hence my insistence on dancing, singing, loving, relating to people.... The warmer you become, the better; the hotter you become, the better. Then the ego starts dissolving, and the ultimate experience of the dissolution of the ego is god.

Madhu means sweet, nado means music – sweet music, sweet sound. Existence is full of music; it is music everywhere, all over. The wind passing through the pines is music, the water descending from the mountains is music, the birds, the animals. The whole existence is a kind of great orchestra. It is a symphony.

Only man has fallen out of step, only man is no more musical. Man is noisy and he has created so much noise in himself that he cannot even hear the music that is all around. He is full of his own noise, his own chattering, his constant inner talk. Awake, asleep, the talk continues, the mind continues. The mind goes on spinning and weaving, spinning and weaving; it is almost neurotic.

And because of this neurotic mind you cannot hear the immensely penetrating music of existence, of the cosmos.

To hear it is to be transformed. To hear it is to be reborn. Then life takes on a new dimension.

Then life is no more ordinary; it becomes extraordinary, it becomes luminous. It throbs, it dances! It becomes a hymn to god, a prayer. Tremendous gratitude arises in one’s self once the cosmic music is heard. And that cosmic music is always there; it is just that we are not available.

Meditation helps you to become available. Meditation doesn’t produce anything, it simply removes obstacles so that you can hear that which is already happening. Meditation is a negative process: it simply removes rocks so that the flow of music can be heard, so that the music can reach you.

When you are quiet, silent, the still small voice is heard. That voice is divine. And it is absolutely miraculous, mysterious. Its splendour is immeasurable and it leaves nothing but a sweet taste in you

– the taste of nectar!

[To a new sannyasin Osho says:]

And let this moment be an absolutely new beginning, as if you have closed the whole past, as if it no more belongs to you. It can be done!

And that is the whole art of sannyas: closing the chapters, dying to that which is no more so that life can become unburdened. The whole problem is that we are too burdened, and we are carrying unnecessary luggage. It is absolutely meaningless; that which is past is past.

Jesus is right when he says ’Let the dead bury their dead.’ One should be able to unburden oneself each moment so that the freshness remains, so that the mirrorlike quality continues to be there. That mirrorlike quality is real intelligence, and god is available only to intelligent people. By intelligent I don’t mean intellectual – I mean innocent.

Children are intelligent. They are not intellectuals but they are utterly intelligent. Their response is of intelligence. Their eyes are shining with intelligence, their whole being is full of vitality, freshness.

They respond to reality with their totality. In their anger they are total, in their love they are total; they are always total, and that totality has beauty. And a sannyasin should be like a child, not childish but like a child. Childishness means immaturity. To be like a child means to be utterly innocent, unburdened of the past, free of the past, not continuously bringing the past between you and your present.

That’s the only barrier that has to be removed. It can be removed in a single blow because it is only a question of you clinging to it; it is not clinging to you. The past is ready to go, to leave you; it has no interest in you. Just because you go on clinging to it and carrying it, it goes on growing every day and the burden becomes heavier and heavier and heavier. Then you cannot move; the burden is too much. It is a mountain on your chest. Life loses dynamism, life loses evolution and becomes boring, repetitive.

The whole significance of becoming a sannyasin is to learn the art of remaining a child. So from this moment be innocent, live moment to moment and live freshly. Bringing in the old gives you efficiency. If you live freshly you may not be so efficient, but efficiency is not a value in itself. You will be more responsive, and that is a real value; you will be more alive.

Functioning through the past you will commit less errors, that is true. That’s why people have chosen to function through the past. It is knowledge, it is skill; it is practised. You have done those things so many times, it is better to do them in the old way, less possibility of committing mistakes. Hence people are burdened by the past.

Don’t be afraid of committing mistakes. A real life moves through mistakes, grows through mistakes.

Be always capable of committing mistakes, be always courageous. That is the only way to grow.

Don’t commit the same mistake twice, because that will be old. Find out new things to do, new ways of being and seeing. And even if you are not very skilful and not very efficient, it doesn’t matter; you will be more alive, you will be full of juice.

And slowly slowly you will come to understand a totally different vision: that vision is sannyas! It has nothing really to do with religion, it has something do with the total quality of your life.

[A sannyasin, who is leaving, asks for a meditation to do while away. Osho asks which is his favourite meditation. He replies that he doesn’t have a favourite one; but sometimes he just sits quietly doing nothing: I felt that there’s nobody inside.]

Very good. That’s meditation! You can continue that sitting silently doing nothing for at least one hour every day. And one active one you choose – Dynamic will do; in the morning you do the Dynamic, in the evening you do the silent and that will be enough.

Both are needed to give you a balance, because man has two sides, active and passive. If one simply meditates actively then the passive side remains undernourished. And if one meditates only passively then the active side remains undernourished, and that creates a lopsidedness. Man has to become whole, and the wholeness is possible only through balancing. Your feminine, your masculine, your yin and your yang, should both be nourished. So one active meditation will do –

Dynamic or Kundalini or dancing – anything, but one.

And then stick to it, don’t change it every day. At least for the time you will be away stick to it, because if you don’t stick to one method you will never go into depth. It is as if you want to dig a well but you dig here one day, another day somewhere else, the third day some other place. You will destroy the whole land but there will never be any well. You have to stick to one spot and go on digging. Howsoever long it takes, one thing is certain, that one day or other you will come to the source of water. That is there.

Choose a single method, one for active and one for passive. Your passive method is perfectly good.

That’s what real zazen is: just sitting, feeling you are nobody, a nothingness, a silence, an absence.

Relax into that absence. disappear into that completely not even leaving a trace behind. That is good for your feminine side. It will give you fifty percent of meditation; fifty percent more will be needed. That has to come out of Sufi dancing, Nataraj, Kundalini; or Dynamic, or anything done very actively.

Then one grows in a very balanced way. So you do this.

[Prem punam – full moon of love.]

Love is the only phenomenon that can become perfect. Everything else has a limitation, but not love, because love is the very quality of god. Love is perfection itself. It can become a full moon.

Money you can have but you will never be satisfied; you will always feel that more is still possible.

And because more is still possible you are still poor. You can have all the money in the world, still you will be poor because more is possible.

It is said of Alexander the Great that when he was coming to India an astrologer told him ’Do you know that there is only one world, and if you conquer it, you will be in trouble?’

He said ’What do you mean?’ The astrologer said ’Think over it again: there is only one world. If you conquer it you will be in trouble!’

And it is said that Alexander closed his eyes and was very sad and he said ’Yes, I had not thought about it. If I have conquered the whole world, what shall I do? What more remains? And one thing is certain: I will not be satisfied by conquering the world.

Imagination can go on and on desiring more and more; there is no end to imagination. So money cannot take your poverty away and power cannot take your poverty away – only love! In the moment of love, one is suddenly perfect. That’s the beauty of the moment of love: out of nowhere arises the full moon.

Ordinarily we have only glimpses of it, but when you start meditating and you start becoming conscious about your love energy, it can become a constant phenomenon. For twenty-four hours the full moon is there and one is utterly fulfilled. That’s the meaning of your name: love is the only possible perfection in existence. Those who search for perfection in anything else are searching in vain. Only in love is one fulfilled, utterly fulfilled.

CHAPTER 21

21 November 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[Veet means beyond, Osho explains, and amo means darkness: beyond the darkness is the dawn.]

The darkness is not something outside, it is something inside; hence the light is also not going to happen from the outside, it has to arise within. No outer light can dispel inner darkness. Only the inner can function on the inner. This is something very fundamental to be understood: the inner reality of man is of great poverty, but he goes on accumulating wealth on the outside. The idea is that if he has enough wealth on the outside his inner poverty will disappear. But it doesn’t happen and it cannot happen. On the contrary the more wealth you have on the outside, the more you become aware of your inner poverty. And so is the case with love, so is the case with light. So is the case on many planes. The inner can only be transformed by the inner – the outer cannot even touch it. They don’t meet, they never cross each other. They run parallel, very close, but parallel, so they can’t meet.

And man has tried everything from the outside to change his inner reality. It has been an utter failure.

The whole history of man up to now has been nothing but a failure. Only a few people have escaped from this calamity. Those people can be counted on one’s fingers, a Buddha here and there, a Jesus here and there, when it is everybody’s capacity and potential to become a Buddha or a Christ. But the kingdom has to be searched for within.

The inner darkness means the inner noise of the mind. The mind is a constant chattering box and it goes on and on of its own accord. And all that clamour and noise creates darkness because it creates confusion, because it creates clouds of doubt, of distrust, of anger and of hatred.

Light means clarity. Meditation is the technique to create inner light. Meditation does only a single and simple thing: it makes you capable of turning the mind off. And once the mind is turned off and the mind disappears there is immense light. That is the dawn I am talking about: the dawn beyond darkness.

Deva means divine, ami means nectar. There is a spring within every heart, the spring of divine nectar. If we are unaware of it we live in fear. All fear is basically fear of death. The moment we become aware of the inner sources of immortality, fear disappears because death disappears. And a life lived without fear is a life of love.

Either man can live in fear or man can live in love: these are the only two possible styles. The man who lives out of fear lives in hell. And the man who lives out of love lives in heaven. Hell and heaven are psychological states, not geographical. They are not located somewhere in the universe; they are located inside you, in your orientation.

If you live in a fear-orientation you create hell around you; that is your vibe. And not only do you create hell for yourself, you create hell for others too who are in some way related to you, because they will become infected by your vibe. And because millions of people live in misery and in hell, when two miserable persons meet the misery is not simply doubled; it is multiplied. That’s why the earth looks so ugly.

It need not be so. It can become a paradise. This very earth can become a paradise. It has all that is needed for it to become a paradise except a certain psychology is missing, except a certain kind of man is missing; otherwise everything is ready. Just bring the psychology that creates paradise and immediately the whole vision of life changes. It is the same then and yet not the same, because you are no more the same.

Man has to search for something that is deathless, because unless that is found you cannot love.

Hence each time you fall in love there is a subtle hidden sadness in it. Whenever you see a beautiful person you are thrilled. But watch, search, and hidden underground you will find a very profound sadness, very sad. And you will be puzzled as to why it happens. Seeing a beautiful rose flower a certain sadness comes into the eyes of all those who are perceptive, of all those who have some poetic sensibilities. Seeing a full moon or a sunset or a bird on the wing, they feel sad, they fall into sadness. The reason is this: whenever you see a beautiful flower, immediately you become aware of its approaching death. Such a beautiful flower and soon it will be gone! Not even a trace will be left behind. The world will not take any note of it, it will be as if it has never existed.

You see a beautiful woman or a beautiful man and suddenly a deep sadness arises in you. This beauty is momentary; soon it will not be there. This man will not be there soon; soon death will overtake. So each time something beautiful stirs your heart, simultaneously some sadness is stirred in you.

That is the dilemma of love: love brings great joy; it also brings great pain and great sadness. It brings laughter, it brings tears too. And it is very difficult to make something out of these diametrically opposite things, so lovers are torn apart.

Love really is not possible unless you have known something deathless inside you. Without knowing the deathless your love will remain contaminated, polluted with sadness, with pain, with misery. To see beauty is not possible unless you have seen something deathless, unless you have come to know that only the form of the flower will disappear, but the soul will continue. Then there is no sadness, no agony. Then you can rejoice with it!

This is the meaning of your name, Deva Ami: the source of nectar is inside you; it has to be searched for. It is not far away; it is within your grasp. Just a little inner search, an inner enquiry, just a quest inside you – the quest of ’Who am I?’ – and sooner or later you stumble upon the source of infinite well-being. And that transforms your whole being, your way of seeing. It transforms the whole world that you live in. It transforms your relationships. It transforms all that you have known up to now. It gives you a totally new world.

Sat means being. The mind is a becoming and you are a being. You are already that which you will ever be. As far as your innermost core is concerned, you have already arrived; in fact you have never left. You an at home, but the mind lives in becoming. It thinks ’What to be? What to attain?’

The mind lives in ambition, the mind as such is an achieving mind: achieve, possess, become.

Hence the mind is in the future and has no contact with the present, and you are in the present; you cannot be anywhere else. This is the disparity within man, this is the anguish: the mind is pulling you towards the future in a one desires, and the being is rooted here and it cannot move from here. It is always now. Between these two great tension arises, anxiety, anguish. If it goes beyond a certain limit then insanity arises.

Once you understand this – that you can never be anything else than what you already are – if this is settled, becoming becomes futile, the mind loses its grip on you. And that’s what sannyas is: an effort to help you so that the mind can lose its grip on you, so that you are no more infatuated with the mind, no more hypnotised by the mind, so that you drop becoming and you simply relax into that which you are. That is the sat, that is being.

Arhato means one who has arrived. Where? One who has arrived at the place that he never left in the first place. That is the meaning of arhato, a very paradoxical word.

It is like when you have fallen asleep in the night and you dream of a thousand and one things. You never leave your room, your bed, your house, you never leave your body, for the whole night you are in your bed under your blankets but your mind can roam; it can be in Tokyo or Timbuktu. In the morning when your alarm-clock wakes you up, you will not find yourself in Timbuktu or Tokyo; you will find yourself in your own bed, under your own blankets.

This is the case... this is so metaphysically also. We have never left god, we are still in him, but we have fallen asleep and we have dreamed a thousand and one dreams.

My effort here is to give you a good shock, to shake you to awakeness. The moment your eyes open, alt your dreams are finished and nothing is left to do except laugh. And laughter is the climate of a sannyasin... laughter at the whole ridiculousness of the thing, at how much you worried about how you were going to make your living in Timbuktu and on how many office doors you had knocked to find a job, how you were worried about getting back home because you didn’t even have a ticket.

A thousand and one worries were there with Timbuktu. But in the morning you suddenly find there is no Timbuktu – you have never left your home.

Arhato means attaining that which has never been lost.

Deva means divine, Nayano means the eye – the divine eye, the third eye. There are three eyes in man. Two are out-going, because the world outside is the world of duality; hence the two eyes are needed to see it. Everything is divided in two: day and night, man and woman, love and hate, friend and foe, birth and death; everything is divided in two. In the outside world it is a constant conflict between two polar opposites: the positive and the negative. Fundamentally that is the division. So the two eyes, the out-going eyes, can never know the oneness of reality. For that a single eye is needed.

Jesus says ’When your two eyes have become one you will know god.’ And that one eye is a metaphor. When your vision, when your capacity to see. starts turning in then the two eyes are not needed there. Then your two eyes start meeting in one current of seeing. That one current of seeing where your two eyes pool their energies is the third eye, and that is the eye through which one comes to know oneself. And to know oneself is the beginning of knowing god.

So you have to turn inwards: that is the message in your name. You have to forget looking at the two and you have to start looking at the one. The one is there at the centre. The periphery is dual and the centre is non-dual.

You have a significant name, with a great key in it. If you can work it out nothing else will ever be needed: your name can become your whole path. Turn in, that is the message.

[Osho gives sannyas.]

So finally you decided? That’s good! I was hoping that you would be able to decide for the jump.

Close your eyes... just look at me....

And this is really a quantum leap. You have lived up to now in the mind; this is the beginning of going beyond it. But only one who has lived in the mind can go beyond it. Half the work you have done; now the remaining half I can do very easily.

