1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

Is the Grass Really Greener...?

Talks given from 1/12/80 to 31/12/80

Darshan Diary

31 Chapters

Year published:

Unpublished

Is the Grass Really Greener...?

Chapter #1

Chapter title: None

1 December 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8012015

ShortTitle: GREENR01

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Dhyan Manuela. Dhyan means meditation.

Meditation is just the opposite pole of mind. Mind means conflict, struggle, ego, competition. Mind is always planning to reach somewhere. It never reaches anywhere because the only place that one has to reach is within oneself and the effort of the mind is to reach somewhere else -- to the moon, to Mars, to become the president, the prime minister, to have this, to have that. The mind goes on thinking in terms of the outside world. The mind is extrovert. Its whole philosophy is: the grass is greener on the other side of the fence.

Meditation is just the reversal of this whole approach. Meditation means asking the question 'Is the grass really greener on the other side of the fence?' With that question a radical change starts happening. It is not a question of reaching somewhere, the question is of being yourself. Only that can bring contentment; and 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

contentment opens you towards god -- that's the meaning of Manuela.

Manuela means god is with us. The mind cannot know that because the mind keeps its back towards god. God resides within you. Unless you are absolutely non-competitive, non-ambitious, you cannot turn in.

The competition is on the outside; in the inner world you are alone -- with whom to compete, whom to defeat, whom to conquer?

In that aloneness, in that silence, in that noiseless harmony, one discovers the temple of god. Everybody carries the temple within.

And the name Manuela is also significant because originally this name was used only for Christ himself, because he had discovered god within himself. That's the meaning of Christ.

Jesus becomes a Christ by discovering god within himself. You also can become a Christ by discovering the god within you. To discover oneself is to discover god -- and unless that happens there is no possibility of bliss, no possibility of rejoicing, no possibility of ecstasy.

Meditation is the way to ecstasy, to god, to the ultimate peak of consciousness.

Sahajo is the name of one of the most important woman mystics of India. There have been very few women mystics in the whole history of man for the simple reason that man never allowed them to discover themselves.

Humanity up to now has lived in a very ugly way. Half of humanity, the feminine half, has been reduced to a thing. Women have not been allowed to discover their being; in fact, many cultures have believed that the woman has got no soul to discover. What is there to discover? -- she is just a body to be used by man.

And that is the ugly part of the biblical story -- that God made woman for man's use because he was alone, feeling lonely. The story is anti-feminine, it is male chauvinistic.

God makes Adam for his own self, but because Adam feels lonely, God makes a woman -- but in a different way. He just takes a rib out of Adam's body and creates a woman. So the woman is just to be a part of man's life. She cannot be herself; she is only a rib, a bone, to be used as a means.

All the religions have supported this ugly nonsense, this idiotic idea. That's why I say the real religion, a religion which makes everybody capable of discovering God, has yet to be born. Hence, only a few women

-- their names can be counted on one's fingers -- have attained to the ultimate peak. Sahajo is one of them.

In India we have known only five women who can be compared to Buddha, Christ, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu and Nanak. One is Meera, whose name is well known all over the world. The second is Lalla -- she was born in Kashmir, and Kashmir has tremendous respect for the woman. In Kashmir there is a saying that they know only two names: Allah and Lalla. Allah means God, and Lalla means the woman Lalla. The third name is Sahajo; the fourth name is Daya -- another contemporary of Sahajo and a friend of Sahajo. And the fifth name is Mallibai, one of the tirthankaras of the Jainas, one of the most important masters.

Literally, the meaning of Sahajo is spontaneity -- and that was her teaching; hence the name was given to her by her master.

Live spontaneously, moment to moment. This moment is all. The past has to be dropped, forgotten, because it is no more, and the future has not to be worried about because it is not yet. Then all that is left is this beautiful moment. Rejoice in this moment, live in this moment totally and this moment becomes the door to God.

Jesus says to his disciples, "Look at the lilies in the field -- they are far more beautiful than even the emperor Solomon attired in all his precious clothes and ornaments, in all his grandeur. These poor flowers, lilies, are far more beautiful than Solomon, for the simple reason that they don't think of the morrow. They live in the moment, herenow. That is their beauty."

And my own observation of the female is that she is less worried about the future than man and less burdened with the past than man. She is more realistic, pragmatic, more rooted and grounded in the earth; hence it is easier for her to be spontaneous. And spontaneity and a life of spontaneity can become the whole path.

God knows only one time and that is now, and only one space and that is here. God is always now-here.

So once you withdraw yourself from the past and the future, only God is left. There is no need to pray, there is no need to go into scriptures, there is no need to dig into all kinds of stupid esoteric teachings. One can be very simple and one can find the truth without any fuss. The whole of theology is an unnecessary fuss, much ado about nothing.

And this is my approach too -- to live totally in the present. Nothing else is needed.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

Supriti means love.

Love can exist in three possible ways. The lowest is lust, the highest is prayer, and exactly between the two is love.

Lust means the instinctive, the biological, of the body It can reproduce children, it helps the race to survive; it is reproductive but it is not creative. Higher than lust is love. Love is creative; it creates music, painting and poetry. When you love a person you create the person. The moment somebody loves you, the very love changes you immediately. The loved person is no more the same person, the lover is no more the same person either. Love is so magical that it transforms, it makes people beautiful, graceful. Wherever love lands it creates something new.

Love is of the mind. It is higher than the body but lower than the spirit. The highest form is prayer. The first is reproductive -- it only goes on creating replicas. Your children will just be replicas of your repetitions -- and they will produce and their children will produce and so on, so forth. It is a chain. Love is creative. Creativity is something greater than reproductivity. There have been only very few creators in the world, very few lovers.

Prayer is neither reproductive nor creative; prayer is higher than both. It is discovery: discovering the truth, the ultimate reality: god. Lust is on the surface, Love is going slowly deeper; it is in the middle, between the centre and the circumference. Prayer is at the very centre of your being.

My concern is with the highest form of love. To help you move from the lowest I use the second form of love also, the creative part. But that is only a milestone on the way; the goal is prayer.

Truth cannot be created. Reproduction is biological and natural, and creativity is imagination.

Discovering is simply uncovering that which is already there, that which is already the case. And to know the truth is to know all that is worth knowing. Truth liberates it liberates one from darkness, from misery, from hell, and opens the doors of paradise.

Anadi means beginningless.

Life is eternal; there is no beginning, no end. We begin at the time of birth and we end at the time of death. That means we have not yet known our real life. We have known only the container, not the content.

The container changes; it becomes old and it needs a change. The body is only a container, so you can use it for seventy, eighty, ninety or one hundred years, then you have to change the house. It become so dilapidated, it becomes so impossible to renovate that it is better to move into a new house than to renovate the old. It is less costly.

So life goes on changing from one house to another house, unless you discover it. The moment you discover it there is no need to change houses; then life can become part of the universal life. There is no need to be confined to a small body. That's what is meant by the word 'god'; god means the life of the cosmos. And man can feel blissful only when his small river disappears into the ocean of god.

I don't teach any philosophy here. I only give you small strategies to discover the ocean, small devices to reach the ocean. It is not very far, we just need to know the right method, the right technique.

Mohani means the beautiful, the graceful.

Truth has many aspects to it and one of the most important aspects is beauty. There are three types of people in the world and there are three main aspects of truth. Satyam is one aspect; satyam means truth.

Shivam is another aspect; shivam means the good. And Sundaram is the third aspect; sundaram means the beautiful. And these are also the three categories of people. A few people seek the truth, a few people seek the good and a few people seek the beautiful.

The people who seek the beautiful become painters, poets, musicians, dancers. That is the most lovely path to follow, and the easiest and the smoothest -- particularly for a female seeker. It is very close to her heart. The woman has more of an aesthetic sense than man. She is not much concerned about truth, that seems to be a far-away thing. I have never come across a woman who is really philosophical. Even if she has studied philosophy it remains superficial, because the ultimate is not the feminine concern but the immediate.

Rather than studying Plato and Aristotle and Kant and Hegel, she likes to stand before a mirror... for hours! That can be transformed into a meditation! But because nobody has bothered about woman, so nobody has taken note that this is such a meditative process.

I have made a certain meditation out of it, just look at your eyes in the mirror and enjoy it! Look at your face, at your eyes, and enjoy it. Just looking at the mirror, doing nothing, spring comes and the grass grows 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

by itself!

Move through the door of beauty. And there is so much beauty all around -- it is very immediate. Truth may be somewhere above the clouds, but the clouds are so beautiful, why bother about something that is above them? And the stars are so beautiful and the people and the trees and rocks. To reach god through beauty is the simplest method; it is very easy because it is so close.

Mohani... is also the name of the great Indian mystic, Krishna; one of his names is Mohan. Mohan means the beautiful -- and he was really a beautiful man. In fact if you look at pictures of him... he can defeat any woman. He has long hair and a beautiful crown of peacock feathers and he uses all kinds of ornaments. And the way he stands in a dancing pose with a flute... a perfect hippie! Nobody has seen him naked, otherwise you would find him tattooed! That's the secret thing I am telling you -- don't tell anybody because Hindus will be very angry!

Akhil means the total.

My approach towards life is that of totality; whatsoever you do, don't do it half-heartedly. Either do it or don't do it, but never be in anything in a half-hearted way. Never be partial, fragmentary, because unless you are total in your acts you will never have any taste of god. And the moment you have learned the knack of being total in things then every action becomes prayer, then every gesture becomes meditation. Then if you are cleaning the floor with your total heart in it, not withholding anything, it is no more ordinary; you have brought some extraordinary quality into it. You have changed something mundane into the sacred. That's the whole secret of sannyas: change every mundane activity into the sacred -- and the way is to be total.

While eating simply eat, while sleeping simply sleep, while walking just walk. And slowly slowly your whole life goes through a rebirthing process. A moment comes in life when each and every thing has your whole heart in it. That is the greatest moment. In that moment of total absorption one becomes enlightened.

What one was doing does not matter -- how one was doing it matters.

Astiko is ordinarily translated into English as the theist. But that is not its deeper meaning, it is its superficial meaning -- one who believes in god. And it is not only superficial but in a way inadequate too.

My definition of a man of god is one who knows, not one who believes. The believer is ignorant. He believes because he is not capable of doubting, he is afraid of doubt. Through his belief he represses his doubt, but the doubt is there; and the more you repress it, the deeper it goes into you. You may completely forget about it but it will remain part of your unconscious. And any moment it can again surface, any situation can bring it up.

To me, knowing, not believing, is the only way to be religious. In the past it has been said that believing is knowing; I say to you knowing is believing. Without knowing there is no point in believing.

So Astiko means one who knows god. And in fact we all know, it is just that we have forgotten that we know it. We are born knowing; each child is born knowing but he is not aware that he knows. So we have not to know god really, just we have to become aware of our knowing. But we are so occupied with the outside world that the whole energy is spent in the non-essential and nothing is left for the essential.