The truly sceptical mind can only become truly trustful, and the atheist is always closest to god because his enquiry is sincere; his enquiry is honest, his search is authentic. And now much more is going to happen because you have already passed all those futile things that always remain in the mind hankering for attention; they are finished.

This is the time to come to me, and you have to come home. Now put all your energies into meditation and the remaining you leave to me – you meditate and the remaining you leave to me.

CHAPTER 22

22 November 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Prem means love, vidheya means positivity, acceptability, affirmation, the quality of saying yes to existence – and that is the greatest religious quality. In fact only that quality makes a person religious. Renouncing the no is renouncing the mind. The mind exists by saying no, the mind is basically negativity. Its whole existence is that of denial. It always looks at the dark side of things it is incapable of seeing the light side. It cannot see the silver linings in the dark clouds; it is utterly impotent for that. It can make much fuss about the dark clouds but it simply goes on missing the silver linings. And the dark clouds exist only for the silver linings.

The thorns exist only to protect the roses and the dark night is nothing but a womb for the dawn to be born out of. This is the attitude of one who says yes – yes to all that is. Then the whole gestalt changes: you move from the mind to the heart.

The mind is synonymous with no and the heart is synonymous with yes, a total yes. The heart affirms, reveres, loves, trusts; those are all aspects of yes. The mind doubts, suspects; those are aspects of no. And either a man can live through the no – then he lives in misery and in hell; in the language of hell there is no word corresponding to yes, yes does not exist in the vocabulary of hell

– or a person can live through the yes. Then one creates a paradise around oneself. Then there is no need to wait for paradise to happen somewhere in the future; it starts happening herenow.

The moment you say yes you open up. The very climate of yes and your flower starts blooming, as if it has been waiting for it, and waiting for long, maybe for many lives. Yes is spring to the flower of the soul.

And the person who lives through yes can also use no, in the service of yes, just as the person who lives through no can use, will use, yes in the service of no. So I am not saying that the no has to be utterly effaced from your vocabulary, no. It has to become subservient to yes, it has to become part of yes-saying. Then even no has beauty, because it serves yes. And when yes serves no it is ugly. It depends who is the master. The master decides the quality of your being: your present, your future, your destiny.

Sannyas has to become a yea-saying, a sacred yes to existence and to an that existence brings, even to those things which you don’t like in the first place. Because what you like may not be the right thing and what you dislike may be the right thing.

The person who wants to say yes says yes unconditionally. Even if sometimes he does not like a thing, knowing perfectly well that there is dislike, he still says yes in spite of it, because he trusts in the wisdom of the whole. ’The whole knows better than me, than the part, so if I am not in a situation to love it and like it, I must be wrong. I have to grow; I have to become more alert and more understanding. I have to attain to a greater perspective, but the whole can never be wrong!’

Religion can be reduced to a single statement and this is that statement: ’The whole can never be wrong, the whole is infallible.’ Then there is only surrender, then there is only let-go. That let-go is sannyas.

Prem means love, vidheya means the yes-saying quality – a loving yes to an that is!

Prem means love, sarit means river – a river of love. Love is never a dormant thing; it is always flowing. The moment love is dormant it dies. It can live only in the flow. It can live only as growth, it can live only as movement; movement is very intrinsic to it. And because people all over the world have tried again and again to make love a possession, they have killed it. You cannot possess it. A thing can be possessed, a flow cannot be possessed. A dormant, stagnant thing can be possessed, but a riverlike flow – how can you possess it? It is a process: it goes on moving, it goes on changing.

The change is so intrinsic in love that the moment we decide to cling to it, we start suffocating it, we start killing it. Parents kill the quality of love when they cling to their children; and when they teach the children to cling to them, then even more calamity. Then husbands and wives cling to each other and try to possess each other. Then friends, and everywhere, in all relationships, the whole effort is to make unmovable something which is intrinsically movement. This effort is bound to fail, and because it fails love brings frustration. If love is allowed to flow then love will bring the greatest fulfilment possible.

So start teaching him from the very beginning that love has to remain a process, it always has to remain growing. It is unpredictable: we cannot say anything about where it will be tomorrow, how it will be, what it will be. Nothing can be said about tomorrow. Tomorrow will bring its own surprises, and we have to relax with it. Whatsoever it brings as a gift has to be thankfully accepted.

Veet means beyond, tamo means darkness – beyond the darkness. Man essentially is light but is surrounded by great darkness. The darkness is infinite and the light is very small, although it is more powerful than the infinite darkness because darkness is impotent. In fact darkness is not something in particular, it is just an absence. Darkness has no positive existence; it is only absence of light.

That’s why you cannot do anything directly with darkness: you cannot destroy it, you cannot bring it into the house, you cannot push it out of the house. If you want to do something with darkness you will have to do something indirectly. You will have to bring light in then darkness goes out or you will have to turn the light off then darkness comes in. Because darkness has no existence nothing can be done directly about it. And that is one of the greatest problems that man has always been facing.

He starts fighting with darkness, directly, and then the whole effort is futile, absurd, ridiculous. And it simply dissipates your energy.

For example, a man who is fighting with his anger is fighting with darkness. Anger has no existence of its own, it is only absence of compassion. So is the case with hate: it has no existence, it is only the absence of love. So the people who are fighting with anger and with greed and with hate are just wasting their time. They will never be victorious.

The only person who can ever be victorious is q the one who starts searching for the light. And once the light is there and you pour your energies into the source of the light, it grows bigger and bigger and bigger and you become full of light. In that state there is no anger. Even if you want to be angry you cannot; at the most you can pretend, act. Then there is no hate, no greed, no possessiveness.

The whole darkness of life simply disappears when the light is there.

Meditation is the search for the light. Morality is the fight with darkness. So the moral person goes on moving into a wasteland. He never attains anything; he always remains empty and poor. The meditator is the only one who attains because his direction is to find the light, to search for the light...

and the light is there! It is very small right now, just a spark, but if you go into it and you pour all your energies into it, it becomes a great fire. Then the whole forest is on fire!

Sannyas is to be aflame, afire. Hence the colour orange has been chosen: it is the colour of fire, of light, of the sunrise. So remember this: my work here is not to make you moral but to make you a meditator. And the beauty is that when you are a meditator morality comes on its own; it follows like a shadow. It is a consequence. One need not bother about it at all.

When you go for a morning walk you need not bother about your shadow. You don’t look behind you again and again to see whether your shadow is coming with you or not. It comes, it has to come.

Morality is a shadow of meditation.

[Osho explains the meaning of deva amira – divine richness, divine kingdom – reminding us that we are made in god’s image; we have all the potential to be emperors, yet remain beggars because we never look within.

He tells the story of the child found some years ago near Lucknow who was reared by wolves till he was discovered, and finally died through the efforts of doctors to humanise him.]

Now what had happened? He was born as a human being but he was not given the human environment. He was born to become a human being but he was not nurtured.

This is the case with all human beings: everybody is born with the capacity to look within but nobody is nurtured, so we never come to know about our own potential, about our own possibilities and peaks and depths. And we have infinite depths – the Pacific is nothing. We have great heights

– the Himalayas are nothing.

A special nurturing field is needed. That’s what I am trying to create here, a Buddhafield where you can be reminded again and again that you are a Buddha, that less than that won’t satisfy, not to settle for less than that, that you have all the greatest possibilities that any man ever had or will ever have in the future. Search for it!

I am here to create a great thirst in you. And to be initiated into sannyas is to be initiated into my Buddhafield. To be initiated simply means that you are ready to become part of this commune, of this great experiment which will remain invisible to millions of people, which will be visible only to those who participate.

This is not something that anybody can know about by being a spectator. This is something so subtle that unless you are part of it you will never be able to taste of it.

[Pragito – a song.]

Life can be thought of either as a logical syllogism or as a musical song. These are the two alternatives: either life can be arithmetic or it can be poetry. And man has two minds inside his head. One is the calculative mind. That calculative mind is very mechanical, obviously, its function is to calculate. If you are after money then the calculative mind is perfectly skilful and efficient. But if you are in love, it is utterly meaningless. Then you have to move to another side of your mind, the side that knows how to love, the side that knows how to be sensitive, the side that is intuitive, the side out of which poetry is born. These are two separate minds.

The left hemisphere is calculative. It is connected with the right hand, that’s why the right hand has become very important. The right hemisphere of the brain is poetic, it is a song. It knows nothing of calculation, it is very innocent. It knows how to love. It knows how to be madly in love, but it is irrational, emotional. This mind is connected with the left-hand side. Because the society values arithmetic very much, it values the right hand, so the right hand is right and the left hand is wrong.

That has become the general assumption. It is not true.

The left hand needs to rebel. And with the left-hand rebellion, the whole structure of society will change. If the right hand remains predominant then woman will never become equal to man, because the woman means the intuitive mind, the irrational mind; the woman means the left hand.

And if the right hand remains predominant then life will never know what joy is, because through calculation you cannot come to joy. Joy is not a calculation, joy is a very very non-calculative process. Joy is available only to those who are childlike, still full of wonder, awe, still interested in the small things of life.

... You have to change from the logical to the illogical, and to be a sannyasin is the beginning of that.

This is the revolution of sannyas: moving from the calculative part of the mind to the non-calculative.

I am not against the calculative, it has its own uses, utilities, but it should not be the dominant one, it should not be the master of your life, it should not be the captain of your soul!

Poetry should be the central force of your life. Celebration, not calculation, should be the most important thing. And calculation should serve your celebration, mm? then you are on the right track, then you are moving towards god. And then things are no more upside-down; everything is in harmony.

Your name is an indication, it contains a message for you – to move from syllogism to song. Dance more, sing more, play. Love music and love trees and rocks and mountains and stars and people....

And then slowly slowly you will see a totally new fragrance arising out of your life, which fulfils.

Prem nado.... It means love music. Love has its own music. It is not produced on any instrument; it arises out of a silent heart of its own accord. In fact it is already there but it is a very still small voice, and the mind is so full of noise that you cannot hear it, you cannot contact it. Once the noise of the mind is dropped it starts arising. And when the music of love fills you then only do you know what god is. There is no other proof for god, only love is the proof. And god comes into your life as music arising from your very core.

Man is made of music. That is one of the greatest findings of the mystics: the whole existence is in a harmony, it is a great orchestra, and man is a miniature universe, man is also an orchestra. But to feel it we need a little better sensitivity, a deeper sensuousness, a more clear perspective.

That perspective arises out of your meditations; hence in this place all meditations are somehow joined with music. The outer music starts functioning as the catalytic agent for the inner, so the outer music creates a synchronicity in the inner world. It cannot cause it, there is no cause-effect relationship between the outer and the inner, but it can provoke the inner without causing it. It can simply make you suddenly aware one day that there is outside music and there is something inside happening also, parallel to it. And once you have become aware of the inner music then there is no need for the outer music. Then there are silent meditations like vipassana, zazen: you simply sit and you hear. You simply sit and you are overwhelmed....

CHAPTER 23

23 November 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Madhu means sweet, veda means wisdom – sweet wisdom. Knowledge is never sweet because it is something foreign. It burdens you; it is a pollution, a poisoning of your system. It does not grow out of you, hence It can’t be sweet. And because it is imposed, you are a victim of it. It is a violence perpetuated by the society on the individual.

The society forces its past on every child. It does not allow anybody to grow in his own way; it wants you to become a psychological slave. Knowledge is the strategy to do that. The schools, the colleges, the universities, all serve psychological slavery. They are not in the service of the future; they are in the service of the past. They are never evolutionary; they are always reactionary.

They serve the status quo, the vested interests. Their only purpose is to reduce you to a skilful mechanism; hence it is a rape on the individual and his freedom.

But wisdom is totally different. It does not come from the outside, it is your own fragrance. When you grow and bloom it is there. It is a sun that rises within. It is another name for your own consciousness.

It has a purity because it is deeply in tune with your nature. Rather than burdening you, it unburdens you; rather than making you a slave it makes you a master; rather than reducing you to serving other people’s goals it gives you freedom so that you can be your authentic self. And to be one’s self, to be one’s true self, is to know what sweetness is. The sweetness simply represents the taste of nectar. When one comes to know one’s self one comes to know immortality. In knowing one’s self one transcends all limitations of time and space.

Deva means divine, aruno means the rising sun – the rising sun of divinity. And that1s what sannyas is all about. The sun has always been there, just very close to the horizon, but we have not allowed it to come up, we have not helped it to come up; on the contrary, we have been repressing it. Our whole life is very ridiculous. We repress that which is our essential core and we express that which is just a pseudo artifact. We repress the real and we express the unreal; this is the absurdity of our life.

The individual in us remains in darkness and the personality we go on exhibiting everywhere. The personality is a false phenomenon. It is just a mask, it is not our real face. But we have become too attached to the mask and we have completely forgotten the real face, the original face. And it is only in recognising the original face that one’s life starts growing, because only the real can grow; the unreal can never grow. The unreal remains stuck; only the real is dynamic, moving, flowing. The real is always a process and the unreal is always a thing.

But there are a few things which make us too attached to the unreal. First: it is manipulatable. It is very secure, you can rely upon it; tomorrow it is going to remain the same, and the day after tomorrow too, and so on, so forth. It is predictable, it is safe, because it never changes.

To live with the changing is always unsafe, insecure. One never knows ! One remains unpredictable There is no way of knowing what the next moment is going to bring. But if you have a mask, the next moment also the same face will be there; you need not worry. And not only do you feel safe; others feel safe around you. They can depend on you; you have a certain character, a certain mask, a certain personality; you cannot go against it.

But they are also afraid to live with a real individual who is always changing. The real individual cannot promise. He cannot make any promises, because he will say ’How can I make any promise for tomorrow? – it is yet unknown. I don’t know who I am going to be tomorrow, what circumstances, what stimulants, will bring what ind of responses. It is all in the dark.’

The society does not want this kind of growing people. Nobody feels secure with them. They themselves feel insecure and everybody else feels insecure.

Your wife would not like your

individuality, because your individuality can fall in love with some other woman tomorrow. But your personality is dependable, your personality is the husband; is not you. Your personality is the marriage contract; your personality can be dragged to the court, your personality can be made to pay. Your personality has to be answerable, but the individuality is never answerable to anybody, not even to one’s self.

The personality is very consistent; only dead things are consistent. And whenever there is something alive and growing it is bound to be consistent; it cannot be consistent with its past and still grow. The tree was five feet tall, now it is ten feet tall; it is not consistent, it is very inconsistent. The river was moving to the south, now suddenly turns and starts moving to the east; it is very inconsistent.

Life is inconsistence. But to live with consistency needs great courage so people have decided to live with synthetic personalities, and that’s how we have repressed our real being. And that real being is hankering, longing, to come up; it wants to rise above the horizon, and without its rising above the horizon there is going to be no fulfilment ever. Fulfilment is withe essential, with individuality and security is with the false personality.

To be a sannyasin means that one takes the risk of being insecure, that one decides to change one’s gestalt from the false to the real, whatsoever the cost. Only one thing can be said: to live in insecurity is to live in tremendous joy. To live in insecurity is the only way to live. To live in security is a way of dying, a slow suicide, comfortable, convenient. Comfortably one lives and comfortably one dies but one really never lives. And the person who never lives, even his death is false.

How can you die a real death if you have lived an unreal life? Only a man of this type, men like Socrates, die an authentic death, or a man like Jesus dies a true death. And the beauty and the miracle and the paradox is that the true death takes you to the deathless. True life leads you into true death; true death leads you beyond death, it leads you into the deathless. One who is able to die truly is ready to be resurrected. The resurrection automatically follows a true death.

That is the whole meaning of the parable of Jesus’ resurrection. It is a myth, tremendously pregnant with meaning, but the Christians have destroyed the whole beauty of it. They have tried to make it a historical fact, and whenever a myth is reduced to, or projected as, a historical fact it loses all significance. It becomes ugly, it becomes a pretension because it is a false thing; it is untrue.

Resurrection is the other side of a true death, but the true death is the climax of a true life. And to live truly and to die truly is my only message!

The sun is there, just very close to the horizon – if you allow it will start rising!

[A sannyasin asks: How can I change problem-solving thinking, which is result-oriented, into meditation?]

Just do one thing: let the mind solve the problem, kt the mind go through the whole process of solving the problem, but you be a witness; don’t become identified with the mind.

The mind is a mechanism, a computer; precisely that’s what the mind is. You are not it, you are the watcher behind. You can see all the manoeuvres of the mind, you can see all the climates and the moods of the mind; you need not get identified with them. That’s where the problem arises. Nothing else is ever a problem: the only problem is that we get identified.

For example: there is a thought of anger passing through the mind, your biocomputer is very hot, angry, at something or other. You can watch it in a very detached and cool way, you can see ’Yes, the mechanism is hot.’ It is just as when something goes wrong in the car and you start feeling that the engine is getting hot; you don’t become identified with it. Although I know people who are even identified with their cars! They become hot when their engine becomes hot.

A distance has to be created. So let the engine be there, let the engine be hot – watch, simply watch!

And I am not saying ’Don’t be angry.’ I am not saying to repress anger. I am not saying anything of that kind. I am not saying ’Evaluate that this is bad.’ No evaluation is needed; you simply wait without any evaluation. Simply look at the whole process, watch it without any prejudice, without any bias; just see what is happening, see the fact of it! Just as you see a leaf falling from the tree, see that the mind is in anger. And when the anger starts going watch its going. When the engine is cool again watch its coolness. So many things come and go through the mind, you remain there, far away, a watcher on the hills.

This is an art, you learn only by doing it: the more you do, the more you will be able to do it. Once this art is learned, slowly slowly you become tremendously capable. And then the mind can go on doing its work; it is not a disturbance to you.

I am not against the mind; I am only against identification. And when you are not identified, you have surpassed the mind. Then you are the master: you can use the mind. And the mind is of great use; it is one of the greatest gifts of god. So don’t try to change the processes of the mind. Rather than changing the processes of the mind, you just learn new art, a new way of looking at the mind.

A new context has to be learned, a new perspective. This you try!

[Osho checks the energy of a sannyasin recently returned from the West.]

You are ready for many many things! And it is always a question of being ripe. A person can make many efforts but if he is not ripe all those efforts are doomed to fail. And not only that, if those efforts fail he will lose self-confidence too; next time he will find it very difficult to do anything again. That’s what happens to many people: many people start meditating but the time is not right, the season has not come and they fail. And if you fail too many times, you lose confidence; you fall into a kind of despair. You start thinking that this is not for you or, maybe, this is all nonsense.

By being with a master this can be prevented. The master starts work only when the person is ripe; otherwise he tries to prepare him for the real thing to be done. But you are ripe, and there is no need of any preparation. You can simply dive into the infinite, you can dive into the depths of the divine.

And the reason is that you have a very innocent approach towards life. You are not knowledgeable, you are not academic about life. You have the heart of an artist.

And the heart of an artist is very close, closer than anybody else’s heart, to the heart of the mystic.

The artist is a mystic who has not yet become aware, that’s all. He is groping; he is already in the shrine but groping, not knowing where he is. The mystic knows. But the space is the same, and you are already in the space. Just a little more light, just a little more rootedness, a little more centering, and all will become luminous.

I am happy with the way you are: you have the right kind of space for me to penetrate you. So for the few days you are here remain as open as possible, as vulnerable as possible. Remain in tune with me as deeply as possible. Don’t allow any doubt to disturb you, to come between me and you.

It is a love affair, and doubts disturb love affairs very deeply.

And one cannot live in a doubt, one cannot live in a no. The no has no space, so you cannot live in it. One can only live in a yes. Yes is infinite. It has all the space of the world, it contains the whole universe.

So be in a yes, in a total yes, and things will start happening on their own accord. So meditate, dance, sing... become a child!

[A sannyasin visiting for the first time says: I was very clear when I came but now being here these days I’m full of doubt and wondering if I’m supposed to be here. Things like that have come up.]

That is natural.... If you come full of doubts, the first impact is that your doubts disappear and you are full of trust. If you come full of trust the first impact is that your trust disappears and you become full of doubt. And the reason is that the mind has both together. Half of your mind is a trusting mind and half of your mind is a doubting mind. So if you come with a trusting mind, by the time you reach here you are already tired of it, so you shift. It is just for a change, you shift to the doubting side. If you come with the doubting mind, the same thing happens: you are tired of it so you shift.

This happens to almost everybody. It does not happen to people who come without any doubt and without any trust, who simply come with no particular attitude. Then it doesn’t happen, because it can’t happen. It depends on you.

That’s why it is easier to believe in a dead master, because he will never create any doubt in you. It is easy to believe in Jesus, because now Jesus is just a fiction of your own mind. You can project anything on him, and he has to be like that. When he was alive it was not so.

When you come to me you come full of expectations, and they are very unconscious! If they are not fulfilled, doubts arise. And how can they be fulfilling? If I am going to fulfil the expectations of everybody who comes here, just think what will happen? Thousands of people come with thousands of expectations. I have to be simply myself; I cannot fulfil anybody’s expectations. And it is very rare for a person to come without expectations; that’s not the way of the mind. The mind has already decided a few things; without knowing anything the mind has already concluded, it has many a priori ideas.

If a Mohammedan comes here he expects me to be like Mohammed, and I am not! It is very unconscious.... He will not find Mohammed here, and then he is disturbed. He would like me to say things which are written in his Koran and I will be saying things which I have to say; then there will be disturbance. And there is a gap of fourteen hundred ears between me and Mohammed, so how can I say things which Mohammed used to say? It is impossible, I will be so out of date.

And how can I fulfil...? because here are Mohammedans, and Christians and Jews and Parsis and Jainas and Buddhists and Hindus and Sikhs. Almost all the religions of the world are represented by people here; they all come with their ideas.

You will be surprised, you don’t know this: there is a sect of Jaina monks who don’t speak in the night. Now if a Jaina comes from that sect and he sees that I am talking in the night – finished! I am no more enlightened! Because how can an enlightened person speak in the night? They don’t even sit in the light in the night, because the light may kill a few insects. It creates heat, a few moths may come and die; then who is responsible? And they believe in absolute non-violence, so in the night a Jaina monk sits without light. He cannot read, he cannot talk, because if you talk hot air comes out of your mouth: It can kill small germs in the air.

There are three hundred religions on the earth and all have their own a priori conclusions. So whenever you come, you will have to learn one thing: drop your expectations. You will have to see me as I am, not as you would like me to be.

And I have no expectation of you – that again creates the problem. Because if you go to a Christian you can expect a few things from him; in return he expects a few things from you. So there is a mutual arrangement: you fulfil his expectations; he fulfils your expectations. But with me there is no question of any mutual arrangement. I fulfil nobody’s expectations and I have no expectations of anybody. I help you to be yourself, whatever that means. I don’t impose a pattern on you, I don’t want you to be a certain kind of person; I simply want you to be free, to be yourself. I give you freedom and I teach you freedom, because I don’t have any expectations of you, of what you should eat and what you should not eat and how you should live and how you should not live.

You will have to learn at least that much, that I don’t expect anything of anybody; nobody should expect anything of me. Then there is no question of doubt, no problem arises. You are here simply to learn if something can be learned. Why bother about doubt? What has that to do with you? You are here to imbibe something, to learn something. If it is useful, learn it; if it is not useful, forget an about it. But give it a try. And your doubts won’t allow you to give it a try; they will disturb you.

So be here neither as a believer nor as a non-believer; just be here to be available. to see what is happening.

And people get disturbed over such small things, ridiculous things, but they get disturbed about them. One has to be very alert. To be with me means to be with a certain phenomenon about which you cannot have any expectation; otherwise you will miss the whole opportunity.

And I am not saying to trust. I am simply saying to drop your a priori expectations and doubts will disappear. And when there is no doubt arising what is left is trust. I am not saying to trust me. Trust is not against doubt, it is just the absence of doubt. Then there is trust. Trust is not belief or faith; trust is just an open heart. Trust does not mean that you believe in me, because belief presupposes doubt. First you have to doubt; only then can you believe. Belief is a process of repressing the doubt. So I am not telling you to believe in me. Why should you believe in me? There is no need. I am simply saying to put the doubt aside so you can learn something.

It is not going to harm me whether you doubt me or not – it is going to harm you. So it is your problem and you have to see it: if you doubt me you ill miss the opportunity. That’s your choice. If you put the doubt aside seeing that it is your expectation.... And why should you expect anything from me?

Why should you expect anything from this commune? This commune is not run according to your idea, so there is no problem. This commune has no commitment to run according to anybody else, so there is no problem.

These people have decided to be with me, so let them be! You are here to learn something, to meditate, to sing, to celebrate. Why bring in these things to disturb you? Put them aside and then you will start finding a trust arising in you which is not belief, which is not faith; it is nothing but love.

It is neither belief nor disbelief, it is just pure love, and in that love there is great splendour. In that love there is great benediction.

Just dance and sing and those expectations will disappear, and with those expectations doubts will go. Doubts are shadows of expectations.

CHAPTER 24

24 November 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Veet means beyond, ahmo means ego. The truth is very close by; just a thin layer of the ego is preventing it. It is really a very thin layer, because the ego is not substantial. It is not an entity, It is not a thing; it is just an activity. In fact the ego should used as a verb rather than as a noun. It is more ego-ing than ego. And to ego is the whole activity of the mind; it perpetuates the idea of I.

It is a false idea, so you have to continuously perpetuate it. Even if for one moment you forget to perpetuate it, it is no more there. So whenever you forget to perpetuate it you are in tune with life, and those are the moments of joy, bliss and benediction.

Seeing a bird on the wing you are lost in the beauty and the freedom of the bird. You have forgotten yourself and there is great joy. You didn’t perpetuate the idea in that moment, you were not separate from reality; you became one. The observer became the observed.

Or seeing a sunrise or a sunset or seeing a rose flower or listening to music or being in love....

Whenever you forget ego-ing, whenever you don’t support the constant activity, it immediately disappears; it is very non-substantial. In deep sleep it disappears. You don’t know who you are, you don’t know even that you are. In a deep spiritual state – in meditation, in love, in dance – it disappears, or whenever you are totally involved in something, so totally that you cannot perpetuate the constant process of the ego. You are painting something or you are playing the guitar or you are just cooking for a friend who is to come, and you are totally in it, nothing is outside it. You are no more a doer, you have become the doing. Then suddenly there is no ego and there is great joy. Joy is nothing but absence of the ego-ing process.

And it is really a very thin layer so it disappears in a single moment. Whenever you forget, it disappears, and whenever it is not there you are one with reality. That oneness is felt as bliss.

That’s what happens in a deep sexual orgasm: two persons have forgotten ego-ing. They lose boundaries, they melt into each other. They forget that they are, and the moment they forget that they are, they are for the first time! So each moment of joy is a very paradoxical moment: on the one hand you disappear, on the other hand you appear for the first time.

And sannyas is a certain style of life in which slowly slowly you stop ego-ing. You become more and more conscious and you drop ego-ing, and then one day it becomes your natural state. When ego-ing has disappeared, you have arrived home.

Let this be the beginning of that great arrival... the first step!

Deva means divine, sonya means gold – divine gold, and this is the alchemical name. All the alchemies of the world, Eastern and Western, use gold as a metaphor for the ultimate flowering of man. Man has to be transformed from the baser metal into the most precious metal, gold. Born, man is just a base metal. Unless one works upon it, purifies it, transports it into new planes, into new dimensions, one remains nothing but the earth. If one starts working upon oneself then slowly slowly the sky penetrates one’s being; then one is no more just the earth. The earth becomes the vehicle and the sky becomes the innermost reality. Then even the body, the earthly part, is beautiful, because now the temple is no more empty; the deity of the temple has arrived. That arrival is known as the gold.

So to change man from baser metal into gold is the whole process of alchemy and the whole process of religion too. And this is what we are doing here. This is an alchemical field. Something of immense value is being done. It is not available to spectators, it cannot be; it has never been available to the spectators. It is such an inner and subtle process that one has to become a participant to know about it.

To be a sannyasin is to be an apprentice in an alchemical school. Long is the process, arduous is the task, but the payoff is infinite! And how long it takes depends on your intensity. If your intensity is total it can happen in a single moment too. It all depends on intensity. If the intensity is just lukewarm it can take lives. So let sannyas become a very passionate affair. Let it be hot, not just so-so. And then you are very close to something which you have been seeking and searching for not only in this life but in other lives too! Everybody has been seeking and searching; everybody wants to be transformed, because to live as one is born is ugly.

The way man ordinarily lives is the life of imprisonment – chained to a thousand and one slaveries, and all is dark, all is frustrating, an is just anguish. One wants to be transformed into the world of light and freedom and love, and those are nothing but other names for god. One can call god freedom, one can call god love, one can call god light, or whatsoever one wills.

Make effort and put all that you have at the stake.

Deva means divine, madhu means wine, any intoxicant – divine intoxicant.

Man can find god only when he learns how to forget himself. Forgetfulness of oneself is the remembrance of god. You cannot keep both together – it has to be either you or god. We all are too full of our own selves. We are continuously remembering ourselves, hence it is impossible to remember god; they don’t mix. They are like light and darkness. If you want darkness then you cannot bring light in; if you want to bring light in, you have to renounce darkness, you have to lose your love for darkness. The ego is love for darkness; god is light.

We cling to the ego so deeply that we talk about god, but basically we are afraid, frightened of god.

If suddenly god comes and knocks on your door and says ’Can I come in?’ you will not be able to say ’Yes’ immediately; you will say ’I have to think about it.’ And you may take lives to think about it, because to allow god in means that you disappear, you will never be found again!

That is the meaning of becoming so intoxicated with god that one forgets oneself. Intoxication is a metaphor for forgetting, for losing one’s self. And the greatest experience of life is to lose one’s self and yet be conscious. That condition has to be fulfilled. Many people lose the themselves – in alcohol, in psychedelic drugs, in sex. Many people lose themselves, but just by losing themselves they have not attained anything, maybe a few moments of relaxation, but again the whole misery comes back and the whole hell starts. And it is even worse than it was before, because when you were oblivious of yourself, it was gathering, collecting around you, it was accumulating.