The religious person is one who starts discriminating between the essential and the non-essential and goes on dropping the non-essential so more and more energy is available for the essential. The moment enough energy is available for the essential you suddenly go through an explosion and that explosion makes you aware of who you are. Suddenly it is there, the experience that we are part of god. And also in that moment one knows that we always know it in a very subtle way, in an underground way -- something like an undercurrent -- but we were so occupied, preoccupied with other things that it receded. We had been ignoring it, that's all.

The English word 'ignorance' is beautiful. It means ignoring; it does not mean not-knowing. We have been ignoring god, that's all; our ignorance consists of ignoring. If we drop ignoring, if we pay attention, if we just become a little bit concerned about our own being, immediately the discovery....

Neti-neti. They contain the whole of religion -- those two words, neti-neti. They mean neither this nor that.

This is a method of inner discovery. One has to become aware that one is not the body -- that is the first neti -- and then one has to become aware that one is not the mind -- that is the second neti. Neither this nor that ... and then suddenly only that which you are is left behind.

One is neither the body nor the mind. With these two discarded what is left? -- a pure consciousness, a 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

deep awareness. That awareness is our very being, that's what we are and that's what god is. We are little bits of awareness, just dewdrops of awareness. God may be the ocean, a vast ocean, but our innermost nature is the same.

But you have to go beyond two things, the body and the mind; hence the repetition: neti-neti. One won't do! If you can fulfil these two simple words -- and I think you can do it.... (Osho is grinning broadly. He holds her gaze for what seems like some minutes. And the longer he does, the louder becomes the laughter of the group watching.) I know you can do it (more laughter) It is a very simple thing. I have done it and I found it easy!

Now start meditating! That's all you need, at least one hour every day. Use twenty-three hours for the world and one hour for yourself. And ultimately you will find that those twenty-three hours are wasted; only one hour, the one in which you were meditating, is saved.

Time becomes precious while you are meditating. Time is a wastage in every other way; without meditation time has no significance at all. Then people are right when they say that they are killing time --

they are: playing cards and looking at a TV or going to a movie and becoming a member of a Rotary club.

And there are few fools who even become members of a Lions' club! (laughter) As if to be just a man is not enough for them -- they have to become some animal! But these people think they are killing time and time goes on laughing because time knows it is killing all these people.

So don't kill time and time will not be able to kill you. The only way to escape from time is meditation because in meditation you move beyond time. Slowly slowly you start transcending time -- and that is our reality, that's our truth: the transcendental.

Is the Grass Really Greener...?

Chapter #2

Chapter title: None

2 December 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8012025

ShortTitle: GREENR02

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Veet Adam: Veet means transcending, surpassing, going beyond. Adam means earth because in the biblical story the first man was made of earth. It exactly means red earth because according to the story the earth of Israel out of which the first man was made, was red. Symbolically it represents the human being; man, a mortal, mortality.

Friedrich Nietzsche has a beautiful statement; in defining man he says 'Man is the only animal that tries to surpass himself.' That's the most beautiful definition about man that has ever been uttered by anybody.

The dog is born a dog and remains a dog, the rose is born a rose and remains a rose. Except for man the whole existence is settled wherever it is, whatsoever it is. Only man is in a chaos, but that chaos is beautiful,:out of that chaos stars are born. It is only man who gives birth to a Christ, to a Buddha, to a Moses, to a Mohammed, to a Lao Tzu. It is out of this chaos that man tries to rise above, to go beyond.

Man is not only the earth, he is far more, but ordinarily he is born as part of the earth although he 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

contains the whole sky within him. But that sky has to be found, discovered. And the only way to discover it is to go beyond the physical, the psychological -- because mind and body are not two separate things. We should not use 'and' between the two; we should not say 'mind and body'; instead 'mindbody' would be closer to the truth. The body is the outside of the mind, the mind is the inside of the body, but man is beyond both: man is consciousness.

So Adam only defines the actuality, but it does not define the potential, the possible -- and man contains infinities in himself. He can go on transcending himself; there is no limit to it. That's the whole dignity of man, the glory of man. That is his distinguishing mark: he is part of the earth but not just that; he is something plus. And that plus is his real reality, his authentic reality.

So your name means go beyond the mortal, the physical, the mental, seek and search for that which is beyond all this, that is eternal, immortal. The whole religious search is concerned with the eternal, the timeless, the deathless. And that's what initiation into sannyas is all about: looking beyond your actual. To remain confined to the actual is to remain a prisoner.

Unless one reaches the ultimate peak of one's potential there is no contentment, no bliss, no god, no truth.

Dhyan Inge. Dhyan means meditation. Meditation is a method of slipping out of the mind in the same way as the snake slips out of its own skin.

The mind is nothing but old skin. The mind is always dead; it consists of the past, which is no more, The mind is a kind of cemetery -- graves and graves. And you can see rows of crosses on the graves; howsoever whitewashed, they only contain dead bodies, rotten bodies. Mind is a graveyard.

And it is not coincidental that churches have graveyards behind them: they are part of the same game.

The churches are as dead as the graves, or maybe more. They don't represent life.

Mind is always against life. It prevents you from living, it holds you back, it insists on the known, on the familiar. It always creates fear in you about the unknown, and the unknown is what life is; not only the unknown but the unknowable. And mind is a coward -- it clings to all that is known, well-known. That is why people are Christians and Hindus and Mohammedans and Jesus.

Jesus was not a Jew. Of course his mind must have been Jewish. He was not a (Christian either, he had not even heard about the word 'Christian'. He was not a Jew, he was not a Christian -- then who was he?

That state is meditation.

Buddha was not a Hindu although his mind was Hindu. And he was not a Buddhist either. Hinduism was of the past, Buddhism was of the future, and Buddha lived in the present.

To live in the present, to be in the present, always alive, searching, enquiring, exploring, accepting the challenges of the unknown, is the whole of meditation.

And Inge comes from Norse mythology. In Norse mythology Inge was the god of creativity, peace and prosperity. And all those things are just by-products of meditation.

An authentic meditator is bound to be creative because he will be constantly in touch with life. That touch with life gives him energy to create, a passion to create, because life is nothing but creativity. The alive person overflows with creativity.

All the so-called religious people are uncreative, for the simple reason that they don't live in the present, for the simple reason that they are afraid of being alive and they are trying in every possible way to avoid life, to by-pass it. It seems to be too risky to be alive; to be dead is very secure.

Creativity needs a kind of gambler's mind, otherwise one goes on repeating the same pattern because one is more efficient in it. To be creative means to give birth to the new; of course one is not efficient with the new. How can one be efficient with the new? Only with the old can one be efficient. With the new you are always experimenting, exploring; one never knows what is going to come out of it. The new is unpredictable; there is no guarantee that you will succeed in creating something.

Meditation releases all your energies of creativeness. Whatsoever one's dimension of work is, meditation brings great energy to it. It comes like a flood. It brings a kind of madness, a madness which is far superior to the so-called average sanity. All the great creators have been mad people -- poets, painters, sculptors, musicians, dancers -- they cannot be called average sane, otherwise they would be businessmen, they would be politicians, they would be priests. These things are secure, insured; there is no risk in them.

The sane person behaves in a businesslike way, calculatedly.

When I say creators are mad I mean they behave like gamblers, like drunkards -- they can risk all for something which is not guaranteed. But they are the salt of the earth, these people; these few people are the 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

whole joy of the earth. They bring prosperity in every possible way, they raise the consciousness of humanity.

The whole evolution of man has depended on very few people; they can be counted on ones fingers. The masses have not contributed anything at all; they have been like a dead weight, they have hindered but they have not helped. The crowd mind is always against the new. They crucified Jesus simply because he was so new. The way he was talking nobody had ever talked, the war he was behaving nobody had ever behaved.

The mob could not tolerate the man -- such a beautiful man, such a lovely person -- and the masses decided to crucify him. But that has always been the case, they did the same with Socrates, with Mansoor.

Whenever there is a man who brings the new into existence, who becomes a vehicle of the beyond, his life is in danger because the masses cannot forgive him. He is soaring so high that the masses feel offended, insulted; their egos are hurt. But the strange thing is that these few people who have been killed and murdered and tortured by the people are the cause of the whole prosperity of humanity; they are the foundation stones of this temple that is still incomplete. Many more sacrifices are needed, many more Jesus have to be crucified, many more Socrates have to be poisoned and killed.

Meditation brings creativity and through creativity there is prosperity -- both material and spiritual. And a man who is creative becomes very peaceful, because he starts feeling that he is doing the work he is born for. He is fulfilling his nature, his longing, his hidden potential is becoming more and more manifest, actualised. When the whole potential is actualised a man is enlightened.

That is the goal of sannyas: to be creative, to be peaceful and to help the unwilling humanity to be prosperous in all possible ways, in all dimensions.

Anand August: Anand means bliss.

Bliss is not pleasure; pleasure is physical, momentary. Bliss is not happiness either; happiness is psychological -- a little bit deeper than pleasure but only a little bit. Pleasure is just on the surface and happiness is skin deep, but just scratch the skin and it disappears. It has no real roots, it is just in the mind.

Bliss is neither of the body nor of the mind; hence it has infinite depth. It is your very soul, your self-nature, your being. Pleasure comes and goes, happiness happens and disappears. Bliss is forever! Even when we are not aware of it, it is there, present is an undercurrent; one just has to dig.

And that's my whole work here, to help to dig a well within your being so that you can find the undercurrent of blissfulness.

August means sacred, sublime, exalted. Bliss is sacred, sublime, exalted. It is divine, it is godly. To know bliss is to know god; in fact god is only a name for bliss.

In India we have defined god as satchidananda. Satchidananda consists of three basic words. 'Sat' -- sat means the truth; 'chid' -- chid means consciousness; and 'anand' -- anand means bliss. When you dig deep within yourself first you will find truth, then you will find consciousness and then you will find bliss. Bliss is the deepest -- and the deepest is also the highest.

God is only a name for bliss, god is not a person. The very idea of god as a person has misled humanity.

It is an experience, the experience which is beyond bodymind, the experience of that which is hidden in you and which has always been there. You need not create it; you need not search for it anywhere else, you just have to dive deep within yourself.

Sannyas means a turning in, it means exploring your interiority. I am not against the exterior -- the exterior is beautiful -- but if you don't know your interiority, if you don't know your inner world, your exterior cannot be very beautiful. It can have depth, beauty, joy, only if you are rooted within your of sources.

If a tree wants to reach high into the sky, wants to touch the stars and whisper with the clouds, then the first thing it has to do is to reach as deep into the earth with its roots, as deep as possible.

The deeper the roots, the higher the tree can rise. And the same is true about the internal and the external: the deeper the roots into the internal, the greater will be your approach into the external.

If your roots are really touching your source of bliss then your branches in the outside will have a flowering. In the past the religions have tried to create a split between the outside and the inside -- that was a reactionary attitude. Because they saw the people, the worldly people, too concerned with the outside, they turned to the opposite pole; they became too concerned, overly concerned, with the inner. But they created a split and that split has been one of the greatest calamities humanity has suffered so far, because that has created a schizophrenic humanity.