To be intoxicated and to be conscious... then the miracle happens. That cannot be done by ordinary intoxicants, because the moment you are under the impact of alcohol you forget yourself, but you are not conscious either. So self-forgetfulness becomes unconsciousness too.

And that is the whole process of meditation: to help you to become intoxicated and yet keep you alert and awake. A conscious self-forgetfulness – that is the subtle art of meditation. It is very delicate. It is easy to remember yourself, it is easy to forget yourself, both are easy. Any chemical drug can help and you can forget yourself. The difficult thing is to forget yourself and yet be aware.

When there is no self but only the pure light of awareness inside, that is the moment god comes in, that is the preparation. That is when you become ready to receive That is when you become a womb, that is when you become pregnant with the divine.

So this name has to be an indication. It has to be decoded, it has to become your very life style.

Drop the self and remain conscious. People are self-conscious. The self has to be dropped and the consciousness has to be raised higher and higher. When there is no self and only consciousness –

that’s what meditation is all about – the door opens and infinite mysteries start flooding in from every direction. From every nook and comer of existence god rushes towards you and fills you. When the self has left, you are empty; now you can be filled. The condition to be filled is to be empty.

Trust is not belief. Belief is never without doubt; belief is a repressed doubt. You have hushed the doubt inside and you have painted it on the surface as belief. So in each believer you will find deep down a doubter. Hence the believer is always afraid to talk about his belief. He is afraid to listen to something that goes against his belief. He knows that anything can provoke his own doubt, anything can help the doubt to come to the surface. He is very defensive, very protective, always on guard.

And his belief is superficial; it is borrowed. He has taken it from others – parents, society, state, church; he has not earned it. It is not his own. growth, hence it is a burden. It is luggage that he has to carry, and unnecessary luggage because it is a dead weight; it has no life in it.

Life happens only when some experience is authentically yours, then it is alive, then it has a heartbeat in it. Whenever you have taken the experience from somebody else it is a lie. It may have been a truth to the other person, but it can’t be a truth for you. There is no way of borrowing truths; in the very borrowing they become lies. Each one has to arrive on his own.

Each one has to seek and search and suffer and go through all the pains of the journey, all the turmoils, all the anxieties, all the pitfalls. Only then does one become ripe enough. That ripening is absolutely necessary. You cannot be spoon-fed. Truth is not Like that, it is not transferable from one hand to another. One has to live it; that is the only way of knowing it.

So trust is not belief, trust is your own experience. Never believe in anything but remain open for everything. That is the foundation, the very ground, of a real search: being open to everything and not believing in anything. How can one believe unless one has known? I am not saying to become a disbeliever, because that too is a belief, a negative belief but still a belief.

Don’t be a believer, don’t be a non-believer, just remain open, a seeker, a searcher. And one who is ready to do that has already taken a very very essential step towards truth. Because the mind always wants to believe. The mind lives through beliefs, borrowed information, theories, philosophies, systems, religions. The mind is nothing but all that you have borrowed from others; the mind lives through borrowing. The moment you stop borrowing the mind starts disappearing; it accumulates no more.

Sooner or later you are in a kind of emptiness, and that emptiness is the true beginning; the beginning of the great pilgrimage that ends in god or truth. And only when you have experienced something does trust arise. Trust is absence of doubt. Belief is repression of doubt. Trust is beautiful, belief is ugly.

Idam means thisness; shunyo means nothingness. The only right way to live is to live in the now; neither in the past nor in the future but in the present, because the present is the only reality and only the real can be the door to the ultimately real.

The past is no more, it is only a memory, a hangover. Living in the past one can never find god. And living in the future is living in imagination, in that which is not yet. Living in the future nobody can ever find god either.

The door to god is this moment, now, here. That is the meaning of idam. It means to live in this.

This is it – there is no need to go anywhere, there is no need to search into the past, there is no need to desire in the future. This small atomic moment is the door to god. And whenever you are herenow suddenly you are surrounded by the divine. Whenever it happens, knowingly, unknowingly, whenever it happens suddenly there is the quality of the divine. Listening to music it can happen.

Sitting silently doing nothing you can fall in tune with the present moment; then it can happen. In the mountains, with the silence of the mountains, you can fall in harmony and it can happen. It can happen in a thousand and one ways.

And it happens to everybody, once in a while it happens to everybody. It is very rare to find a person who has not tasted of the divine in some moment or other. It may be that he has not recognised it as divine. He may not even have taken any note of it, because it is so absurd; it does not fit with the rest of his life. It is so outlandish that one thinks maybe it is just a figment of imagination or maybe just a mood or one was feeling good, one had a certain well-being, this and that... things were going well and nature was beautiful.... One finds rationalisations, one tries to find an explanation for such beautiful moments which really have no explanation, which come from the beyond, which descend whenever one is herenow.

So idam has to become your meditation. Whatsoever you are doing be in that moment, and if the mind moves here and there, bring it back.

One has to behave with the mind just as you go with your dog for a morning walk. The dog goes here and the dog goes there, and he enters into this bush and he tries to fight with some other dog, and you have to pull him back again and again. The mind is like a dog: it goes into the past, it goes into the future. You have to constantly pull it back to the present. Slowly slowly it becomes accustomed. It is a kind of training, a discipline for the mind.

’Idam’ is a very significant word. It contains the whole discipline of meditation. This single word is enough.

A Zen master was dying and the disciples had gathered for the last message. This has been a tradition in Zen: in the last moment the master gives his final message; it may be a small verse, a haiku, just a simple statement or a gesture. So the disciples were waiting and then one disciple said

’Sir, you are slowly slowly leaving your body; we can see that you are disappearing. What about the last message?’

The master opened his eyes and at that very moment a squirrel ran on the roof, making noise. The master raised his finger and he said ’This is it!’... and he died with his raised finger. The message is absolutely clear and loud: ’This is it!’ This is the whole message, not only of Zen but of all true religion.

In English we have to say three words: ’This is it’. Idam contains all the three in a single word. It means: this is it! So bring yourself again and again to the present.

And the second word, ’shunyo’, will be the outcome of it. Shunyo means absolute nothingness.

When one is in the present, one disappears, one becomes a nobody. Great space is created inside, and that space is god. Nothingness is the beginning of all.

The first taste is that of nothingness, all disappears, and then suddenly something starts descending.

Into that emptiness descends the beyond. First one has to become spacious enough for god; the space has to be created. Idam creates space; that space is known as shunyo. Actually the word means zero. A great zero arises in you; your name disappears; nothing is left. And that is the moment of transformation. When nothing is left, all falls into you. When you are nothing then you become all. Then one is one with god, and that is the goal of life....

Just be here... just drink of me as much as you can, become more and more available to me.

Something immensely valuable can happen, something of which you have never even dreamt is possible. And you are so close to its actualisation that just availability will be enough.

So become one with my people, with this energy-field, and whatsoever you can do, do. Dance, sing, meditate, sit silently, and just remain available to me, that has to be the keynote, in a kind of passive receptivity.

If you can do that, then the remaining I will do!

Prem means love, sandipti means aflame – aflame with love, afire with love. Love is fire, and a very necessary fire to pass through.

Those who avoid it are unfortunate. They become afraid of the fire, they become frightened and scared. But it is only by going through the fire that one’s life can be transformed. The mutation cannot happen without it; without it one remains just a mind. Only by going through it does one become a heart. It is the fire of love that creates heart, and not to have a heart is the greatest calamity that can happen to a man. But millions of people are living without a heart. And when I use the word ’heart’ I don’t mean the physical heart.

The heart is a spiritual centre of your being. It is not the pumping system to purify your blood; that is not the real heart, it is the physical part of it. Hidden behind it is a centre which is not functioning in millions of people, and that’s why they are in misery, because only the heart can bring joy. Those flowers bloom only through the heart, in the heart. They are heart flowers.

So those who avoid fire because of fear remain hung up in their heads; their whole life remains just of calculation, cleverness, but utterly ugly and utterly impotent. They never come to know what fulfilment is. They lose all possibilities of attaining any meaning. Meaning is possible only when you go through the fire.

The fire makes you afraid only because you have not entered it. Once you enter it all fear disappears.

One becomes really enchanted. The adventure is such that one is ready to risk all for it. And the deeper you go, the cooler does the fire become; only the first impact is hot. The deeper you go, the cooler becomes the fire. At the deepest, love is the coolest breeze possible. Then fire is only light, it burns no more. But those are the experiences which happen only to people who go into it.

Never be afraid of love, because it is love that will bring you close to your heart, and it is the heart that can open the doors to god. God can enter only through the heart; he cannot come through the head.

The head has no possibility of having any contact with god. The head can create great science, great technology, but it cannot create great poetry, great mysticism; those are not its possibilities.

So remember it: my fire is the fire of love. I initiate you into sannyas just to initiate you into deeper realms of love, because the ultimate climax of love is god.

[The new sannyasin says:... will you help me? Will you be my father?]

I will be more than a father. Fathers can’t help. In fact they have disturbed the whole thing! So I will be something more, something far more. A master is a father, is a mother, is a lover, is a friend, is a guide all rolled into one!

Don’t be worried – all help will be given to you. Once you become a sannyasin it is my responsibility.

For you it is easy to become a sannyasin. For me to accept you as a sannyasin is a great responsibility. Because when you become a sannyasin you are unconscious, you don’t know what you are, you don’t know what you are doing. But giving sannyas to you is a great responsibility for me. I am doing it in total awareness!

You need not be worried about it. I will be all that is needed; but I may not fulfil your expectations because your expectations cannot be right. They come out of your mind. Mm? you have a certain idea of how a father should be. I am not going to be that kind of a father. I will be a grand father! I will not fulfil your expectations.

But they need not be fulfilled at all, because if I fulfil your expectations I will not be able to change you. Fulfilling your expectations will be giving you more support as you are, and that is where the problem is. So leave it to me. You will get whatsoever is needed.

If pain is needed, pain will be given to you. If agony is needed, agony will be given to you. If ecstasy is needed, ecstasy will be given to you. Everything will come as the need arises. But drop all your expectations, otherwise you will be in constant trouble. Because you don’t know how much more I want to help you, your ideas will be very small. I want to really transform you all totally.

You come with small desires and small demands, and you will be very happy if those demands can be fulfilled, but I know that there are greater treasures available and I can give those treasures to you. But for those treasures I will have to change you, I will have to cut many chunks out of your being. It is painful, but once you have passed through those painful tests you will see a new person arising, a new being born, and birth is painful.

Leave that to me. By becoming a sannyasin you have given the signal to me that now I can start working on you!

CHAPTER 25

25 November 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Anand means bliss, and pritam means beloved – a blissful beloved. and the beloved is hiding in our own heart. The whole search outside is utterly meaningless. God is within but we seek him in the churches, in the temples, in the mosques, and we go on missing him. God is not in the scriptures either. The scriptures are beautiful, but empty. They are only footprints of somebody who had known the beloved, beautiful footprints in themselves but they are not the real thing.

Jesus knew the beloved. Now his words are collected; they have become the gospels. Now people are pondering over those words, thinking over those words, guessing, speculating, philosophising, wasting their time. Those words don’t contain the beloved, can’t contain the beloved.

The beloved is contained within you. No word can take you to that space. Only when all words have been dropped and all philosophies abandoned, all scriptures burned, metaphorically not literally, when one is utterly alone and not a single thought disturbs one does the beloved emerge. It is a miracle, because he emerges out of your own nothingness. He emerges not out of your mind –

because the mind is all that you know; he never emerges out of your knowledge – he emerges out of your heart, he emerges out of your feelings, he emerges out of your sensitivity. Out of your aliveness he emerges.

This is what I call the beloved, and to know the beloved is to be blissful. Not to know the beloved is to remain in misery.

Search within, seek within, because all that one needs is there; it is already provided. You have brought it with you, it is born in you, it is you in fact, it is not separate from you.

Love people, love trees, love animals. Never miss an opportunity to love. The more you love, the closer you come to god.

Veet means beyond, mano means the mind – beyond the mind. The mind is the original sin. The mind is the fall. To be in the mind is to be outside the Garden of Eden. To be in the mind is to expel oneself from the kingdom of god. Adam is not expelled; he himself has fallen. And the story of Adam and Eve is not a story of somebody in the past; it is the story of each single human being, and it happens again and again. It is not a historical event, it is a continuous happening. It is very existential. The world has many beautiful parables but there is no comparison with the parable of Adam and Eve; this is the most fundamental fact of life.

The mind is not your self, the mind is not you, but it is very close, and you can easily get identified; that is the fall. The self is a screen, a pure screen, on which all kinds of things arise, out of which they arise. For a moment they are there and then they disappear again like the waves of an ocean.

You cannot call a wave the ocean; if you do, that is the fall. The waves come and go; the ocean remains. The ocean is the background of all the waves, the screen on which they arise, remain, fall, disappear. They are a momentary phenomenon, they are just events, with a birth, with a life and with a death. They are changing phenomena.

The self is like an ocean: thoughts arise in it and desires arise in it, and imagination and fantasy and all kinds of waves arise in it, but the self cannot be identified with any content that arises in it.

The self is the context of all contents. It is always behind, beyond, it is always transcendental. In its purity it is only a witness: it only sees what is happening.

The moment you become attached to what is happening, the mind arises.

The mind is an

attachment. A thought moves and you become attached to it, you become identified with it. You say ’I am it. I am a Christian.’ This is an attachment. ’I am a Hindu.’ This is an attachment, this is the mind. The self is neither Hindu nor Christian. The mind is Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan and so on, so forth. The mind is Communist, the mind is Catholic, the mind is this and that. The self is a pure witness. There may be a thought which is Catholic or Hindu or Communist, but it is only a thought; the mind is a witness to it. Knowing it, remaining in this witnessing, the mind disappears. Then you are no more attached, and in that detachment is meditation. Meditation is a state of no-mind.

Adam is mind; Christ is no-mind. Adam is falling away from the self towards the content; Jesus is returning home. Christ-consciousness means the journey back home. The detachment is arising, the attachment disappearing. One is searching for one’s source. Jesus has called it repentance. He does not mean what it has come to mean. The original root simply means returning home; to repent means to return, a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn, an about-turn. You change your whole direction. You were rushing towards the content and becoming the mind; now you turn your back to the content, you start facing the self. And suddenly the revolution has happened, the transformation has happened! This is real revolution, the only revolution there is; all other revolutions are just pseudo.

The self is a matrix, mater, mother: everything arises out of it and everything dissolves back into it, but it cannot be identified with any particular content. It contains all, hence it cannot be contained by anything. It remains a pure matrix, mater, mother. It is space, pure space.

Buddha has called it zero, shunyam. Out of this zero arises all. That’s the mystery of existence, that it comes out of nothingness and then It disappears into nothingness again. The mystery cannot be solved but it can be lived, and to live it is to be a sannyasin.

Sannyas is a journey back. It is repentance. It is withdrawing one’s self from the fall. It is dropping the mind and becoming the self. And remember: the self is not personal. The mind is personal, the mind is an ego. The self is not an ego, the self is universal. Your mind is yours, my mind is mine, but my self and your self are not separate.