The outside and the inside look like enemies, the worldly person and the other-worldly person look like 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

enemies. The worldly is the sinner and the other -- worldly is the saint.

My sannyasin has to be both together: in the world and yet not of it, with roots in the inner and flowers in the outer. He hasn't to escape to the Himalayas, to the monasteries; he has to live in the marketplace and yet live silently, peacefully, lovingly, meditatively. That is the only way that we can create a whole man.

And to me to be whole is to be holy. That is the meaning of your name: August: to be sacred.

The inner is not the only dimension of sacredness; the outer is also the same. But first certainly the roots have to grow, then the branches can follow. If the tree grows first it will fall down, it cannot stand.

So the sannyasin first has to become more and more meditative, more and more blissful, then naturally he starts growing new foliage on the outside, he becomes greener, he rises higher. And when the roots are nourished by the bliss inside, sooner or later the branches are bound t be burdened with flowers. That is the moment a person becomes a Buddha, a Christ, a Zarathustra.

Vimal means innocent, pure, literally without any dirt.

The only dirt that we are full of is thoughts. Our consciousness is like a mirror; thoughts are like just collecting on the mirror. And the work of a sannyasin is to continuously clean the mirror, because if tile mirror is clean it can reflect reality, if the mirror is clean it can show you the way. You need not depend on anybody else; you have your own inner vision, perspective, clarity.

Once we know the art of cleaning the mirror every moment, life becomes such a joy, such a benediction because then whatsoever you do then is beautiful, then whatsoever you touch becomes gold. One becomes a magician.

My sannyasins have to be magicians. And the greatest magic in life is to live in this world which is so full of misery, stupidity, mediocrity, in an intelligent way, blissfully, rejoicingly. The world may be living in hell but the intelligent person lives here, in paradise.

The people who invented a paradise somewhere above, in heaven, were stupid people. They were simply saying that it is impossible to live here in heaven so they projected a heaven somewhere beyond the clouds; it is just a consolation and nothing else.

My sannyasins have to live now and here in paradise. If others are living in hell, that is their decision, that is their responsibility. One cannot be forced to live in heaven,,one has to choose. And if people are choosing to live in hell, of course they are free to choose it, but my sannyasin have to live in heaven here and now, in this very world.

Unless you can live here blissfully you cannot live anywhere else blissfully... because you will be the same person. Even if you are transported to heaven in a spaceship, what will you do there. You will do the same stupid things that you were doing here, maybe on a bigger scale. You will get into the same ego trips, into the same miseries, you will fall into the same kinds of love affairs and you will suffer in the same way.

My effort is to create a sannyasin who can live even in hell beautifully. The old definition was that when a saint dies he goes to heaven. My definition is: a person is a saint who lives in heaven whether dead or alive and even if you throw him into hell he will change the whole quality of hell.

If I have the choice then I will go to hell with all my sannyasins (laughter). It will be such a beautiful trip... and initiating all the devil, into sannyas and giving them beautiful names...!

Apantho means no path.

There is no path to truth because truth is not on the outside. Truth is within and no path is needed because you are already there; it is just that your eyes have wandered far away, that's all.

It is exactly like a dream. You are sleeping in your room but in your dream you are travelling to far-away planets. In the morning when you wake up you will not find yourself on the planet you have been dreaming about; you will find yourself in your bed, in your own room.

When one becomes awakened to one's reality one finds that one was unnecessarily travelling, there was no need to go anywhere; and all those trips were mind trips, made of the same stuff dreams are made of.

One has never left one's home, one cannot leave in the very nature of things. So all that is needed is an awakening from your dreaming state -- and that's my purpose here: to give you shocks, to shake you, to fix many alarms around you. All these meditation techniques and therapy groups are nothing but alarm methods to make so much trouble that you have to wake up and see what the matter is, what is going on. And once you wake up, the work is finished; then you cannot fall asleep and resume your old dreaming.

There is no path to truth because we are already there. We have not to reach there; we have just to wake up and see. Because it is so, it is simple, very simple. The moment you decide whole-heartedly to wake up, 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

nobody can prevent you. It can happen right now!

Navyo means the eternally new.

Existence is eternally new, it never gets old, but our minds get old. And because we go on clinging to our minds we lose contact with reality, we start lagging behind.

When a child is born he is in tune with reality; he is not lagging behind, he is in the moment, herenow.

But we start teaching him and he has to learn whatsoever we teach because he is so helpless. He has to bargain with us, he has to sell his self for survival.

Now psychologists have discovered that even a six-week-old baby starts being diplomatic. He smiles when he sees the mother coming. He knows that this woman is dangerous -- it is better to smile! This is a diplomatic smile; he does not mean it, he has nothing to smile for. But he knows that it pays to smile and it costs nothing, so he simply opens his mouth, Carter-style. It is just an exercise of the lips; there is no heart in it. He does not want to smile, there is no reason for it, but the mother feels good, and to make this woman feel good is safer.

Now, he has started getting into the mind. Slowly slowly he will start lagging behind reality. By the time he is four, if he is a boy, or three if the child is a girl... Girls are more pragmatic and realistic, hence they got into the mind earlier, one year earlier than boys. Boys are a little reluctant, resistant; they try hard to give a fight, to somehow escape. Girls, seeing the situation, settle quicker: 'It is better, no need to fight, it is unnecessary; sooner or later one has to settle, so why bother to postpone?'

It is because of this fact that when you try to remember your past you can remember only up to a certain age -- for example, three or four. Beyond that is blank because mind is perfectly settled at that time. From that time mind took over; it started managing you, it became the manager. Hence it has perfect records, files, everything, of after that time, so people can easily remember backwards to the age four or three. Then there is a blank because there is nothing to remember. They were in tune with reality, they were enjoying themselves, but there is nothing to remember.

After one gets into the mind everything has to be remembered. Mind is just a biocomputer, a memory system. It goes on collecting information, and the more it collects, the older it is, and the older it is, the farther away you are from reality; hence the child is the closest and the old man is the farthest.

A sannyasin has to learn the art of remaining a child for his whole life; not childish but childlike. Jesus says: Unless you are like small children you shall not enter into my kingdom of god. And I agree with him absolutely because the kingdom of god means the harmony with the universe -- and the universe is always new, and the mind is always old.

Get out of the mind and be in tune with reality. Be more spontaneous, be more alive to the moment; live moment to moment. Go on dying to the past, go on getting rid of the past, so that you are always fresh -- as fresh as the dewdrops in the early morning sun, as fresh as the flowers just opening in the early morning sun.

That's the way of a sannyasin: to be always new, young. The body will get old -- that is not a problem at all -- but you should not get old. Even at the moment of death a sannyasin is a child, full of wonder and awe.

That quality of wonder and awe is the greatest religious quality in the world; it is through that that one comes to know what god is.

Nilamber means the blue sky.

The sky only looks blue, it has no colour. It looks blue because of its infinity; its infinite depth gives it an appearance of blueness. Hence blue has become the symbol of depth, of infinity, of eternity, of vastness.

You can see it happening in water too: if the river is shallow then the water is white, if the river is deep the same water becomes bluish; depth gives it the colour of blueness. So blue represents depth.

And just as there is a sky outside you spreading to infinity there is also an inner sky. We are standing exactly in the middle of two skies, two infinities. And the inner is of course Is more beautiful because the inner is yours and the outer is not yours. Even if you try to have it, it cannot be yours. Alexander tried, all the conqueror tried, and they all failed.

In the outside you can only have a very temporary illusion that you are possessing it, but sooner or later death comes and takes all your possessions. But the inner cannot be stolen, the inner cannot be burned cannot be destroyed. Even death is impotent as far as the inner is concerned. The person who has conquered his inner sky dies as conqueror.

Alexander the Great dies like a beggar; Gautam the Buddha dies like a conqueror, he is the real emperor.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

Although on the outside Buddha was like a beggar with a begging bowl and Alexander the Great was the great conqueror of the then known world, those are appearances.

Don't be deceived by appearances. Remember, the real victory is inner. And don't waste your time and energy in the non-essential. Put your energy as much as possible into the essential, and the essential means only one thing, it means the inner.

Sannyas means the beginning of an exploration of the inner sky.

Nilam means sapphire, a blue diamond.

It represents the third eye. Two eyes are needed to look at the outside world, two, because the outside world consists of duality. It is always divided into two polarities -- day and night, hot and cold, summer and winter, birth and death. Everything is divided in two.

The outer world consists of two-ness. Everything is opposed by its polarity, hence there is constant conflict. And day is followed by night and pleasure is followed by pain and success is followed by failure and so on and so forth. One goes on moving in a wheel and nothing is stable.

The inner world needs only one eye -- that is called the third eye. It is not a physiological phenomenon, it is only symbolic. And when you experience that inner vision for the first time it is just like a sapphire, a blue diamond radiating its blueness, like a blue flame. In a literal sense too the first inner experience is of a blue flame. It gives light but light is so vast, so infinite that it appears blue.

Jesus has said when the two eyes become one then you have arrived home. The moment you turn in these two eyes become one, because the inner needs only one vision; just one eye is enough because there is no duality inside. In the inner world light and darkness are one, death and life are one. And because there is no duality there is no conflict; there is tremendous peace, silence, stillness, so profound that we cannot even imagine it from the outside.

That profound silence make you aware of the beauties, of the blessings, that existence has been showering on you but which you had not even seen before. These flowers were always falling like rain on you but you were engaged in other things. You were so full of other things you could not pay attention to them.

When for the first time you are able to see the miracle of existence, great gratitude arises. That gratitude is prayer.

Meditation makes you capable of seeing the grace of existence, the gifts, the infinite gifts, and that vision leads you towards prayer. Meditation is the beginning, prayer is the end. Meditation is the flower and prayer is the fragrance. Nobody can begin with prayer; you have to begin with meditation. Prayer comes of its own accord.

Sow the seeds, grow the flowers and one day spring comes and the flowers blossom and the whole sky is full of fragrance.

Is the Grass Really Greener...?

Chapter #3

Chapter title: None

3 December 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8012035

ShortTitle: GREENR03

Audio:

No

Video:

No

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Satyam literally means the truth, but the approach of the western mind and the eastern is so different, so diametrically opposite, that sometimes literal translations of words are not adequate at all.

In the West truth is a philosophical quest; in the East it is a mystical enquiry -- and there is tremendous difference. Philosophy means something of the head and mysticism is something of the heart. Philosophy is based on logical reasoning, and mysticism is rooted in something that transcends all logic, it is supralogic.

And when I use the word 'truth' I use it with the eastern emphasis -- and that makes a lot of difference.

In the East we have thought about truth as an experience, not as a logical conclusion; more like love and less like logic, more in the mode of feeling than in the mode of thinking. In fact in the West if you are an enquirer, a seeker of truth, you have to sharpen your reasoning you have to become very skilful in thinking.

That's what the whole western philosophy is, the art of thinking.