And this is the beauty of falling in love with a master: you can drop the mind, because the mind can only be dropped in trust and love. Otherwise one is afraid. The mind protects, the mind helps you to survive. You can drop the mind only when there is so intense a love that one doesn’t care; then one can risk even one’s survival. And the moment you drop the mind, suddenly you are part of the universal self.

The self is only one; minds are millions. The self is god or nirvana or whatever you will – any name will do. But the whole process is getting disidentified with the mind. Watch the mind and remember that you are not it

[The new sannyasin says she feels it is time for her to change her work and environment. She was a therapist in the West.]

So the change will happen – just wait – no need to think about it. Just being here the change will happen; it is going to happen. And the time has really come.

So just be here, do a few groups, feel me. Get more and more drunk – dance and sing and meditate.

For at least one and a half months don’t think about it at all. Mm? just put it aside, and remind me after one and a half months. Things will have settled then, clarity will have arrived, and then things will be very easy.

I know already what is going to happen, but wait!

Deva means divine, jivan means life – divine life.

Life is more than just to survive, but millions of people have decided just to survive and not to live.

Their only value in life seems to be how to survive, how to survive for a long time. Survival has become their god, and because of it they have missed the whole opportunity of life. Because when survival becomes the goal you become afraid of living. Life is dangerous and one has to risk one’s survival again and again; only then can one live.

If one is too interested and obsessed with survival then one tries to be secure, safe, and in being secure and safe one becomes dead. One loses aliveness. Then one lives only superficially, with no depth, with no height. One’s life is very very dull, flat, boring. There is no adventure, no exploration, and no surprises, no mysteries; and nothing is ever revealed to such a person. He remains closed to existence and existence remains closed to him. They never meet; there is no communion.

Being initiated into sannyas means that from this moment survival will not be the goal, but life, not security but life, not safety but life. And to live intensely and totally even for a single moment is more valuable than to survive for a hundred years. That is not life; that is vegetating.

So the real man knows no other goal than life itself. Living totally is his goal; living moment to moment, intensely, passionately, hot, that is his goal. Then each moment becomes so precious, such a gift. And only when you know those gifts can you be thankful to god, can you feel grateful, can prayer arise in you.

I see survival as one of the greatest calamities, the idea of survival and the obsession with it and the attachment with it. It is worthless, the whole idea is meaningless. We are not here just to survive and live long – one hundred years or one hundred and twenty years. We are here to live and to know life in its multi-dimensions, to know life in all its richness, in all its variety. And when a man lives multidimensionally, explores all possibilities available, never shrinks back from any challenge, goes, rushes into it, welcomes it, rises to the occasion, then life becomes aflame, life blooms. Life knows what spring is, and then the spring is something that follows you wherever you are; it becomes your very climate, your milieu.

Deva means divine, sagaro means ocean – a divine ocean. Man is not a wave, although he appears like a small wave. But the appearance is not the truth; behind the wave there is a great ocean. The wave is only a door to the ocean. We are not what we appear; we are more than that, far more than that. We are windows into infinity, and not to know it is to remain in unnecessary misery. To know it, one enters into a totally different kind of life, a life of celebration. Because in knowing one’s self as vast, like the ocean, as infinite, like the sky, as eternal as life itself, all fears disappear. And then there is no death, there is no old age! The body gets old, the body dies, but one remains young and one never dies.

But one has to know the real, not the appearance. And the real can. be known. In fact it is not difficult to know it, it should not be difficult to know it – it is real – but we have become too invested in the unreal, and we have lived with the unreal for so long that all our values have become topsy-turvy.

My work here is to make your values natural, to put things in their right place. And the first thing to remember, and the most fundamental, is that you are not the body in which you are, and you are not the mind in which you are. When this realisation becomes an established, experienced fact, your life is immediately part of the eternal. And then all misery disappears, all darkness disappears; the light is there forever.

[A sannyasin couple are returning to the West to open a centre. They say: We’ve lived an incredibly beautiful life while we have been here... it’s been marvellous!]

It will go on growing. It has started and now there is no preventing it. The greatest problem is the beginning. Once the sprout has come out of the earth then it goes on growing of its own accord.

The fundamental has happened now wherever you are it will go on growing. Just find at least one or two hours to nourish it, to be with it. And your nourishing it will be of tremendous importance – not only to the new thing that is happening but to your whole life. The more you nourish this new plant, the more the plant will nourish you, and your life will start having a different flavour. The same world, and yet nothing will be the same. And the same work, but with a totally different, new, perspective, with new quality, with new vision. And much more is going to happen, so remain open.

[A sannyasin visiting for the first time is too overwhelmed to speak.]

Much is going to happen – just allow it. And that is the greatest thing to learn here: to allow. It is not much a question of your doing it. Much more important is your allowing it to happen.

All that is great in life happens; it can’t be done. And all that can be done remains mundane, ordinary, mediocre. ’Happiness’ and ’happening’ are derived from the same root, and it is significant.

It means that happiness is a happening. It is not a question of doing it, forcing it, coercing it. It is more a question of becoming available to it, allowing it, being in a let-go. And in the same way love happens. You cannot do love – it happens! And in the same way beauty, in the same way grace, in the same way meditation, and in the same way finally, god. So learn more and more how not to interfere.

The greatest art in life is the art of non-interference. Lao Tzu called it wu wei: action without action, doing something without doing it. And my whole work consists of wu wei. You have to just be a participant, you have to fall in step with all that is happening and then you can ride on the great energy wave that is available. But it is available only to those who participate; it is not available to the spectators. It can’t be available to the spectators, it is intrinsically impossible for spectators to see it. It is an experience.

So for these four months just forget the whole world. I am your world for these four months; nothing else exists and nothing else matters. And you will go completely transformed... you will go a new man!

CHAPTER 26

26 November 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin has followed his wife, of thirty years marriage, to the ashram after they separated. He wishes to live with her again and asks advice. He says the ashram has been a good influence on her.]

Mm mm. No, she is happy and things can start flowing again.

Mm. In fact, there are just a few misunderstandings, nothing else. And different characters always get into conflict. Just a little understanding and people can live together very happily. And to be able to live together with someone harmoniously is very significant for one’s self-knowledge, because your relationship is a mirror. If you can make your relationship smooth, beautiful, it reflects you. You change the relationship and the relationship changes you; it works both ways.

And we destroy our relationships for almost ridiculous reasons. People fall in love for something immensely great and fall out of love for ridiculous reasons. To fall in love means that something from the beyond has grasped you both, a bridge has happened. Your hearts have felt a rhythm. Each love-affair is divine, but then sooner or later we become accustomed to each other.

We start taking each other for granted and we start fighting unnecessarily for small things. The reason is that man has grown down the ages through the animals and all the animals are aggressive; for their survival it is a must.

Now man needs no aggression anymore but the instinct is there. We have surpassed that situation but the instinct it there. So the instincts go on working. And if we cannot find anybody else to fight with then certainly whosoever is close by – the wife, the husband, the children, the father – becomes a victim. We are just in the grip of an aggressive instinct which is no more needed, which has become completely out of date. Man has transcended the jungle but all that he has learned in the jungle is still there and still functions. So it finds vicarious ways to express itself.

It becomes politics, it becomes war. It becomes any nonsense: a football match and people start fighting for no reason at all, as if they were just looking for any excuse. Mm? you are a green shirt and I am a blue shirt – enough! Enough to shed blood. You are a Christian and I am a Mohammedan – enough! And the difference is not more than the blue shirt and the green shirt; it is the same aggressive instinct. And you can watch it: small boys start fighting on their playgrounds, in the clubs, in the hotels, and that continues. It is very rare to find a man who has really grown out of it.

You fight for your ideology and your religion and your country, but all stupid excuses, rationalisations, to fight. And then, whosoever is close by you start dominating, and she starts dominating, and then the fight.

One just has to understand – one has to be a little more watchful and a little more alert – that we are carrying a very poisonous instinct in us; and this instinct is dangerous. It has served us well but it is no more needed. Man is no more in the jungle and there is no fight for the survival. But it has been of such a great service and for so long, millions of years that it has become a deep-rooted phenomenon.

Now there are a few scientists who think that if we really want a world without war then man has to go through some kind of psychological surgery so that the instinct can be simply cut. But that too is dangerous because that will make people very conformist. Then the state will really become absolutely totalitarian, because man will not be able to rebel; man will not be able to disobey. Then anybody who is in power will remain in power forever. So that cannot be done; that should not be done. The instincts should not be removed chemically or scientifically. The instinct has to be removed through meditation, through awareness, so that it is no more powerful, but if it is needed, in case it is needed, it can be recalled. And there can be a few situations where it is needed. If somebody attacks you it is needed. But if nobody is attacking you it is not needed. But it goes on functioning; it is autonomous.

So just try to understand a little bit.

And it will be good if you do a few groups. They will be of immense help.

Anand means bliss, sudhir has two meanings – one is wisdom, another is patience – and both meanings are deeply connected with each other. Only in patience does wisdom happen and only a wise man can be patient. The stupid are always in a hurry. The hurry is a sign of stupidity, because in a hurry nothing significant can ever happen. All that is significant happens only in tremendous patience. So a certain wisdom is needed to be patient, and if you are patient then great wisdom descends in you.

So you have to work on both ways: be more patient so you remain available for more wisdom to happen to you; and become more wise. By wise I mean: become more aware. Wisdom does not mean accumulating more information, it means becoming more alert. Wisdom is not quantitative, it is qualitative.

Knowledge is a quantity. You have this much knowledge or that much – one is a B.A. another is an M.A., another one is Ph.D. and somebody else is something else. You can quantify it, you can measure it. Somebody is a first-class gold medallist and somebody is second class, but wisdom is not quantity; it is quality. There is no way to measure it, it is immeasurable. Knowledge is intellectual, wisdom is intelligence. Even a mediocre mind can become very knowledgeable; there is no problem.

In fact, only a mediocre mind wants to become knowledgeable; because he cannot have quality, he substitutes the lack of quality by quantity.

Real intelligence consists in being more alert, more alive. The man who is aware of whatsoever he is doing, of whatsoever he is thinking.... If he is aware of his body, his movements, his gestures, his functioning of the mind, then slowly slowly something inside crystallises. That is wisdom. Be patient, be wise, and then you will be blissful!

Prem means love, krishna means god, a name of god, but it is very symbolic. Krishna is the symbol, the metaphor, for all that is beautiful, for all that is celebrating. Krishna represents life-affirmation.

He was tremendously in love with life. He was not for renunciation, he was not against the world. His concept of god was not something contrary to the world. One need not renounce the world to attain to god; on the contrary, one has to surrender one’s self to god in the world. One has to renounce one’s will not the world, and then this very world is divine.

The East has worshipped Krishna as the perfect incarnation of god. In the East even Buddha is thought to be an imperfect incarnation, because he chooses; he renounces the world. He cannot accept the totality of it. He accepts something; he rejects something. Krishna accepts the totality of life. From the lowest to the highest, from the roots to the flowers, the whole life is accepted, affirmed.

And that’s my vision too. I am not in favour of dissecting life.

So your name means god of love – love which can include all, love which is inclusive, not exclusive, love which is a kind of choicelessness, love which is multidimensional. And when love is there, there is creativity. When love is there, there is joy. And religion is no more then a serious affair; it is playful.

My whole effort is to make religion playful again. If one can reach god dancing, then why not? Why go with a long face? If one can reach to god with a song then that’s the best way!

So I am not in favour of you becoming a saint: serious, sad, rejecting, negative, denying, condemning life; that is not my idea of a holy man. That is something pathological. My idea of a holy man is a whole man, and then this whole world is holy. Even Hollywood is holy then! There is nothing that is unholy.

So become a whole man and live richly with all nuances possible. Sing, dance, create, love. Let each moment become as vital as possible, as passionate as possible, as hot as possible. And then one can find the centre of the cyclone, the eye of the hurricane. And that brings tremendous freedom: you are in the world and not of it, you are in it and yet beyond it. That should remain as the goal, that has to be achieved. Then one is a lotus in a pond, untouched by the water yet in the water, not rejecting it, totally accepting it, welcoming it. But there is a kind of witnessing inside that keeps one thousands of miles away from the world.

There are moments of witnessing when you find you are no more on the earth and yet you are on the earth. When that paradox happens, a man has become holy. That is my vision of the holy man: he will be paradoxical.

[Prem debena – a love goddess.]

Everyone is a god or goddess, in disguise, unaware, unaware of the treasures that they are carrying within themselves, unaware of the mysteries that are there. Just a little effort and you have all the riches of the world. People live like beggars and they were meant to live like emperors. Out of god only gods can come, there is no possibility of somebody else.

If god creates the world, the world is divine. And if everything comes out of god then everything is divine. And only man has the privilege of becoming aware of it. Trees are divine but they cannot be aware; animals are divine but they cannot be aware. Only man has the privilege: he can become aware of it. But that depends – one may become, one may not become; man is free to choose.

And millions choose to remain unaware, because to live unaware seems to be easy, no effort is involved. That’s why millions of people can become good singers but they never will, because they will not make the effort. Millions of people can become good dancers but they never will. A great lethargy surrounds people’s lives. Millions of people can become creators but they never will; they will just somehow survive.

Meditation is the greatest art. It is easy to learn music, it is easy to learn dance, it is easy to learn all kinds of things, but it is not so easy to learn meditation, because meditation is the art of all arts.

It is the very foundation of all arts. It is the key, a master key, which can unlock all the doors.

One who learns meditation has learned the most secret phenomenon of life. Then it will be easy for him to learn music because the fundamental he has already got. It will be easy for him to learn dance and easy for him to become a painter or a poet, because the essential is there. Now he only has to find the right medium for it. And one who knows how to meditate knows his inner wealth.

Your name is to remind you of that continuously. Whenever somebody calls you Debena, remember it! It is a device, a device to remind you again and again that you are a god, that you are a goddess, not to be lost in an illusion of being a beggar; that is only a dream, a nightmare.

And if one is constantly reminded, slowly slowly it sinks into the heart. And one day, the explosion, the revelation!

CHAPTER 27

27 November 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva means divine, kranto means revolution – divine revolution. The political revolution, the social revolution, the economic revolution, are not really revolutions. They are only reforms, modifications, rearrangements, but nothing new ever happens through them. They remain continuous with the past. To call them revolution is not right.

The first requirement for a revolution is that it should be discontinuous with the past. And anything that arises out of the reaction against the past cannot be discontinuous with it.

You can love a person, you can hate the person – in both ways you are related to the person; love-hate is one kind of relationship. You can submit to a certain society or you can rebel, but in both ways you remain part of the same society. Submission-rejection is one relationship; obedience-disobedience are not very different, because the focus of both of them remains the same.

A child disobeys his father but his disobeying is determined by his father. He feels he is revolting, that he is going against his father, but that very going against is determined by the father. This is how revolutions remain part of the same old structure, modified here and there they are just renovations of the old structure; the continuum is never broken. So I call them reforms.