In the East just the opposite has to be done: logic, reasoning, mind itself has to be put aside; you have to come into direct contact with reality, into immediate contact with reality.

The mind is an interference because it interprets reality, and the moment you interpret, it is something else, it is no more the something.

The mind cannot experience, only the heart can experience, but the mind can interpret, the heart cannot interpret. The mind interprets without experiencing. It is like a blind man talking about light to a dumb man who cannot talk but who knows what light is.

The heart is dumb, silent; it cannot express itself, there is no way for it to express itself, but it can feel.

Tile mind is very talkative -- it can interpret, comment, argue, philosophise, prove, disprove, but it cannot experience. And the real thing is experience -- whether you can talk about it or not is immaterial.

Hence all the great eastern mystics have said nothing can be said about truth. All that we say is how to reach it but nothing can be said about the experience itself; one has to experience it to know it The Buddhas only show the way, they give you some hints about how to reach to the ultimate peak of experience, but that's all; you will know only when you have reached. The truth has to be an individual experience. It cannot be borrowed, it cannot be transferred; it cannot even be expressed. And that is its beauty; its profoundness is such that no word can be comprehensive enough, no language is so unlimited that it can contain it.

So remember, when I say the truth, I mean the truth of the mystics, not the truth of the philosophers.

Even in the West there have been mystics but they are not the main current of the western mind. Jesus is a mystic, not a philosopher; Eckhart is a mystic, not a philosopher; Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Plotinus -- these are mystics, not philosophers. But they are far and few in between, very rare. And because the western philosophy knows no place to put them, to what category they belong, they are ordinarily but into the same category as Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, Bradley, Russell, Wittgenstein, Sartre. They are put in the same category because that is the only category known in the West.

In the East we have an absolute distinction. The philosophers are not counted with the Buddhas; they are only thinkers, mere thinkers. The Buddhas are the knowers. And my sannyasins have to make a journey of knowing, not of thinking.

Anubodh means awareness -- and that is the secret key, the most essential part of religious experiment, of religious investigation, enquiry, exploration.

One has to become more aware than one ordinarily is. The ordinary life does not need more awareness than you have; just a superficial awareness is enough to go to the office, to do the routine work, to come home, to reproduce children, to get things done. And once you have learned them, you go on repeating the same pattern every day -- it is a mechanical phenomenon. The mechanical life is the mundane life.

To be a sannyasin means to enter into the phenomenon of the sacred. For that more awareness is needed, much more, because it is not something mechanical, something routine. It is now every day. It is moving; from the unknown towards the unknowable; it is dropping the known every day, dying to the known and entering into the unknown. It is an eternal pilgrimage, because every moment is so full of mystery that one has to be very alert, otherwise one will miss. One has to be constantly watchful.

Very few people know the beauty of the stars. Even if they do, they have read it in a poem; it is not their own experience. Very few people know the beauty of the mountains. Even if they do it is because they have looked at albums, pictures, films. Even if they go to the Himalayas, they are much more concerned with taking photographs rather than looking at the reality.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

The tourist is a very strange personality: carrying the camera everywhere. His idea is that back home, sitting before the fireplace at ease, he will look at the pictures, at how beautiful the Himalayas were; and when he was in the Himalayas he was concerned with the camera -- loading, unloading and clicking. The camera was not working (laughter)... and something got stuck and.... Who bothers about the Himalayas!

That is later on when the album is ready and one sits in the easy chair and relaxes, with the coffee pot by the (much laughter) side and... (The rest of the sentence is drowned in a deluge of laughter.) That's how people are.

This is not the way to experience reality -- it is a way to avoid it. Your pictures cannot contain the beauty... or maybe only a very far far-away echo. They cannot contain the coolness of the breeze, the warmth of the sun. They are bound to be one-dimensional, flat.

Once a friend said to Picasso 'I don't like your paintings. They don't represent reality, they are not realistic.' He said 'Rather, I like photographs -- which are realistic, representative. For an example, he took out of his pocket, a photograph of his would-be wife and he showed it to Picasso saying 'Look at this picture, this is my would-be wife: see how beautiful she is and how clear the photograph is. This is a realistic thing.' Picasso touched the photograph, felt it and said 'But your would-be wife looks very flat -- no curves, absolutely flat. What are you going to do with this woman?'

Of course a picture is a flat thing, it cannot represent the multi-dimensional reality. It is only a reflection in the mirror and that too is dead -- because if you are in the Himalayas it is changing every moment. The clouds are dispersing, moving; sometimes the sun is there and the peaks with the virgin snow are all golden; and sometimes it is clouded and all that gold suddenly disappears and the shade and the shadows of the clouds move on the snow. You can see it reflected in the snow, the peaks functioning like mirrors. Your pictures, howsoever beautiful they are, cannot contain its reality.

You have to be more in contact with that which surrounds you; for that only one thing is needed, and that is more alertness. Very few people are alert. They go on like sleepwalkers, somnambulists. Somehow they manage, but for that management just a small bit of consciousness needed, a very peripheral thing. And awareness, Anubodh, means a central awareness, not peripheral. Your very centre is full of consciousness, you are all consciousness. Only then does one become aware of the presence of the sacred, of the divine.

Then this very earth is paradise.

Getting initiation into sannyas really means getting initiation into awareness. That's the whole work a sannyasin has to do. All the methods of meditation are nothing but devices to help you to become more aware.

Naresha means an empress, a queen.

Man is not born as a beggar but ho lives like a beggar -- and the whole responsibility is his, he chooses to live like a beggar. Life gives so much but he is not ready to receive it, he is very reluctant; he is closed.

When love knocks on his door he shrinks, withdraws; he is even afraid of love. He is afraid of truth; he feels more comfortable with conventional beliefs, which are nothing but beautiful lies, comfortable lies. At the most they can give one consolation.

Truth needs enquiry, it needs work. A belief needs nothing; you can simply believe. Just by being born accidentally into a Christian home or a Hindu home or a Mohammedan home, one gets beliefs. People start conditioning you -- the parents, the teachers, the priests. They are all ready to jump upon every child and they start giving him a shape and a form. They call it education, culturisation, civilisation. And all they do is to give the child cheap beliefs, plastic flowers, which are of no help. In fact they are harmful, because then a person becomes afraid of truth; he has invested so much in beliefs that he is not ready to look at the truth; he avoids it. To look at the truth will mean all his beliefs will be shattered and with those beliefs all his dreams will be shattered and all his investment will be gone down the drain. So he shuts himself off.

People are taught in such a way that they become incapable of love, incapable of truth, incapable of authenticity and sincerity. And the strange thing is that everybody's taught to find god but all the qualities that help to find god are destroyed, systematically destroyed.

That's why there are so many churches and so many temples, synagogues and mosques and all people belong to some religion or other -- still, the world is absolutely irreligious. God is only a formality.

People don't bother really about god or anything significant. In fact it is impolite to talk about such things; people don't want to get involved in such things -- it is better to talk about the weather.

English people are very much interested in the weather. And it is a very strange thing because what is there to talk about? And both know what the weather is.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

(Osho's thumb arches back over itself to indicate Vivek sitting by his side.) Yes, she is also English!

(laughter) When you meet her you can talk about the weather. (There is a roar of laughter.) Yes, she is...

There are many English people hiding here!

It is good manners to talk about the weather because you don't get into any controversial thing: that it is very cloudy -- of course you can...(He doesn't even bother to finish the sentence this time. Naresha smiles; and the group behind her doubles up.) But to talk about god or to talk about truth or to talk about anything really significant is dangerous; the other person may not agree. There may be argument, there may be a conflict; there is every possibility that that may create a disagreement -- and it is not good. When people meet they have to create a certain kind of lubricant between themselves so things go smoothly.

Man is born with infinite potential. He can be as great as a Buddha, as a Jesus, as a Zarathustra; but he lives at the minimum, he never reaches the maximum. And the only reason is that he remains confined to his conditionings given by others.

My sannyasins have to drop those conditionings. They have to come out of the cave that others have created for them to live in. It is a dark cave, very small, but cosy and comfortable. They have to come out into the open, under the sky, under the stars, and they have to be adventurers, adventurers about life, about consciousness, about love, about truth. Nothing has to be accepted as belief, everything has to be explored.

Unless you experience it as true there is no need to believe in anything.

I don't give any belief, any dogma, any creed. I only provide you methods to enquire with. And once a person becomes an explorer he is on the way to becoming an emperor. He may not possess anything of the world but he will possess his inner being -- and that is the most precious thing. Jesus calls it the kingdom of god. It certainly is!

Parishuddha means perfectly pure.

Thoughts, desires, memories -- these are the impurities of consciousness. Consciousness is pure when there are no thoughts, no desires, no memories. It is just as when there are no clouds the sky is pure. Purity means to be just your essential consciousness with no content, no clouds, just and openness, a vastness --

unhindered, unbounded. And that's the whole purpose of meditation, to give you a perfect purity, a clarity, an open sky.

So all that a sannyasin has to do is to get out of the rut of thoughts. It is not as difficult as it appears in the beginning. One only has to learn to be a witness. Just watch your thoughts whenever you have time.

Relax and watch -- don't do anything. There is no need to fight with them, there is no need to throw them out, because if you fight with them they will defeat you. They will defeat you because you will be unnecessarily fighting with yourself.

Thoughts are non-existential, like darkness: you cannot fight with darkness because it does not exist at all. If you start wrestling with darkness you will be defeated -- not because darkness is powerful but because you will simply get tired and exhausted. There is nothing to fight -- darkness does not exist at all. All that is needed is to bring light in and there is no darkness. That light comes in by witnessing, not by fighting.

Just watch, go on looking, unattached, unconcerned, without any judgement that this thought is good or this thought is bad. Don't bring your moral notions in. Otherwise you will get involved in thinking, because you will cling to the good and you will want to throw out the bad -- and they are inseparable. They have a certain intrinsic unity, a certain organic unity. If you throw out the bad you will have to throw out the good too. If you want to keep the good you will have to keep the bad too. They are two sides of the same coin.

That's why every saint is unconsciously a sinner: That is the other side. He is just a repressed sinner.

And every sinner is a repressed saint. So there is not much difference. The only difference is that one is standing on his feet and the other is standing on his head, upside-down, that's all. The saint is doing a headstand. Saints, particularly in India, love to stand on their heads very much. But that's what they are actually doing for their whole life; that headstand, the sirshasana, represents their whole life. But even if you are standing on your head you are the same person, nothing has changed; it is just that your legs are up and your head is down. Just a little digging in the saint and you will find the sinner. So every saint is a sinner in his dreams and every sinner is a saint in his dreams. That's why the psychoanalysis pays so much attention to dreams -- because they show what part you have repressed and the repressed part is very significant because it goes into your unconscious; and the unconscious is bigger. The conscious is only one-tenth and the unconscious is nine times bigger than the conscious. So the saint is only one-tenth and nine times more he is a sinner. In fact the sinner is in a far better situation psychologically: he is only one-tenth a sinner and nine times a saint.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

I have more love for the sinner than for the saints. For the saints I have only pity, I feel sorry for them.