Revolutions can only be individual, spiritual, divine. Revolution can only be religious, because it is the capacity only of the individual to be discontinuous with the past. It is not the capacity of the society, it is not the capacity of a collectivity, because the collective has no soul. It has a psychology, it has a certain culture, it has a certain mind, but it has no soul. So the mind can again and again rearrange itself, that’s all, but it is the same old stuff arranged in new patterns. It is only the possibility of the individual to jump from the mind to the no-mind. That’s what I call revolution: a quantum leap from mind to no-mind.

If you go on arranging the stuff of the mind it is not revolution. A Christian can become a Hindu and there is no revolution, there is no conversion. He simply replaces Christ with Krishna. Just the name changes, that’s all, everything else remains the same. Instead of the Bible he starts worshipping the Vedas, but it is the old worship and the worshipper is old. It is the old attachment and it is the old kind of commitment; nothing new has happened. Now he no more goes to the church but he goes to the temple, and it is the same person who goes to the temple. Just by changing your church you cannot go through a revolution. Or a Hindu can become a Mohammedan, it makes no difference.

Even if a theist becomes an atheist, or vice versa, there is no revolution.

I have heard: A Mohammedan philosopher once became atheist. He was a well-known philosopher, a theologian, very much respected by the community. It was a shock to the community, they could not believe it! The whole community gathered to inquire ’Is there some truth in the rumour? It is unbelievable!’ So they asked the old man ”Have you become an atheist in this age, at this time?’

And he said ’Yes.’ They were dumbfounded. For a moment there was silence, then somebody asked

’Then what is your creed now?’

He said ’There is no god and the prophet Mohammed is his only prophet!’ There is no god but Mohammed still remains the prophet

Nothing has changed: he has simply rearranged words. And the mind has so much stuff that you can arrange it again and again millions of times and you can deceive yourself that you have passed through a revolution.

By the mind I mean your whole past, not only of this life but of all the lives. It is a vast accumulation: all the memories, all the experiences, all the knowledge, all the hopes and the fears and the aspirations, the imaginings and the dreams: they are all there. It is such a big phenomenon that you can always arrange it and you can always feel that now something has happened. Again and again you can find that nothing has happened. The only thing worth calling a happening is a jump from mind to no-mind. Then you don’t arrange the mind at all; you simply leave it, you slip out of it.

You don’t become a Christian from a Hindu, you don’t become an atheist from a theist. You simply reach to your centre. You simply become a witness, you simply see the whole content of the mind separate from yourself; you are no more identified with it.

This is revolution. When one is not identified with the mind great benediction happens. Suddenly one has absolute freedom. It is the mind that becomes the prison; it is the mind that makes you limited, gives you limitation. When you are no more a mind you are unlimited, you are unbounded, you are as infinite as the sky. And that freedom is the goal. That freedom is god.

A real revolution will bring you to god, and god not as an object but god as your own subjectivity, god as your own being!

Anand means bliss, shraddhan means trust – blissful trust. Belief is out of fear, hence belief is not trust. It is just trembling. It is just clinging to something as a security, as a safety. Belief is trying to cover up one’s ignorance, trying to cover up one’s doubt, but the doubt remains and remains very much alive. The doubt is deeper and the belief is just on the surface.

So if you are talking about your belief you can be very articulate but you will not be able to live it.

You can only talk about it, because one has to live from the centre and not from the surface, and at the centre there is doubt. Hence the dichotomy in the so called religious people: they say one thing and they do another. Hence the hypocrisy. They are caught in a dilemma: they talk their belief, they live their doubt. Their life is decided by their centre; only their conversations are decided by their peripheries. Slowly slowly a hypocritical person becomes schizophrenic. Schizophrenia is nothing but hypocrisy stretched to its logical end. A person becomes two, and with that becoming there is constant anguish in him; he is torn apart, he lives in hell.

Trust is not belief, because trust has to come out of your bliss, not out of your fear. Trust has to come out of your authentic experience. It has not to be borrowed; it has to grow in you, it has to be a growth. Trust makes a person really religious. Then the periphery and the centre are one. Then one lives in a kind of integration.

That integrity, that oneness of the surface with the depth, that subtle harmony between what you say and what you live, gives you grace, gives you beauty, makes you a phenomenon; your very presence will have an impact. Whosoever comes close to you will feel your coolness, your silence, your joy, your god. Your presence will have a fragrance to it; a very subtle perfume will be there, and that perfume is prayer. To live in harmony is to be prayerful, to live in harmony is to live sanely and to live in harmony is to live as a whole. And then there is trust! Then you not only trust existence, you trust yourself, you trust everything! You trust even people who deceive you; even their deception makes no difference to your trust. Your trust is so deep that everything else is immaterial. If somebody deceives you it is okay, it is just a game; you can enjoy it. You can even feel good that he thought you worthy of being deceived, that he has paid a kind of compliment, because whenever somebody deceives somebody else one thing is certain: the deceiver believes that the other is innocent, otherwise he cannot try to deceive. When somebody deceives you he is paying a compliment, he is saying that you are innocent; and there can be no other compliment which is higher than that. When one comes to trust one simply trusts. Then there is no condition in it; it is unconditional.

Atit means beyond, santap means anguish – beyond all anguish. And it is only a question of finding a centre within oneself which is beyond all anguish, and there is a point. It is not a question of creating it, It is already there. Whenever you come close to it an anxiety disappears, all misery disappears; whenever you go away from it, again you are in the turmoil of the mind. Sometimes one almost touches the point, those are the moments of beauty and love and benediction, but it happens unconsciously, accidentally. Listening to music for a few moments you are transported into another world. You forget all your misery and all your sadness and all your despair and anguish, as if no problem exists for the mind. Even if somebody reminds you of your problems, you will be able to laugh – they look so ridiculous, so absurd. You are so high that everything has been left deep down in the valley, you are on a sunlit peak.

In deep love it happens, watching a sunset it can happen. Listening to the birds it can happen or just sitting silently doing nothing it can happen. But these are all accidental phenomena. You are not the master, it is not in your control. It comes, it goes; at the most you are a watcher.

But this can be made conscious. You can arrange your being in such a way that it can start happening. You can create the occasion for it to happen, and that’s what meditation is all about: creating an occasion for it to happen. You cannot directly produce it but you can occasion it. You can create all that is needed, all that is necessary for it to happen, and then slowly slowly the knack is learned; small changes make it happen.

Sitting in a certain posture can help. For example down the ages this posture has been found again and again to be helpful.

[She is sitting legs crossed, back straight and hands in her lap at rest.]

When the spine is erect and one is sitting like a Buddha something happens. When the spine is erect, making a ninety-degree angle with the earth, something happens, because in that moment your body is the most relaxed. The gravitation has the least effect on you. It is a scientific phenomenon. That’s why if you are leaning to one side soon you will be tired, because on that side gravitation will be pulling you too much. You will have to hold yourself; you will become tired.

Sitting erect, gravitation has no pull over you. Everything is balanced. You are not lopsided; it is not that from one side gravitation is pulling you more, on another side less. If that is the thing soon you will be tired. In that state – when gravitation is not pulling you at all – you start feeling a kind of euphoria.

Hands together in the lap are helpful, because one hand represents one side of the brain and the other hand the other side of the brain. One side is positive and another side is negative, and when both hands are together a circle of your body electricity is created. And when the circle is complete there is silence, when the circle is complete there is harmony. Sitting in a Buddha posture is just creating an occasion.

Then, if your breathing is also quiet, rhythmic, you are creating another occasion, deeper than the body, because breathing is deeper than the body. It is your inner body, your vital body. So if the breathing is rhythmic, harmonious, in a kind of melody, silent, deep, musical, you have taken another step towards the occasion for it to happen.

And third: if you can watch your thoughts without any choice, with no evaluation, without calling a thought good or bad, just as a detached observer, then you have created the third and the deepest occasion. Now it can happen, now it is just around the corner. Any moment you will be transported.

Suddenly you will feel a great energy rising in your spine, and you are going up. This is the real high; no drug can give it. Drugs can only imitate this high; they are a pseudo phenomenon. You start moving upwards. One actually feels as if the body is rising above the ground. One actually feels, and feels so certain about it, that if one wills it, one can fly. One is weightless.

In this moment there is no thought at all; all thinking simply withers away. You are, but there is no thought, and when there is no thought you cannot even say ’I am’, because ’I am’ is a thought. It is pure amness, no idea arises. This is the point where one goes beyond anguish; this is the point where one enters into paradise.

To be initiated into sannyas is basically to be initiated into meditation. Meditation is the flavour of sannyas. The orange clothes, the mala, they are outer symbols; the inner thing is meditation. So remember it and occasion more and more centering, getting to the centre beyond all anguish. It is possible. It is within our reach, it is our birthright, and if we don’t claim it then there is nobody responsible except ourselves. We are missing!

Life has great treasures to give us but we don’t ask, we don’t knock on the door. Knock and the door shall be opened unto you. Ask and it shall be given. Seek and ye shall find. And the seeking has not to be done anywhere else. The seeking simply means creating the occasion physically, vitally, psychologically, creating the occasion where you slowly slowly start moving to the centre.

And suddenly when you are at the centre, you are no more part of the world, you are in god. That experience is enlightenment, that experience is transformation.

And never settle til it has happened, never be satisfied til you have achieved it. This has to be your aspiration from this moment.

Deva means divine, arhata means one who has arrived. Man is a pilgrim, and the pilgrimage has been long. The whole life is a search, a search of one’s self, the search to know who one is, and unless one finds out life remains mundane, trivial, rubbish. Then at the most one simply survives, but one never comes to know the beauties of life and the mysteries and the blessings. The moment one finds who one is, all doors suddenly open. Then each moment is bliss and each moment is a surprise because each moment new mysteries go on being revealed. Then life has joy, it is an adventure; then one really lives.

Arhata means one who has come to know himself... and that has to become your goal. Being here with me can only mean one thing. If you are really here with me then this is going to happen; if you allow it to, this is going to happen. If you are passionately here with me, and that’s what sannyas is all about – to be passionately with me, to be totally with me, in utter surrender – then things are not difficult. Things are very easy. It is not so much a question of making great effort. Much more important is becoming available to the infinite energies that surround us. It is more a question of becoming open, vulnerable, absorbing, drinking.

This energy-field can transform you very easily. All that is needed from your side is to drop defences, to drop your armour. Don’t be afraid, that’s all. Be open and the river will take you to the ocean. You need not fight with the river, you need not push the river, it is already going to the ocean. You can simply be in a let-go and any moment you will arrive. Whenever the let-go is total, you have arrived

[A sannyasin says: I feel a lot for Krishnamurti and... you seem to have been materialising a lot of what he was saying. I had a lot of resistance to coming. I’ve had to push myself but now I feel it’s almost too intense in the ashram for me. I’ll try to stay and work through a few things.]

It is good: if you understand Krishnamurti it will be very easy to understand me, but to understand Krishnamurti is very difficult. It is very easy to misunderstand him.

Ninety percent of the people who are involved with him are involved through misunderstanding. And there are reasons why he can be misunderstood so easily. For example, he says ’No meditation is needed.’ And he is right, because meditation cannot be a technique, it cannot be a method, because all methods and all techniques are used by the mind, so how can you go beyond the mind by using a technique? So he is perfectly right that no meditation is needed, but this is his approach towards meditation; this is a meditation. That’s where people completely lose track.

They understand perfectly logically that no meditation is needed, but then nothing happens. Just by understanding this nothing happens. Now they are in a double-bind: nothing is happening and they would like something to happen, but now the idea that no meditation, no method, is needed, hinders them.

In fact Krishnamurti was trying to explain to them the very heart of meditation. It is not a technique, because it is not a mind thing. It is not something that you have to do, it is something that you have to be. It is not something that you can do in the morning or in the evening and be finished with it; it is something that has to spread all over your life, waking and sleeping too. It has to become a climate inside you, and no effort can become a climate, because every effort tires you, so you have to take a rest. If you have been walking then you will have to sit or lie down; you cannot go on walking forever.

Walking will tire you; you will have to take rest.

Any efforts need holidays, so meditation cannot be an effort, otherwise you will need non-meditative holidays and that will destroy the whole thing. Meditation has to become like breathing, so whether you are awake or asleep it continues. It has to become your inner understanding, your inner awareness. Not something imposed, not something that you do in a particular time, for a particular motive, but something that you enjoy for its own sake, for no motive at all.

Krishnamurti says ’No master is needed’ and he is perfectly right, because nobody can give it to you. Truth is not something to be transferred; it is untransferable. It cannot even be communicated because no word is adequate. So he is right that no master is needed, but again people will misunderstand.

He himself is the master! He is doing what a master needs to do: he is pointing the way, he is goading you towards the way, he is creating the situation in which you can become aware. This is the function of a master. But the people who listen to him will understand ’No master is needed –

very good. It is very ego-satisfying that I need not become a disciple.’ He says that no master is needed and people understand ’I don’t need to become a disciple.’ This is the misunderstanding.

He is not saying that you need not become a disciple. He is saying that disciplehood has to be so deep in you that you are constantly a disciple, that you are learning constantly: that is his meaning of disciplehood. Constant learning, never accumulating knowledge, and always remaining in the state of not-knowing: that’s what disciplehood is. He is a master, and one of the most perfect masters, but that is his way – not to declare himself a master. But then very few people will understand him.

Rarely have I come across a man who has understood him. People have been listening to him for forty years and they have become parrots. They repeat him, not understanding a single word that he has uttered! And he has not said many things. He is a simple man, his message is very simple.

He simply says the same thing again and again. You can ask any question, his answer is the same, he brings you back to the same point. Still people don’t understand. People project their own ideas, their own motives.

Nobody wants to become a disciple because it is so against the ego, nobody wants to surrender.

So all kinds of egoists have gathered around him. If you want to find the most egoistic gathering anywhere, you can find it around Krishnamurti, because he is giving them a beautiful rationalisation for their egos. Not that he is giving it; they are taking it. He is a simple man, very absent, almost absent, a nobody, a no-ego.

So whatsoever you have read and heard can create great resistance, because here surrender is the key, to be a disciple is the key, to trust is the key. And that’s what he is saying but his way of saying is such that only very very few people will be able to understand it.

But you have come, so something is going to happen.

[Anand siddhen – one who has achieved bliss.]

You have not yet achieved it but the name is to remind you that this has to be done, this life, this time! Many lives you have missed but this time don’t miss. Let it be the very centre of your whole life now; put everything at stake. Risk all, pour your whole energy into it, and this is going to happen.

My feeling is that this is going to happen this time! Just remain available to me and don’t hinder my processes. That’s what is expected of all sannyasins. If a sannyasin resists then he is creating a contradiction, I want to do something in him but he resists, so there is an unnecessary wastage of time and energy. If you drop all resistance things start happening in a magical way, suddenly from nowhere, out of nothing. And once you have seen it happening then things are very easy. Just one time you have to see it happen – that if you don’t resist, something immense possesses you, transforms you, changes you, with no effort on your side. You are simply transported.

So remember this, and within three months things will start moving.

[A sannyasin who is in Individual Primal therapy says: I see that I’m so much in games. I was not aware of it – the continuous game. When I cry I don’t know whether it’s right or wrong. I don’t know anything about myself.]