Remember that to fight with anything is going to create a dichotomy in you, a division, a split personality. So don't choose, don't fight, don't judge. Remain choicelessly aware and slowly slowly you will find those clouds are disappearing. And the moment the sky is completely without clouds there is purity. It has nothing to do with morality -- it is innocence.

Your vision will be clear, unhindered. You can see, you can hear for the first time; you can feel, you can touch, you can smell for the first time; you can taste for the first time. Then all your senses are doors to the divine. Then each sense brings a new feel of the divine. Then you are surrounded by the divine -- you see the divine, you hear the divine, you taste the divine, you touch the divine, you smell the divine. All your five senses are continuously pouring the divine into you.

It was happening before also but you were not able to see it. There were so many thoughts, desires, memories, imagination, dreams, fantasies, between you and the reality -- a thick China wall. But it disappears very easily, one just has to be a witness. Witnessing is the whole art of meditation.

Gyanesha means goddess of wisdom; remember, not of knowledge but of wisdom. And the difference is as much as it can be. They are unbridgeable, in fact they are opposites, enemies.

The knowledgeable person cannot become wise. It is impossible, absolutely impossible for him to become wise, because his knowledgeability does not allow him innocence, does not allow him wonder. He cannot feel any surprise, he cannot taste anything mysterious, magical. His life is flat. And the reason is that he thinks he already knows, he has answers, ready-made answers for every question. He has never really asked the question, he has only learned the answer. And how can you learn an answer?

First he learns the answer and then he manages the question, but the question comes later on, it is not his own. The answer is somebody else's and just to make the answer fit with him he creates a question. The question is not part of his own growth. So he knows the question and he knows the answer, but he has never been in any quest, he has never risked anything for the question, he has never gone into it the whole way, he has never gambled. He has only learned the answer from the scriptures, from the scholars, from the philosophers. And so many answers are available. For each question thousands of answers are available --

you can have your choice.

A knowledgeable person is a stupid person, very stupid, unintelligent. He may be intellectual but he is not intelligent at all.

Wisdom is intelligence and the first act required for wisdom to happen is one has to discard all knowledge in toto; one has to become a child again -- innocent, full of wonder, awe. Everything seems to be mysterious because there is no answer.

Gertrude Stein on her deathbed suddenly opened her eyes and said "What is the answer?" The friends who had gathered were a little bit puzzled; "What is the answer?" What kind of a question is this? -- because the question had not been asked.

One person gathered courage and said "But we don't know the question, so first tell us about the question, only then can something be done about the answer." She laughed and said "Okay. Then what is the question?"... and she died! Neither the question is known nor the answer is known -- and this was at her last moment. But this is the tragedy of humanity. At least at the last moment she had the guts to ask "What is the answer?" Of course there was no time left, that's why she was saying "What is the answer? Don't waste time with the question -- just give me the answer." And because they insisted, she said "Okay, then what is the question?"

This is really the situation: we don't know the question, we don't know the answer, but we are full of knowledge. The wise man is not at all full of knowledge. He knows the question and he knows the answer; and there is only one question and there is only one answer. The question is "Who am I?" and the answer cannot be given, one has to find it. If it is given, it becomes knowledge; if you find it, it becomes wisdom.

Is the Grass Really Greener...?

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

Chapter #4

Chapter title: None

4 December 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8012045

ShortTitle: GREENR04

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Dhyan Helen: Dhyan means meditation. Helen means light.

Man without meditation is without light. He is just darkness. If one looks within without knowing the art of meditation one will find only darkness and darkness and nothing else. That's why nobody wants to look within. The Christs, the Buddhas, the Zarathustras, have been telling people to look within; Jesus goes on insisting that the kingdom of god is within you and Socrates says know thyself. People listen but nobody tries it because when they try the experience is not ecstatic, it is just terrible! (laughter) There is nothing but emptiness, darkness. One meets nobody -- no god, no kingdom of god. One goes with great expectations and just the opposite is the case.

So one pays polite, formal respect to these great teachers and goes on looking outside; the real world is there. But the reason why we miss is that to look inside one needs a certain discipline. It is like listening; to classical music: it needs a certain discipline, you need certain ears to listen to it, to understand it, to feel it, to see the beauty of it.

Meditation is a whole art; it is the art of focussing inwards, it is the art of dropping the outside completely as if it has disappeared for the moment at least, it is illusory. When your total energy starts moving inside -- remember the word 'total' -- only then will you find light. And once you have found light within you have found god and the kingdom of god. That light transforms your whole life. It gives a new dance, a new song, to your being.

Dhyan Paul. Dhyan means meditation. Paul means rest. Meditation is a way of resting within yourself.

Mind is restlessness. Unless you go beyond the mind you cannot rest, hence meditation means transcending mind, transcending restlessness, being at ease, at home, utterly restful, as if there is nothing to do, nowhere to go, so blissfully in the moment -- that is with no past, no future, no thought, no memory, no desire, with not even a small ripple in your consciousness to go somewhere else.

The mind is always running, chasing shadows, mirages, far-away goals. It is ambitious, it is political; mind is a politician. To be in the mind is to be in continuous struggle, competition -- how can you rest? You can rest only when you understand the futility of ambition, the futility of desire, the futility of all goals, then suddenly your energy settles and rests at the very centre of your being. The circumference starts shrinking and becomes equal to the centre; there is no circumference, only the centre.

When you are in the mind there is no control only the circumference, and the circumference goes on expanding. In meditation there is only the centre, no circumference -- and that is the moment of rest. And to know it is to know all, because by knowing it the door of the divine opens. It is a beautiful name -- it carries the whole secret of meditation.

Anandi means blissful, cheerful, with laughter in the heart.

The religious people are ordinarily serious people. They have long faces, sad, sombre, because they are engaged in something very great, something divine, very superior to all the other activities people are involved in. The whole world is mundane and they are holy -- how can a holy person laugh? Impossible.

Laughter seems to be the very essence of unholiness.

Christians say, Jesus never laughed. Now there cannot be anything more false than that. If one asks me I will say he never stopped laughing, even on the cross he laughed. The last thing that he did was to laugh, to 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

have a good laugh at the cosmic joke! God has ditched him beautifully! Thousands of people were waiting for the miracle and nothing happened! Can you find a better joke? Even he himself was waiting and looking again and again... and nothing happened!

If something had happened the whole point would have been lost, the punch line would have been missed! It was really beautiful of god not to interfere. For the whole of his life Jesus was doing miracles --

raising the dead, giving eyes to the blind -- and at the last moment he could not manage anything! He must have laughed! And when they all met afterwards Jesus must have said, "You did it!"

I can't see why he should not laugh at the last moment. But Christians go on saying he never laughed.

The statues they have made, the pictures, the paintings, are always serious. Those are not representative, they are false, they are inventions.

To me cheerfulness is the essence of religiousness. To take life as fun, to enjoy it, to love it and to accept it with all its thorns and flowers, with all its dark nights and beautiful days, to accept it in its totality is sannyas.

Yes, there is agony; it needs to be there, it balances ecstasy. Ecstasy alone will lose its taste. If one is ecstatic and never comes to know what agony is, one will start forgetting what ecstasy is. The ecstasy can be felt only when there is a background of agony. You can see the stars in the night only when there is darkness as a backdrop. In the day also they are there but the background is missing. It is so full of light that they disappear.

Once you understand life with its duality then even in pain, even in anguish, one has a cheerful heart because one understands; one understands the essentiality of the polar opposite. Then in success or failure one remains balanced, one's cheerfulness is not disturbed by anything.

When Alexander came to India he wanted one sannyasin to go with him -- his name was Dandamis --

but the sannyasin refused. He said 'Nobody can force me'... because the way Alexander asked him to go was aggressive. He said 'either you come with me or I will kill you!' Dandamis said 'It is better you kill me, be finished with it -- I am not coming. Nobody can force me to do anything and death has no point as far as I am concerned; I died long ago.' And then he said 'Why are you waiting? Pull out your sword and cut off my head. You will see it falling on the ground and I will also see it. And you will hear my laughter. After my head has fallen you will hear my laughter!'

Alexander could not kill him. For the first time he had come across a man who was simply amazing, what he was saying. And he said 'I am sorry. I should not have said it to you in such an aggressive way, this is just my habit because everybody has always followed my orders. But now I understand, there are people who cannot be forced. But can you please send some of your disciples with me?'

Dandamis said 'That's alright.' He called a disciple, his name was Kalyan, Kalyan Swami was his name.

He said 'Kalyan, you go with this fool.' Kalyan said 'Okay, master. Anyway I have to go.' Alexander could not understand what this talk was all about -- Kalyan had said 'Anyway I have to go.' Only later on did he understand, because on the way Kalyan Swami died. When he died he said 'Now do you understand? Do you understand or not? I told my master "Anyway I have to go, so it doesn't matter.' He has sent a dead man with you! (laughter) He befooled you!'

Alexander said 'But you Hindus believe in the immortality of the soul -- don't you think you will not die?' He said 'No, I will not die, and I will see you in Babylon and he died without explaining what he meant by 'I will see you in Babylon.' Alexander understood it only because he died in Babylon; when he was moving back to his home, on the way, in Babylon, he died. One of his advisers reminded him: 'That man was right! He said "I will see you in Babylon."'

These people are cheerful people. Now Dandamis played a trick on Alexander -- sending a disciple who was already going to die within a few months. Then the disciple played a trick on him; he said 'I will see you in Babylon.' He was just laughing about death -- it is nothing much to be serious about. Even death is not worth being serious about. But there are fools who think that even life is a serious affair; nothing is a serious affair.

My sannyasins have to learn to be cheerful in every situation -- good or bad. Even if you are thrown into hell, go laughing and your laughter will transform hell. This is my fundamental message: I want a religiousness in the world which knows how to laugh, how to be blissful, how to dance, how to celebrate.

Gandharvo means divine musician. In Indian mythology gandharvas are the musicians of god, they are heavenly musicians.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

Music is divine. It is something that comes very close to meditation. Just one step more and you are in the world of meditation. Music is almost the boundary line between mind and meditation. Nothing comes closer because music is pure joy, it is festivity. Also it has no words. Words are limited, sounds have unlimited significance.

And the beauty of music is that although it is sound it creates silence. That is the criterion to judge whether Music is real music or just pseudo. The pseudo means it is noisy; it simply disturbs you. Maybe the disturbance looks like excitement, but it is not of any great value. That's what the so-called pop music does: it touches only the superficial in you, the biological, the sexual; it does not go deep. The higher the music is, the more the sound starts doing a miracle: it creates silence. When the music creates silence in you, when listening to the sound silence is created, then one is truly a musician, then has heard the real music.

Meditation can be expressed only through music. So learn the beauty of the sound, so that you can learn the beauty of silence. From sound to silence -- that is the way of the meditator. Just listen to this silence of the night. It is also sound, the insects are creating a certain king of music but their sound does not disturb the silence; on the contrary, it enhances it, it enriches it. And life should be such that the paradoxical, the contradictory, becomes complimentary. Then your very life has a music, a harmony, and only in that harmony does one come to know the truth.