It is good! This is the beginning of knowing one’s self. Everybody is playing games, and nobody knows that he is playing games, because the moment you know, you cannot play. Unconsciousness is a basic requirement for continuing to play games. The moment you become aware that this is a game you cannot go on playing it any more; it is so absurd then. It is just as you can dream only when you are asleep; you can play games only when you are unconscious.

To become aware that this is a game is the beginning of the end; then the game is finished. It may continue for a few more days just out of old habit and momentum, but now it is dead; your cooperation is finished. You will see it again and again and you will be reminded again and again. How long can it be continued? You will not be feeding it any more. It can live out of the old momentum for a few days, but it is gone; it is on its deathbed.

So to know that one is playing games and to know that one does not know oneself is the beginning of self-knowledge. You have taken the first step, and the first step is the most important. It is almost half the journey, the remaining is easy.

So now remember, be mindful and catch yourself red-handed when you are playing games again.

And if you catch yourself in the middle of the game then stop it then and there; howsoever ridiculous it looks to others, mm? Because they were expecting that you would play the whole thing, and just in the middle of the sentence you catch hold of the fact that you are saying something false, phony.

Drop it, say ’Excuse me. It was game-playing, I was being phony again.’ This is the first part.

And the second part: immediately replace it by something true, because just by dropping the phony is not enough, because then one will have to live in a negativity and one cannot live in a negativity.

When you drop something that looks like a game then do something which is not a game, and do it immediately because that is the moment to do it. Replace it by something real, authentic, true, and soon you will be able to change the gestalt from the phony to the authentic. And that is the greatest thing in life!

[The sannyasin adds: The other thing is: I have no feeling for you. That makes me sad.]

Mm mm. No need to be, because if you start thinking you have to, then you will create phony feelings. If you don’t have, you don’t have. Be true. There is no need to play any games. It will come.

CHAPTER 28

28 November 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Prem means love, shakti means power – love’s power. And that is the real power in the world. It is very paradoxical, because love is very humble; it is not powerful. And that’s its power. Love is surrender, but that’s its victory. It is a very passive way of conquering, it is the feminine way of conquering. It is the watercourse way. It is not like a rock: a rock t has a power, apparent power

– very male. Water also has power but very female, not apparent, very humble, liquid, ready to change into any mould, ready to surrender, passive. But finally water wins over rocks.

And that’s the power of love. Once one knows how to be humble, how to be surrendering, how to be loving, one is victorious, without making any effort for it. Lao Tzu calls it wu wei; action without action.

Love is the magic, the secret of action without action. You don’t do anything, but it starts happening.

Deva means god, kanta means beloved – god’s beloved. The most fundamental thing in life to learn is that existence cares for us, that we are not orphans, that we need not worry about ourselves.

Existence is not indifferent; it is full of love, and it is full of love for all that arises in it. Existence is a mothering phenomenon. It is a matrix, mater, mother. We are being taken care of in infinite ways but all those hands are very invisible. They are not tangible, you cannot see them; you can only feel them. Unless one is very sensitive, one goes on missing. Those hands are god’s hands. To me god is not separate from existence; it is another name for existence, it is another name for nature.

And once this understanding settles, great trust arises. Then we are not alien and there is no possibility of alienation. Then we are part of this existence, and a necessary part, not accidental.

Existence needed you the way you are. You are fulfilling something immensely valuable in the life of existence, in the growth, in the evolution; you are not meaningless. Each moment of your life is in service – knowingly, unknowingly, that is another matter. If you know it you will feel tremendously happy; if you don’t know you will feel burdened. But whether you know or not you are serving some great purpose. The modern man feels very accidental because god has disappeared from the horizon. The modern man feels meaningless, alienated, because meaning is possible only when you relate yourself to something higher than you, bigger than you. Meaning needs context. Unless you are part of something bigger, you can’t feel meaningful. A single word is meaningless; when it is part of a poem it has meaning. The single poem may be meaningless; when it is part of an epic it has tremendous meaning.

Meaning arises out of the context, and modern man has lost all context. He seems to be simply isolated, an island, unrelated to existence, and that is creating great misery. People are feeling more and more suicidal. Life seems so meaningless that death seems to be a kind of shelter, a relaxation.

Death seems to be the remedy. But this has happened for the first time in the history of humanity that life has become so meaningless. We have made it so. We have lost the capacity to trust, to love. We have lost the sensitivity to feel the infinite around us. We have forgotten how to relate with the totality, how to relate with trees and rivers and clouds and the moon and the sun and people.

We have forgotten even how to relate with our self, with our own body, with our own mind. Our own self even! We are living unrelated, hence meaninglessness, hence this sadness that is surrounding the whole of humanity, a gloom as if man is doomed.

Sannyas is an introduction, an initiation into the wider context of existence. You are a tiny ripple, but behind you is the great ocean of god. You are his river. Even if you are a drop, without you the ocean will be less. And the ocean is nothing but millions of millions of drops together.

You contribute something to god. That very idea, that one is needed in existence, gives roots.

Deva means divine, mitta means friend – a divine friend. Man is being conditioned continuously for ambition. Down the ages all the societies and all the education systems have been poisoning humanity and the basis of their poisoning is: create ambition.

Now, once you create ambition in a person he becomes inimical to everybody; he is always in conflict. All are competitors; he has to fight his way. On the surface he may show friendship but deep down that friendship remains political, diplomatic. Deep down he is fighting; he is alone against the whole world because all are competitors. If you are after money then all are competitors. Either you will succeed or they will succeed. You both can’t succeed, you all can’t succeed.

This has created a subtle enmity, the whole earth lives in that enmity. It creates wars, it creates all kind. of violence. It creates a state of lovelessness in the world, and without love there is misery. It creates hate, and with hate there is hell.

Sannyas means dropping ambition. Jesus says ’Those who are the last will be the first in my kingdom of god, and those who are the first will be the last in my kingdom of god.’ He is giving the secret of non-ambition: be the last and you will be the first, and you are the first. Be the last, just be a nobody, and you have arrived. And out of that nobodiness love flows, friendship flows, because now there is no question: you are not fighting with anybody, you are not coming in anybody’s way; you have renounced fight, conflict, ambition.

This is true sannyas, true renunciation:

you don’t renounce the world but you renounce

competitiveness. You don’t renounce the family but you renounce domination. You don’t renounce your husband, your wife, your children, but you renounce all kinds of possessiveness. And then suddenly there is a great transformation. One is at home, and one becomes then a friend, a divine friend, to all!

CHAPTER 29

29 November 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Sumitro means a good friend. Friendship is something immensely valuable. Love tends to be possessive; friendship is non-possessive love. Friendship is all that is good in love minus that which is not good. Friendship is the very essential core of love. To rise to friendship is really a great spiritual growth. People fall in love, and people rise in friendship. And whenever a love relationship becomes a friendship it is a rare, beautiful phenomenon, it is unique. It is very difficult....

A love relationship is a love/hate relationship; either it is love or it is hate. It is immediately hate, the hate is very close by. Love simply moves between love and hate. It is like a pendulum going from left to right and from right to left, and lovers are continuously moving from love to hate, from hate to love. That is the misery of lovers.

Friendship is a more tranquil affair, as if the pendulum has stopped in the middle, it is moving no more. Real love becomes friendship, has to become. If it doesn’t, something unreal, pseudo, phony, is still there. Real love soars high; it becomes non-possessive. And unless it becomes non-possessive it has no spiritual quality in it; it is earthy. It is more or less a physical phenomenon, a physical attraction, nothing more than that... no spiritual communion. Friendship is spiritual communion.

So remember that all love has to be transformed into friendship. And friendship is very inclusive; it can include the whole. Love is narrow; friendship is a wide sky. You can have as many friends as you want. You cannot have as many lovers, unless your love has become friendship; unless love is also friendship it will be impossible.

Love becomes a bondage and friendship becomes a freedom. That’s the beauty of it and the benediction of it....

Uttama means the highest, the best. Man is a ladder: from the lowest to the highest, all rungs are there. Man can be as low as a rock and can be as high as a Buddha. In fact, the statues of Buddha were made of stone just to symbolise this fact. The stone is the lowest. It has almost no consciousness or maybe just a possibility. It is the most unconscious state in existence, and Buddha, the highest consciousness, pure awareness.

Buddhist images were made of stone to symbolise this fact that man has both the possibilities: from the lowest to the highest all is available, and it is always available. To find it is really a great surprise.

When you find the fact that you have a ladder from the lowest to the highest and that you can exist on any rung of it any moment, you have found a great key.

For example, when you are angry just imagine yourself like a ladder: anger is just at the lowest rung and you are rising higher on the ladder. Soon you will find that you are above the anger; the anger is still there, but somehow you are no more in it, you are no more identified. You are a watcher from above, from the beyond. You are looking at it – it is there in the valley, dark, dismal – but you are absolutely untroubled by it. Whether it is or it is not makes no difference at all; you are just a witness.

In this very moment anger starts disappearing because your support stops. Your energy has moved higher; it cannot support the lower any more. For a few moments it will exist there, throb there, because you had given it some energy. Out of that momentum it will remain there but soon it will be gone. And this can happen in every possible mood, in every possible state of mind.

There is great sexual excitement.... Move on the higher rung of the ladder, watch it, look down at it, and you will be surprised – it is already disappearing. It is like smoke which is disappearing; soon it is gone and a great tranquility established.

Try it on an kinds of moods. You are feeling very tired – just start moving on the ladder. Visualise the ladder and you are going higher and suddenly you will find that the tiredness is disappearing.

You have contacted a higher level of energy in your being. And once this is understood you have a secret key in your hands. One becomes a master of oneself.

This is what sannyas is all about: a secret initiation into the mysteries of life. Life is not what it appears to be. It is infinitely more. The appearance is of the lowest, because the body can express only the lowest. It can express anger, it can express greed, it can express violence. The higher you move, the less and less expressive the body becomes. It cannot express Buddhahood, it cannot express samadhi.

That’s why if a Jesus moves side by side with you, you may not be able to recognise him, because it is not possible for that high state to be expressed by the lowest state; the lower is very inadequate.

A Jesus can be felt only by people who are moving higher on their own ladders; only they can feel.

So only disciples feel a master. The master may be Jesus or Buddha or anybody, but only disciples feel him; others can’t feel. Others exist on the lowest rung and the master exists on the highest, and there is such a gap, almost unbridgeable. There is no way to bridge it from the spectator to the master, unless the spectator becomes a disciple and starts moving on his own ladder. The higher he goes on his ladder, the more will he be able to see the higher reality of the master. And when he has reached to the highest, only then does he understand.

Unless one becomes a Christ, one cannot understand a Christ. So this I am giving you as a method.

You have to use it as much as possible. Whenever you have an opportunity, use it, and within two, three months, you will be able to go so easily. It is almost like changing the gear in a car, and immediately the engine starts functioning in a different way.

[A sannyasin says that she has been feeling a sadness that groups and psychoanalysis had done nothing to alleviate.

Osho checks her energy.]

Things are perfectly good – you are unnecessarily worried. And the sadness that you feel is not really sadness; it is a misunderstanding.

It is just a silence in you that looks like sadness. And if you label it as sadness you will become sad, because the mind immediately starts living according to the interpretation, according to the label. The mind lives through labels. So if somebody comes and shouts ’Fire, fire!’ people will start running. They will not enquire if there is really a fire.

One of the very important things to understand is not to label inner phenomena. Never label them, because the mind will never be able to label them rightly. It has no understanding of the inner, it understands only the superficial. It knows about sadness; it knows nothing about stillness, and the first experience of stillness will be interpreted by the mind as sadness. And once the interpretation is there, you are sad. The sadness is created by your interpretation, but then it is self-fulfilling: you become sad and then the mind says ’Look, you are sad’; and it is a vicious circle. The more the mind says you are sad, the more you become hypnotised by your own label.

So whenever it is a question of the inner, ask me rather than labelling it. It is something beautiful growing in you, something that one should be happy about. One needs to be still, but the Western mind – and the Western mind is the modern mind, whether in the East or in the West it doesn’t matter – the contemporary mind, lives in excitement So whenever there is stillness it thinks that something has gone wrong. The modern mind is continuously hankering for more sensations, new sensations. This is the age of entertainment. From one entertainment to another, that’s how people are living. From the club to the movie, from the movie to the TV and so on and so forth.

So whenever there is a breakthrough, a gap opens inside you and you start feeling something new which you have not known before, you will label it according to your old experience, and that will be wrong. It is a perfectly beautiful space. Allow it, help it, nourish it and cherish it. Soon you will see what I am saying: once the label is not there you will be able to experience it as it is.

CHAPTER 30

30 November 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Prem means love, sahaj means spontaneous. Love can only be spontaneous. If it is otherwise, it is something else, not love. Love cannot be calculated phenomenon. It happens of its own accord.

You cannot do it, you cannot UNdo it. It comes from the beyond, hence it has the flavour of the divine. It comes from nothingness, hence its magical quality.

The mind is a calculator, cunning, clever, hence it goes on missing love. The person who lives through the mind will never be able to know what love is, and really he is unfortunate, because not to know love is not to know life; not to know love is not to know god. If love is missed, all is missed.

Then life is just a futile, empty, gesture – a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing. But that’s how millions of people are living, and the basic mistake in their life is that they have become focused in the calculative mind and they have lost track of the uncalculative heart.

The mind is good as far as mundane things are concerned; the mind is impotent as far as sacred, things are concerned. For the mundane, the mind is a beautiful mechanism; for the sacred it is the greatest wall.

The sacred happens in spontaneity. It comes like a breeze: suddenly it is there and you are surrounded by it, thrilled by it, exhilarated, but you cannot manage it, you cannot call it on order.

It cannot be a slave to you. When love comes it always comes as a master, you have to surrender to it. And that’s where the heart enters into life: through surrender, through trust, through spontaneity.

Slowly slowly, one day love arrives, and the arrival of love is the beginning of real life, authentic life, true life.

Remember it, and not only remember it, make every effort to live it. Slip down from the head to the heart. Let feelings become more important than thoughts, let feelings reign; let them be supreme.

Let thoughts serve feelings. The head has to be a slave and then it is perfectly good. When it pretends to be the master it is very destructive.

Madhu means sweet and intoxicating, and prem means love. Love has two qualities: it is the sweetest thing in existence and it is the most intoxicating thing too; it is psychedelic.

The modern generation has become so interested in psychedelics because it has forgotten how to love. It is searching for a substitute. Down the ages people have been searching again and again in different ways for some intoxicant – it may be alcohol, it may be soma, it may be LSD, marijuana, etcetera, etcetera. They have found many chemical ways to become intoxicated but they are all arbitrary, artificial.

Nature has provided man with a natural psychedelic – it is in-built – and that is love! The moment you are in love your chemistry functions in a totally different way. People in love suddenly become beautiful. People in love suddenly start functioning in a totally different way than they have ever functioned. Their eyes have a shine of their own, their faces have a grace, their behaviour is no more the same. They are not really the same person.

A person not in love is a different person than the person when he is in love. There is a discontinuity; something of tremendous significance has happened inside. And love penetrates all the layers of your being. It changes your body chemistry, it changes your psyche, it changes your being, and these are the three layers. It starts with the physical but it should not stop there, it has to move to the psychological. And it should not stop even there, because it has to penetrate into being.

On the physical plane love expresses itself as sexuality, sensuality.

On the psychic plane it

becomes love and on the spiritual plane it becomes Prayer, but all these are a continuum. It is the same phenomenon growing, it is the same phenomenon reaching new heights, new planes, new plenitudes; and life really becomes full of an unknown sweetness. The heart is able to sing and the body is able to dance and the being is full of gratitude. The moment of love is the most Precious moment in existence, and it is through that moment that one slips into eternity.

So remember: love is the highest religion, the highest truth. All else that pretends to be religious and pretends to be true is nothing but man’s imagination. Only love is natural – the natural way to god!

[The new sannyasin says: I seem to be attracted to ladies who don’t have much energy for me or who don’t after a short while... ]

It happens to many people, and the reason is that deep down you are afraid. It is safe to be attracted to a woman who you can trust will not be attracted to you, so you can play the game of being in love and without any risk.

The whole thing is rooted in fear, and it is not only your problem, it is more or less the problem of the majority of people. They may be aware of it, they may not be, but people always become interested in persons who are unapproachable in some way or other. For example, people become interested and fall in love with film actresses. Now, they are unapproachable. They know that they will not be able to get them, but that is a security. People become interested in persons who are so far away that it is almost impossible to reach, to get them, so they can enjoy the idea that they are in love and without any of the risk and turmoil of being in love. Being in love is a risk, it is entering into a very chaotic world.

To be in love is to be in difficulty, because love is a challenge. Growth happens through it, but through much pain, much suffering. Ecstasies arrive but they are preceded by great agonies. You have to pay for each single ecstasy and you have to pay really hard. So many people have become very clever about it. If a woman is interested in you, you will not be interested in her, and if you are interested in a woman, she will not be interested in you, so both can have the fantasy of being in love. And a fantasy is cheap because you have not to pay anything for it.

You will have to see the point that deep down you are afraid of women; the very awareness will start changing you, will be the beginning of a change. There is nothing to be afraid of in a woman, there is nothing to be afraid of in a man. They are all alike and they are sailing in the same boat, suffering in the same ways, desiring the same joys, afraid of the same traps. If you look deep down you represent the whole humanity: your fears are everybody’s fears. The woman is also afraid, so when you become interested in her she starts escaping.

Even when people somehow manage to be together, the real togetherness very rarely happens.

They live together but they are not together. Togetherness is something very deep and inner; it means that two persons are welded together. That is a real wedding: when you are welded, when you start functioning as a single unit, when your feeling reaches to the other even without being conveyed, when you feel as the other feels, when the other’s shoe is pinching, you feel the pinch; then two persons are really together. They have really cared for each other and they have dropped all defences, all armour, and now they are open, vulnerable.

Because people are afraid to be open, they are afraid of love. Because people are afraid that the other may take some advantage of their vulnerability, they protect. They continuously create more and more barriers, armour, .so that the other can be kept at a distance. So even married people are not together, not married. They may have lived together tor years, they may have produced children, but still they have not yet touched each other’s heart. They have not come to that state which can be called union. And unless that union happens one has not known the woman or the man. And if the man has not known the woman, he will not be able to know himself, and vice versa, because by knowing a woman you will know the man. The woman will become the context, the contrast; the woman will define you. The woman will give you an opportunity to see your face in her being. She will become the mirror... and nobody wants to see their face either.

But this is going to happen – wait. All these groups will peel you; they will take away layers of rubbish from your being and soon you will be raw. It will hurt, mm? because those layers and layers of conditioning have become almost like skin. It will hurt, but once it is dropped you will feel so unburdened, so weightless, and then love is possible.

My whole work here consists of making you capable of love. If I can succeed in that I have succeeded in bringing you to god. Because the person who is incapable of love will remain incapable of reaching to god, because god means the ultimate love-affair! If you are afraid of the woman, how. can you approach god? – because that is the ultimate mirror. You will be reflected in your total nudity, mercilessly. Unless you have started to love your nudity you will not be able to reach to god. Jesus is right when he says ’God is love.’ I go a step further; I say ’Love is god.’ Wait... things are going to happen!

Atita means the transcendental. Reality is not finished at that which is apparent, at that which is obvious. Reality goes far deeper. Reality is not confined to the known, it reaches into the unknown.

Reality is not only that which is available to the senses; it is far bigger. All that we know of reality is through our five senses. There are animals who have only three senses; their reality is confined to three. They cannot even become aware that there are people who have five senses and whose reality is bigger. There are animals who have only one sense; their reality is even more small. If man had ten senses his reality would be far richer.

Just think of a blind man. In his reality there is no place for light, no place for colour; his reality is very poor. Without colour, without light, he is living in a very small cell. He is missing great beauties. He will not be able to see the splendour of a rainbow, he cannot even imagine it. You cannot explain it to him – there is no way! And whatsoever you say he will misunderstand because he will be constantly translating it according to his understanding, and his understanding is confined to his ears. Now, what the eyes can know cannot be translated into the language of the ears; you cannot see music and you cannot hear beauty.

Don’t think that we are confined to five senses. This is the beginning of religion. There is far more to be known, to be explored, and once you start exploring it, you start growing new senses, new sensibilities, in you, and that is the whole miracle of the religious search.

Once you start exploring something, some potential in you which has been dormant starts functioning. Now the brain surgeons say that half of the brain is almost non-functioning. The ancient Yoga scriptures say that that half is far more important than the other half which is functioning. The lower half is functioning, the higher half is non-functioning. It will function only if you start doing something for which it is needed. For example, when a person starts meditating some new centres in his brain start functioning. They were never needed, they remained dormant.

There is no end to human potentialities. Man has all that is needed to know the whole. But the basic thing is to remember that we are just at the beginning of the journey and much has to be done, much has to be known, much has to be loved, much has to be lived.

That is the meaning of the transcendental: that there is always something beyond us, waiting, calling. Hear the call of it! And sannyas can become significant only if you start moving into the transcendental, into that which is not available to the ordinary senses. It is all your birthright, but one has to grow new sensibilities, and meditation is a new sensibility. It makes you aware of the beyond, of the infinite, of the eternal.

Ajijo... it means the unconquerable. There is something in every being which is unconquerable, and that is his true self. The body can be conquered, can be killed, can be chained; the mind can be conquered, can be conditioned, can be hypnotised, can be manipulated. But beyond the body and the mind there is something more – the core, the very core of your being, which cannot be destroyed, cannot be conquered, cannot be put into a bondage; there is no way.

That self has only one quality: that quality is witnessing, awareness, meditativeness, it is a pure observer. And unless one knows it one remains a slave – a slave of the political system one lives in, a slave in the religious organisation one is part of, and a slave of many more things. The whole world consists of slaves. Very rarely is there a man like a Buddha or a Jesus, one who is not a slave; hence we call them the masters.

And why are they the masters? Because they have come to know something in them which is unconquerable, and that something is in everyone. Just a little effort to penetrate into one’s own darkness, just an effort to become more aware of one’s body and one’s mind and their functionings, that’s all, and suddenly one day it explodes!

Then you have freedom, and freedom is joy, freedom is dignity. It is only freedom that can feel grateful to god and it is only freedom that can become a celebration.

[Aurobindo means a lotus.]

The lotus is the most loved flower in the East and it is tremendously significant as a symbol. The lotus is the most soft flower, the most feminine, very receptive, and that’s what the East has been searching for: the quality of being feminine, soft, receptive. Because god cannot be conquered –

one has to surrender to god, and only the feminine can surrender.

God has to be a guest and only the feminine can become the host. God has to be received and welcomed, and one has to learn infinite patience because one never knows when the guest will come; there is simply no way of predicting it. its ways of coming are infinite but there is no way to know them beforehand. its ways are mysterious, and only the feminine heart can understand the mysterious.

The male mind is aggressive, hard; the male mind is a seeker, an adventurer. It cannot wait, it is impatient. Science is the by-product of the male mind, hence deep down science remains a kind of rape on nature, as if we are forcing nature, coercing nature to reveal its secrets to us. We cannot wait, we cannot allow nature to reveal its secrets in its own time. We cannot persuade, we cannot seduce, nature. And that is the quality of the feminine mind: it is seductive.

And god has to be seduced, persuaded, provoked, called forth. One need not go in search of god.

Where will you search for him? You don’t have any address. Even if you come across him you will not be able to recognise him because you don’t have any previous experience. God can only be waited for, and in true waiting he arrives. The lotus flower represents that quality of waiting, softness, grace, femininity, receptivity. It sends its fragrance, it releases its fragrance and waits.

So that has to be remembered: religion is basically feminine just as science is basically male.

Western psychology is male; the Eastern psychology is feminine. And just in understanding it you will find a grace arising in you; tensions start withering away. That’s why women are so beautiful, so round. Even in small children the baby girl is silent, more quiet. Even when the child is in the womb the mother can know whether it is a boy or a girl, because the boy kicks and moves and starts doing his thing, and the girl is silent, unobtrusive, undeclaring. Experienced mothers who have given birth to two, three children, become absolutely aware whether it is a boy or a girl inside the womb. Just the very quality.... This quality has to be learned because this becomes meditation.

I am not against the mate mind; it is perfectly good as far as scientific investigation is concerned.

The feminine mind cannot give birth to science. That’s why the East has not given birth to science, to technology; it is basically a Western contribution. But the mate mind cannot give birth to poetry, to music, to dance, to religion, to god. Alt the great religions were born in the East; even the religions that are being followed by the West were born basically Eastern. This is not just accidental. And the greatest religions were born at the very centre of the East.

That’s why Christianity is not so religious; something of the materialistic and something of the male mind is mixed with it. Hence the great effort to conquer other people, to convert them, to force them to become Christians – those great crusades and murderous efforts and killing and all that bloodshed. Because it was just on the fringes of the East that Christianity was born, just on the boundaries. And so is the case with Islam. It was not born at the very core of the Eastern heart, not at the very core of the lotus flower, but just on the boundaries, peripherally.

If you want to really understand what religion should be then you have to look at Buddha and whatsoever has come out of Buddha, because he was just at the very centre of the East. And just looking at Buddha you will feet the quality of the feminine. Friedrich Nietzsche has condemned Buddha saying that he was womanish, and in a way he is right. He was, but there is something superb about it; it is not a condemnation. Become more and more feminine, relaxed, and suddenly you will see that something starts surrounding you, it becomes your climate. That climate is meditation. It is an emanation of the feminine quality growing in the heart. It is a radiation of the feminine quality.

Adityo. It means the sun. The sun represents three things: life, love, light. All life comes from the sun. But life is just the beginning of a great pilgrimage, it is not the end. And those who think it is the end miss the whole point of life. They have taken the manure for the flowers. It could have produced great It flowers but manure itself is not the flower. It can become the opportunity to grow great roses, it can create the basic necessary condition, but still it is not the rose itself. And if you go on collecting manure your house will stink. That’s what happens: people who become too greedy for life start stinking. Their life stinks of greed, of possessiveness, of violence. Their life cannot ever have any perfume because they have completely forgotten the whole point: the manure is good if used as manure; it is not to be collected. And if it is used, the same energy that becomes stinking can become great fragrance; it is transformed.

Life should not be taken for granted. Ninety-nine point nine percent of people take it as if this is the end. These are the worldly people and these are the people who have made the earth ugly. These are the mundane, the mediocre people. They become politicians, they become great hoarders, they become exploiters. Their whole existence seems to be directed towards one thing: to survive. But if you ask them ’For what?’ they have no answer. They live in a vicious circle. They live to survive, and if you ask them ’Why do you want to survive?’ they want to live more. ’And what are you going to do by living more?’ Just making more efforts to survive. They move in a circle: live long, make more efforts to survive, survive long so that you can live more....

But this is utter stupidity! That’s why you will feel stupidity spread on the faces of people all over the world. No sign of intelligence, because they have not taken even the first step towards being intelligent.

Life lived without any love and light in it is horizontal. It is only one-dimensional, boring, flat, can’t have any poetry in it. It is impossible to have any celebration in it. At the most one can live from one entertainment to another entertainment. All its joys are very superficial. They cannot even be called joys; at the most they can be called pleasures. A pleasure is something that keeps you occupied pleasantly for a time. And again you are bored, so you need another new toy to play with so that you can remain occupied.

Love means introducing a new dimension into your life: the dimension of feeling, the dimension of the heart. If life is the goal and an end unto itself then one lives through the head and only through the head. One lives through calculation, through arithmetic; one lives only motivated towards profit.

One lives in the past and in the future; one knows nothing of the present, because thinking can have no contact with the present. Either it is memory of the past or planning for the future.

The moment feeling is introduced, the moment the heart is brought in, something immensely beautiful starts happening: you start becoming aware of the present.

Past and future lose

significance, because love knows only one time and that is present. It is spontaneous, it is non calculating. It is not arithmetic; it is poetry. It is not mathematics; it is music.

Now you can have joys. Now you can have some depth in your being. Now you don’t live only on the horizontal plane: the vertical has entered into your being. You live now in two dimensions. Your life becomes rich. But there is a third dimension also: the moment you introduce meditation your life starts moving towards light. The first state called life is very dark, and the last state called light is absolute light, as if an inner sun has risen. That’s exactly what all the mystics of the world have been saying – that when they reach to their innermost core a sun bursts forth far brighter than the outer sun.

Life is darkness: one simply gropes, guesses, stumbles. Love is mid-way, a twilight: a little of darkness and a little of light, the meeting of light and life, a bridge. And the third state is pure light: everything disappears in that light. Not even you are found; you dissolve into that light, you become that light. Life lives in the past and the future, love lives in the present, light is non-temporal. It knows nothing of time, it is eternal.

The sun represents all these three dimensions. Search for the inner sun! Let first life become involved as love and then as meditation. First let your heart start functioning, and then be a witness to the head and the heart both. Then you live three-dimensionally. Mm? that is the symbol of the trinity or the Hindu symbol of trimurti. The figure the has been of immense importance down the ages for the single reason that ultimately everything comes to the number three. You can call it trimurti, three faces of god, you can call it trinity, but one thing is certain, that as you go deeper only three are left. And those three are not separate from each other; they are aspects of one phenomenon. That phenomenon is adityo, the sun, the inner bursting forth of light.

[A sannyasin returning from the West says that she doesn’t know what to do; she feels separate from others in the ashram who are working.]

There is no need to know anything about the future – just be here as long as you feel and enjoy.

This time try working. It will be of great help, because the more you get involved in work, the closer you come to the family. Otherwise you remain a little aloof and apart, and the more you get involved in work, the more you get involved in me.

The work is not just work; it is a device. If it was just work then there would not be much of a question, whether one works or not is not much of a question, but it is a device too. It is part of your inner growth. If somebody can surrender absolutely to the work, growth will happen in great strides.

And when you remain unoccupied your mind starts creating a thousand and one unnecessary problems. To attain to a state where you can remain unoccupied and yet the mind will not create problems is possible only at a later time. It happens, it bas to happen: one can sit for twenty-four hours without doing a thing and there is no thought arising. But right now if you are sitting without doing anything a thousand and one thoughts will arise – do this, do that – and the old mind will go on churning and producing the same old patterns again and again.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30