Shantiprem. Shanti means silence, prem means love. The moment these both happen together you have entered the world of miracles.

Love is excitement, it is feverish -- that's why it is called passion. It is a little bit crazy, it drives you nuts! (laughter) Love alone is not enough. Silence is also needed to balance it, to give it some sanity, to make it less of a fever and more of a healthy phenomenon.

Silence alone is dead. It is of a graveyard, it is not alive. Love is needed, then even on the grave roses start blooming. Love and silence together make a life a really rich life.

And that's the work my sannyasins have to do, to create a rich life. I am against poverty -- and the greatest poverty is of the inner, the outer poverty will be removed sooner or later. Either science will remove it or nature will remove it, but it is going to be removed, it cannot remain for long. But the inner poverty, neither science can remove nor nature can remove. It has to be removed by the individual. Hence I have chosen the inner world and the work that is concerned with that.

The outer world is the concern of the politicians, the social workers, the so-called revolutionaries, scientists, technicians -- that is their work. My work is to change the inner world and to make it rich -- and richness happens only when love and silence meet. When love and silence are really merged into one organic unity you have come to know the greatest joy of life.

Vishram means relaxation.

Life should be lived in a very relaxed way. There is no need to be in a hurry, there is no need to be always rushing. It is to no purpose at all, nothing is served by it. In fact it is a way of destroying your life, because once this rushing becomes your habit you are never where you are, you are always somewhere else, so your body is in one place, your mind is in some other place. And this distance between your body and mind creates anxiety, anguish, and never allows you joy. Joy means to be here and now, so totally that there is no idea at all of being anywhere else or of being somebody else.

To feel relaxation is to feel the mystery of your being, because then you are available, unoccupied, utterly open and vulnerable. In a relaxed state you open up like a lotus flower -- to the sun, to the rain, to the wind, to all that is. And this whole is divine. God is not a person but only the totality of existence, the organic unity of all that is. But you can know it only when you are not in a rush, not in a hurry.

Sannyasins have to learn to relax, to drop this speedy neurosis. It is neurosis, it is driving people almost insane. Now psychologists say that out of four persons three are almost insane. And when out of four, three are insane, how long can the fourth remain sane? -- because he will have to live with the three! And the greatest insanity comes to people who have to live with insane people. The fourth cannot remain sane for long; he has to become part of the insanity, otherwise he cannot survive.

I teach my sannyasins to be relaxed, because through relaxation sanity comes, awareness comes, peace comes, bliss comes, love comes and ultimately, the ultimate guest too: God comes!

Kavya means poetry.

My approach towards life is not that of a philosopher but that of a poet. Philosophy is something of the 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

mind -- rational, logical, but superficial. Poetry is of the heart -- it is not thinking, it is feelings it is not logic, it is love. And when you love life, when you feel life without the interference of the mind, you are in immediate contact with god.

The first step is to change your gears from the head to the heart, from being a philosopher... And everybody is a philosopher; a few people are &cod philosophers and a few people are bad philosophers --

that doesn't matter. A few people are very systematic philosophers and others are lousy, but all are philosophers, more or less, in some way or other; hence the first shift has to be from the head to the heart.

The poet stands between the philosopher and the mystic, the heart is exactly in between the head and the being so the heart is a necessary station, anyone who is going on the journey of being -- and that's what sannyas is all about -- first has to stop at the heart.

Once you have settled at the heart and mind is no more a disturbance, the second step is not difficult, very easy; then one starts moving from feeling to being. And once you have reached being sannyas is fulfilled.

The philosopher is the farthest from the truth; the poet is very close, the mystic has arrived -- he has found his home. But nobody can go bypassing the heart.

So start feeling more, thinking less, start loving more, dropping logic, calculation, arithmetic. This is half of the work, and the most hard part; the second part is very easy. If one has done the first part, the second happens very easily, very spontaneously. In fact nothing is needed to be done for the second; once you have started feeling you are bound to go through a new transformation.

The feeling slowly slowly disappears of its own accord and only being is left. When only you are, simply you are -- no thought, no feeling, just a pure existence -- then you are a mirror, and in that mirror reality is reflected as it is.

Vinamro means humble, simple, with no desire to be somebody, utterly at rest with being nobody.

A sannyasin is a nobody. The only thing that he has to drop is the ego, because ego is the only barrier between you and existence, between you and bliss, between you and love, between you and god. Except for ego nothing is preventing you from living your life at the peak, at the optimum. Ego is your enemy, the only enemy; hence sannyas means surrender of the ego.

And it is only a question of a little understanding that the ego never gives you anything except misery, except wounds, so why carry it? It has never given anybody anything. It is like a cancer of the soul. And remember, it is an incurable as the cancer of the body. Sooner or later they will find some cure for the bodily cancer but for ten thousand years mystics have tried to find a cure, but there is no cure, for ego; every cure becomes a nourishment for it.

Hence the decision of all the awakened ones is: why bother curing it? -- drop it, it can be dropped. That is a surgical method. There is no need for any medicine, simply drop it You cannot so simply drop the physical cancer, for the simple reason that it becomes part of your body. But the ego is never part of your soul; it only pretends to be. It never becomes the part, it always remains separate.

The moment you decide to drop it you can drop it immediately; you need not even wait for a single second. Hence many people have attained enlightenment instantly.

A king came to see Buddha. He was bringing the greatest diamond that existed in those days to present to him. One should not go to a Buddha empty-handed, something has to be presented -- that was his idea.

But his queen said 'I know the Buddha, I have been to see him -- this diamond is nothing but a stone as far as he is concerned. Rather, take something better.' She said 'A lotus has blossomed in our pond, and it is unseasonal, rare, so take this lotus.'

The king; decided to take both. He thought 'First I will present the diamond -- if he accepts it, good; if he does not accept it, I will present the lotus.'

He presented the diamond and Buddha simply laughed and he said 'Drop it!' When Buddha said 'Drop it,' he had to drop it! He dropped it reluctantly because it was such a precious thing, but what can you do when ten thousand sannyasins are sitting there and in front of them Buddha says 'Drop it.' And when you have come to present it... So it was okay; he felt very sad but he dropped it.

Then he presented the lotus flower and Buddha said 'Drop it.' Now he was feeling a little bit awkward.

He dropped that too and then he stood there with empty hands, a little bit embarrassed; 'Now what to do?

How to start a conversation with this man? And Buddha again said 'Drop it!' Then the king said 'Either you are crazy or I am crazy -- now my hands are empty.'

And Mahakashyapa, one of Buddha's first disciples to become enlightened, said 'Drop it; drop it, don't 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

hesitate!' The king turned to Mahakashyapa and said 'But what should I drop? My hands are empty.' And Mahakashyapa said 'Now is the point of dropping. Buddha never meant that you should drop the diamond, he never meant that you should drop the flower. He means drop the ego, drop yourself. If you have come here then the only way to be in communion with Buddha is to drop the ego.'

And the story is that the man fell at Buddha's feet and immediately became enlightened. It was a sudden enlightenment, just a simple understanding, and he dropped the ego. It can be dropped just like that.

That is the meaning of your name, let it become the meaning of your life too.

Premdo means the loving one.

There are a few words which I emphasize continuously -- love is one of those words. It contains a whole philosophy of life. If you become loving nothing else is needed, because love goes on changing you. The deeper you love, the deeper you understand yourself. When you love totally you understand yourself totally.

Love becomes a mirror in which you can see your original face.

So don't miss a single opportunity to love: love people, love animals, love trees, rocks, rivers, stars.

Don't miss a single opportunity, and whatsoever you are doing do it lovingly. And start the journey from yourself: the first love is to love oneself.

For centuries we have been told the opposite; it has been engrained in us that it is bad to love oneself --

love others, of course, but don't love yourself. Now that is sheer stupidity. If a person is incapable of loving himself he cannot love anybody else in the world. Love begins at home, just as everything else begins at home.

Love yourself, then go on radiating love. Radiate it to the whole universe. The farther the reach of your love, the bigger your consciousness. Love functions like wings and you start soaring higher and higher.

Love can take you to the ultimate abode of god.

It is because of this that Jesus has made them synonymous: he says god is love.

Devika means the divine.

All is divine, because except for god nothing else exists. Existence means god. When we say god is, we are unnecessarily repeating the same word because god means 'is', 'isness'. When we say god is existence we are repeating the same thing twice because god is 'isness', obviously god is existence, so everything is divine.

The earth is divine, the trees are divine, the stars are divine, the people are divine, even the devil is divine. The word 'devil' comes from the same root as divine. Devika also comes from the same Sanskrit root. Maybe the devil is divine but he is standing on his head -- that may be the only difference. He has just gone a little bit crazy, cuckoo, but even if he is a cuckoo god he is a god! (laughter) Nothing else exists, so the whole existence becomes a temple, and the whole world becomes a play to pray in, to worship in. Then wherever you are walking you are walking on holy 'round' whatsoever you are doing is sacred.

But the religions have created a division. They say when you go to the church it is religious and when you go to the shop or the office or the factory, that is worldly. When you are praying it is holy and when you are taking a shower it is nothing holy. I don't believe in this division. This division creates a split humanity, it is the root cause of schizophrenia.

One can take a shower as prayerfully as one can pray; one just has to be understanding. The water is divine, the shower is divine, the coolness is divine, you are divine. The divine is showering on the divine --

it is multiplied! It is just a question of seeing, understanding; and only then a person is religious -- when all his acts, gestures, movements become divine. Then the twenty-four hours of your day are prayerful.

That's the meaning of sannyas, to transform your whole life into a prayer, an unending prayer.

Is the Grass Really Greener...?

Chapter #5

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

Chapter title: None

5 December 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8012055

ShortTitle: GREENR05

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Anand means bliss. Trinda means pure, clean, clear.

These are the basic qualities of a blissful person. He is pure but not in the moral sense, he is pure in a scientific sense, because there is no misery in him. Misery pollutes the being, it covers your being like clouds. The pure person is one whose being is a sky without clouds.

It has nothing to do with morality. Morality itself is a cloud -- maybe a beautiful cloud -- and immorality is an ugly cloud. But a cloud is a cloud. Beautiful or not, it hinders the vision, the light. The sun cannot reach you, the moon cannot reach you. It comes like a wall between you and the stars.

Clean has a second quality. Bliss has the fragrance of the just-opening flower or the just-born baby; it is the same feeling as when you come out of a shower. That cleanliness continuously remains with the blissful person.

The miserable person is dirty, he feels the dirt clinging to him. He has never known that the beyond showers continuously. He has never been bathed with the beyond, he has never taken a shower in God; hence he is unclean.

And clear, the third quality. The blissful person can see things as they are. The miserable person always projects his desires. He is so full of desires, so full of frustrations, so full of failures, that his whole life is nothing but wanting, wanting, wanting. He cannot see things as they are, his wants are too many.

The blissful person is at ease with himself. He is in a state of non-wanting, he is satisfied. He has got that after which everybody is running and rushing. His perception has no projections in it. And to see things as they are is to see God.

The word 'God' is simply a code word. In mystery schools G stands for that, O stands for which, and D

stands for is. That which is -- that's exactly the meaning of the word 'God'. God is not a word; it is a code word. It has to be decoded, and only a blissful person is capable of decoding it.

So my message basically is simple: be blissful, be cheerful. And if you are blissful you are religious.

Anand means bliss. Alexis means a helper of mankind.

The blissful person is inevitably a helper of mankind. And not only of mankind, he is simply a helper of existence itself. And I say it is inevitable -- it is not a question of doing something, it is a by-product of blissfulness. It comes of its own accord because there is a fundamental law of bliss that you have to share it.

You cannot escape sharing it. That is intrinsic to bliss, its organic quality -- inalienable, inseparable.

Just as when light comes darkness cannot exist, when bliss happens you cannot cause misery to anybody, not even in your dreams. That simply disappears. And when you cannot cause misery you are so full of bliss -- it is overflowing. You have to share it, otherwise it becomes a burden. There is a pain if you don't share bliss, the same pain as the cloud feels when it is full of rain and cannot shower. It has to shower to unburden. It is the same pain as a woman feels when the child is ready in her womb. Nine months are over and the child has to be given birth to. Now it is becoming heavier, it is impossible to contain the child anymore.

Giving birth to a child simply means sharing the child with the world, sending him into the world. The same is true about bliss: when you have it, it comes in such abundance, floodlike, that it starts overglowing you. And the beauty is the more you share it, the more you have it.

Once you have learned this strange law that sharing makes it deeper, greater, then it is simple logic to go on giving it for no other reason but just for the sake of giving. And you don't feel that others have to be 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

obliged to you. In fact, the blissful person is obliged to those who allow him to shower his bliss upon them.

That's the whole philosophy of sannyas: be blissful and let it flow from you in every direction. Never bother about who deserves it and who does not; you are not the judge. And there is no need to judge, your joy should be in sharing.

So give without any conditions. Just give, not as a duty but as love. You are not doing anything to anybody, you are not doing anything special. You are not a public servant, a social reformer and all that nonsense, you are not a missionary. To be a missionary is to be ugly, because the whole idea is that you are doing something great, something holy.

My sannyasins are not holy people in that sense. My sannyasins have to be very ordinary, because, this is my observation, to be just ordinary is the most extraordinary phenomenon in existence because everybody wants to be extraordinary. Hence the desire for extraordinariness is very ordinary. Who wants to be ordinary? -- only a very extraordinary person.

Anand means bliss. Harry means home.

Life in every form is searching for a home, it is searching for its source. That's why animals, birds, trees, man -- all kinds of life forms are one as far as the longing for bliss is concerned, because bliss is the home.

There are many houses, but a house is not equivalent to a home. A house is just an overnightls stay; tho home is eternal. Once you have arrived, there is no need to go anywhere, all is fulfilled, the journey is completed. And the joy of completing a great job, of finishing something that has been incomplete for thousands of lives!

Bliss is the only real longing of man. So I don't insist on your believing in god because that will be a belief, and all beliefs are plastic, artificial, arbitrary; my insistence is on the natural. So whether one is an atheist or a theist, it doesn't matters bliss is the longing of allO Hence I call bliss the home. It is the source and it is the end, the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega.

We have come from some unknown source and we are searching for a way back to it. The circle will be complete when we have found it. And the moment we find it -- immediately the recognition that this is the origin and this is the goal, and they are not separate.

Veet Seraida.

Seraida is a dangerous name, hence I have to put a condition before it; Veet means go beyond -- go beyond Seraida. Seraida means one who is burning with a religious desire, one who is ardently religious.

That is a very dangerous thing, that creates fanaticism. Ardently religious people have been a calamity in the world.

I want you to be simply religious; not ardently, not seriously, not fanatically. There is no question of burning with religiousness. Flower -- that's right. Rejoice, dance, sing, but don't burn! Because when a person starts burning with religiousness then he wants everybody to burn with the same religiousness. That's how Christianity, Mohammedanism, Hinduism, Judaism, has been functioning for thousands of years. The earth has been dominated by the fanatics, and religion is not fanaticism.

One should be very light-hearted, don't take religion seriously. Take it as fun -- it is the ultimate fun, but fun all the same.

The eastern mystics have called the world god's 'leela', his play -- that is far more beautiful. That idea is missing in all the Judaic religions. Christianity, Mohammedanism -- these are Judaic religions, by-products of Judaism. They are completely missing the whole dimension of festivity and light-heartedness; they have been too serious, deadly serious. That's the meaning of ardently religious.

Of course in the past it has been thought to be a great quality, hence the name Seraida became very significant. But with me you will have to unlearn it. To me existence is a cosmic joke. God is playing hide and seek. We know where he is hiding, he knows that we know but just to continue the game....

I can show you where he is hiding but then the whole game is finished. If you read the punchline of a joke first then what is the point of reading the joke? -- all is finished. So the punchline remains hanging like a carrot ahead of you; you go on moving and the carrot goes on moving; it is always there on the horizon. It is very close, it is not very far away, but you never reach it.

That's the whole joy of life! That's the beauty of life, that it remains a mystery. And it is not that we cannot dissect it, it can be dissected but only a fool will do that and a fool cannot do that. A wise man can do it but a wise man will not do it. Do you get it?

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

Dhyan means meditation. Thomas means a seeker of truth.

There are two ways to seek the truth: one is mind, the other is meditation. If you choose the mind you land in the world of philosophy. Then there are thousands of questions but no answers. Many times you will feel you are coming closer to an answer, but when you arrive you will find ten more questions hiding behind it.

In philosophy answers are only hiding places for many more questions. So each answer creates ten questions. And as philosophy has grown bigger and bigger... now it is nothing but questions and questions and no answer at all. It can drive a man crazy -- in fact it does. It is very difficult to find a philosopher who is not crazy. If he is not crazy he is not much of a philosopher, he is wasting his time -- that is not his business. A philosopher has to be crazy; otherwise, who wants questions and questions? And to be surrounded by all kinds of questions... finally one gets lost in the jungle of philosophy.

If you go through meditation, which is just the opposite of mind -- meditation means no-mind -- then you enter the world of religion. Just as in the world of mind there are only questions, in the world of meditation there are only answers, no questions. Hence a person moving into meditation becomes more and more silent, more and more sane. The name of ultimate sanity is buddhahood -- that's what we call wisdom.

Then there are no questions left anymore.

And because there are no questions anymore, you cannot say you have got the answers either -- because they are relevant only with the questions. One is simply silent.

The philosopher is in a turmoil, the mystic is absolutely silent. The philosopher tries hard but finds nothing, the mystic does not try at all and finds everything. The mystic says: sitting silently, doing nothing, spring comes and the grass grows by itself.

The West has not been able to understand the mystic; the mystic seems to be very alien to the Western mind. Just sitting silently, doing nothing, not even thinking? Then why are you sitting? For what?

The Western approach is a mind approach. It is dominated by philosophy. Because of that domination it cannot think that there is a possibility of just being and doing nothing -- no questions, no problems, no thoughts; relaxing in oneself, resting in oneself. And in that rest one arrives, one arrives at one's own innermost core. And that is where one finds the truth. There is nowhere else one can find the truth.

The philosopher goes everywhere, the mystic simply sits in his own home. Lao Tzu says that you need not even go out of the room; all that you want you can find inside. And he is right!

Being initiated into sannyas means being initiated into meditation. So now learn to drop the mind. Pull the energy out from the mind and put it into meditativeness, into silence.

I don't give any answers, I only destroy your questions. I call that answering -- destroying your questions. When all your questions are destroyed, nothing is left in you, all is found.

In nothing all is found.

Anand means bliss. Marlies consists of two words; the first part means rebellion and the second part means victory.

Bliss is a rebellion and also a victory. It is a rebellion against the stupid society in which we are brought up, against the dull and dead tradition that has been imposed upon us. All kinds of ideologies, philosophies, theologies, have been forced on every person. One has to rebel against all that because those are the things which are keeping you tethered to your misery. Unless you uproot all that has been imposed on you by others, you will never be blissful.

The society lives in misery and this society goes on conditioning every child. The parents are miserable, the teachers are miserable, the neighbours are miserable, the priests are miserable; the politicians are miserable -- and they are all together, imposing what is right, what is wrong, what you have to do and what you haven't to do. And of course they create just replicas of themselves. They create every child in their own image -- and they are miserable people. So many miserable people working hard on a small child are bound to destroy all his intrinsic blissfulness. Bliss is intrinsic and natural but it can be destroyed, at least it can be covered with rubbish; you can be made to forget all about it. And that's what they have done.

A rebellion is needed. And unless one is ready to rebel, one cannot be a sannyasin. Rebel against all that creates misery in you and you will be surprised to know that you will have to rebel agalnst the whole mind that up to now you thought was yours; it is your enemy, not your friend.

And if one is ready to rebel against the mind, bliss explodes and brings victory. The only victory which can be really called victory is not the victory over somebody else but the victory over your own innermost self, the victory which makes you capable of entering into the kingdom of god.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

The most important thing in life is to discover your truth. Certainly it is there becauso we are alive, we are conscious. We have to dig into our consciousness, we have to go to the very source of it, to the very rock-bottom. And once you have found it, you have found your truth. Once you know who you are -- that's what I mean by your truth' -- you are liberated. You will live in the same way, nothing on the outside will change, but still you will be a totally different person. In one sense everything will be the same, in another sense nothing will be the same any more, because now you will have a perspective which is timeless, deathless. Now you know that you were before birth and you will be after death. Now that you have seen your original faco you are freed from all small things -- life's failures and successes, richness and poverty, small pains and pleasures. They all look so small, so insignificant, that one can remain absolutely centred in every kind of situation. Nothing makes you waver, your groundedness is so solid, your centredness is so absolute.

This centredness is the goal of sannyas. This groundedness, this integrity, this unwavering state of consciousness which remains untouched by everything, this is the goal of sannyas. And once this is discovered there is nothing more to discover. Then one can livo the ordinary life with an extraordinary beauty, with an extraordinary bliss, with grace, with god within one's heart.

Toshi means absolutely contented.

Mind is discontentment, it is never contented. It goes on saying 'Get this, get that, and I will be contented,' but by the time you get it, it is again asking for something else. And the game continues for the whole of one's life from the cradle to the grave. It goes on asking for more.

It is said that when Alexander the Great saw Diogenes, a Greek mystic, Diogenes said to him 'I have heard that you are going to conquer the whole world, but have you pondered over one question?' Alexander said 'What question?' Diogenes said 'A simple question, that you must consider before you enter on this enterprlses remember there is only one world and if you conquer it then what will you do afterwards?'

The story is that just the idea made Alexander sad; just the idea that if he conquered the whole world of course the problem would arise of, now what? With just the idea -- he had not yet conquered the world -- his mind immediately became discontented and asked for another world, another toy. That's the way of the mind; it goes from one discontentment to another.

But there is something more than mind in you; and that is the only hope. There is something deeper than the mind in you: your consciousness. Consciousness is not part of the mind, because you can even watch your mind, so the watcher is separate from the mind, different from the mind. And this watcher has a totally different quality, just the opposite to the mind -- the quality of contentment, absolute contentment.

Each moment is so full of joy, so exquisitely joyful, that even if death comes right now you will not ask for another moment because this moment was enough. There is no question of asking for another world; even for another moment you will not say to death 'Wait, because I have to finish a few things, because there are a few things which I was doing and they are incomplete. You will say I' am ready.'

Contentment means 'This moment is enough. Right now all that I need is here; all that I have ever needed and will ever need is here.' And to be in such a state is to know god, is to be god. Then each moment is a dance and a celebration. Then each moment has such infinite depth and so much treasure, that who cares whether tomorrow comes or not? Who bothers?

In his prayer at night before he went to bed, one Sufi mystic, Farid, used to say 'Thank you, god.' And in the morning again when he opened his eyes, the same prayers 'Thank you, god.' His disciples were a little puzzled because this was not the Mohammedan way. They have specific prayers; a Mohammedan has to do five kinds of prayer five times a day. What kind of prayer was this? He did it only twice! and 'Thank you, god...'?

They said to him 'Please, don't be offended -- we are your disciples and we should not ask any questions like this, this is your personal matter -- but we have become very curious: why do you say "thank you" when you go to sleep and again in the morning?' He said 'I say thank you because who knows? -- this may be my last moment and in the morning I may not wake up, so at least before I leave the world -- he has given so much to me -- I should say thank you. In the morning when I wake up I am so full of wonder, I cannot believe my own eyes that I am here again and the day is here -- so it seems I have one day more! So much is available -- the sun and the birds singing and the flowers and the fragrance -- so I say thank you. I had never asked, I never thought that there would be another day but thore is. It is just a gift from god, so I say thank you. More than that I don't know,' he said, 'More prayer is not needed.'

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

Prayer is a thankfulness; in fact a contented being is continuously prayerful. Whether he says anything or not there is always a deep undercurrent of thankfulness. That has to become your life.

I am giving you a very small name -- Toshi -- but it contains the whole of religions.

-- How long will you be here?

-- (Her reply is very softly spoken.)

-- Be here as long as possible -- and as long as god allows!

Anudeva means divine, godly.

We are gods. If we know that, we live an ecstatic life; if we don't know, we live in agony. The only difference is of knowing; there is no qualitative difference between you and Christ, except just a very simple difference that he knows who he is and you are unaware of the fact. He has the treasure, you have the treasure; it is the same treasure, but you are unconscious of it and he is conscious of it. So all that is needed is a little bit of awareness, just a little candle of awareness and the miracle happens.

Meditation is that little bit of awareness. It is only a seed but the seed soon becomes a big tree with great foliage and flowers and fruits.

Now, let meditation become the very focus of your life, the very centre. Everything else should be secondary and everything else should be arranged in such a way that it helps your meditation and does not hinder it. Anything that hinders your meditation has to be dropped and anything that helps it has to be practised. Meditation has to be the criterion. And it is such a great criterion that you can easily dissect the non-essential from thc essential; the essential is always nourishing to meditation and the non-essential is always poisoning.

The sannyasin lives the essential life, and the non-essential slowly slowly disappears, evaporates.

Is the Grass Really Greener...?

Chapter #6

Chapter title: None

6 December 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8012065

ShortTitle: GREENR06

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Veet Dirk. Dirk is a dangerous name. It means the ruler of the people. The very idea of ruling others is ugly; it is political, it is inhuman. Hence I am giving you the name Veet Dirk: Veet means go beyond Dirk, go beyond the idea, the desire of domination, of ruling others. Veet means transcending. It is an ordinary desire in everybody, to somehow prove superior to others.

The really superior man has no desire to prove that he is superior -- he simply is! He never becomes a politician, there is no need. The politician suffers from an inferiority complex, hence to compensate he projects just the opposite of it into the world; he tries to prove that he is great, that Alexander the Great, but inside he knows his emptiness.

Sannyas means dropping the desire to rule others and putting your whole energy into conquering yourself, into becoming a matter of one's own being. And one cannot manage both together. To rule others 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

one has to go outside, one has to be violent, competitive, destructive. To become a master of oneself one has to go in, one has to become more loving, more peaceful, more silent, more non-competitive, more non-ambitious, more and more diving into one's being. A moment comes when you reach the very centre.

That moment is the moment of real victory. That is the moment when one becomes a master.

And that is worth achieving; all else is just stupid.

Prem means love. Gabriele means God is my strength.

Man can live either as love or as an ego. These are the two, the only two alternatives available, the two alternative lifestyles.

The ego is very attractive because it promises great things, although it delivers nothing; those goods are never delivered. But it is very persuasive, seductive. It goes on promising, it goes on alluring, it goes on telling you that just a few steps more and you will achieve the goal -- although the goal is never achieved because the goal is like the horizon. You can go on and on but the distance between you and the horizon remains the same, for the simple reason that that horizon is illusory. It exists not, it only appears to; it has no reality.

The ego creates dreams and fantasies of achieving this, of being this, of getting that, of reaching there.

And through all these fantasies it takes you farther and farther away from yourself. And to be away from one's own self is to be away from god.

Love is not at all persuasive. You have to choose it, it does not propagate itself. It will not prove itself.

So when the ego style fails -- and it fails only for the intelligent people, remember; for the stupid it never fails. It fails again and again, but again and again they are in the same trap; they can be befooled for their whole life. But the intelligent person sooner or later -- and it is sooner rather than later -- recognizes that the ego is just a deceptive phenomenon, a mirage.

In that failure of the ego lifestyle one moves to egolessness. And that's what love is: love is egolessness.

Now there is nowhere to go, nothing to achieve; your whole energy starts settling, resting within yourself.

And when it rests at the center one comes to know that one is not, only God is. "That's the meaning of Gabriele: 'God is my strength, God is my existence, God is my very being. I am just a small manifestation of divine energy.'"

To know it brings great rejoicing. All worries disappear, all anxieties disappear; now you know that there is somebody far bigger than you who takes care, who is concerned. You are his project so it is his business to fulfill it, to help you to be blissful. And he is constantly trying to reach you to be blissful. And he is constantly trying to reach you but you are always running, chasing after shadows, hence he cannot reach you. When you are inside yourself, immediately you hear the still, small voice within you -- and that becomes the guiding star.

Then you don't need any scriptures, any morality, any codes of behavior; you have your own insight --

now you can know what is right and what is wrong, on your own. And that has tremendous beauty: to live according to one's own being is to live authentically. That's the way a sannyasin should live.

Dhyan Susanne. Dhyan means meditation. Susanne means full of grace.

Everybody is born with great grace, beauty and intelligence, but it has to be discovered. It is only a potential; it has to be actualised. It is only a seed; you have to sow it, only then will it burst forth into flowers one day.

Ordinarily it is invisible. You cannot see the flowers in the seed. Even if you cut the seed you will not find any colour, any fragrance, nothing, no foliage, and you know this seed has all that. Millions of flowers are possible through it, for years and years millions of leaves, greenery, will come out of it; it has infinite potential, but that potential has to become a tree, a reality.

Man is a seed full of grace, full of beauty, full of wisdom, full of god -- but he is only a seed. Meditation is the way to make that seed sprout. Meditation is nothing but preparing the ground, withdrawing all the stones, weeds, roots, all that is non-essential, so that the essential can have space enough to grow.

Meditation only creates space within you by taking out all the weeds.

Thoughts are weeds, desires are weeds, memories are weeds -- and they all have to be taken out, root and all. Once the space is there you will be surprised: suddenly roses start growing within you.

Govindo is a name of god. One may know it one may not know, but one is a god.

The function of the master is to remind you, to create a situation in which you can remember, to create 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

devices which can function as mirrors in which you can see your original face.

But one is not less than god; less than that is all false. Less than that is our invention, more than that is not possible. So don't settle for less. Discover the reality of your being. And it is not very far away either.

Just a little bit of shaking, jumping, jogging, and you will wake up. That's what we are doing here, One never knows through what situation one is going to wake up. Buddha became awakened while he was just sitting under a tree, like any lazy man -- just sitting, doing nothing. And we Indians are really efficient at it! (laughter) Perhaps that's why so many people became Buddhas in India: laziness may be the real cause of it.

We know how not to do things. We are really efficient. So he was just sitting like any other Indian under a tree and he became awakened.

If you sit too long under a tree sooner or later you will wake up. You will get tired of sitting and you will think 'What am I doing?' You will have to get it. For how long can one sit?

Somebody can become enlightened while he is dancing. One never knows. So in my commune all kinds of devices are Made available. Try every possible door. One thing is certain, that there is one door for you too, but you will have to knock on many doors before you come to the real door that will be yours.

It is a trial-and-error method. There is no other possibility. So do all that is happening here, participate in everything. Don't be choosey, because whatsoever you choose you will choose from the mind -- and the mind is very cunning: it will avoid the door that is really going to be your door.

My own observation is that whatsoever the mind chooses is almost always wrong. So the best way is: whatsoever is available, try; try everything -- all the meditations, all the groups. One never knows in what situation the lightning will happen. But it happens -- that much is certain.

-- How long will you be here?

-- One month.

-- That is not like a Japanese! (Osho shakes his head slowly, looking smilingly at Govindo, and does it for so long that everyone begins to laugh.)

Next time come for a longer period! Good.

Anurage means pure love.

Love can be impure, then it creates bondage. When it is pure it brings freedom. The whole process of sannyas is of purifying your love-energy. It is mixed with many things, because our society makes every child a mess. There is lust, which is not love but millions of people think that is love; it is just a biological instinct. It is just nature trying to continue the race. It has nothing to do with you; it is almost impersonal.

Love is not possessiveness; many people think that's what love is: you possess somebody totally. To possess somebody is to destroy all possibility of love. Possessiveness can be hate but cannot be love, it can be fear but it cannot be love.

One has to drop possessiveness, one has to drop the very idea of dominating, one has to give freedom if one wants freedom. Whatsoever you want for yourself give to others. And if you cannot give even to those you love, to whom else can you give it? And the only gift worth giving is freedom. And the miracle is that the moment love gives freedom it becomes pure, absolutely pure. And in that purity it rises to its ultimate height. That height is prayer. At that height you start meeting, merging with the eternal, with the infinite.

Nothing else is needed if one can go on watching all those elements which made one's love impure and drop them so ultimately only love is left. Then love is just fragrance -- so sweet and of such grandeur that one cannot imagine it, there is no way to imagine it, one can only experience it. It is of the beyond, penetrating the thick layers of the earthen existence. It is like a ray coming from the ultimate source. Jesus says god is love -- and he is right.

Gopalo is a name of god.

Every man should be reminded again and again that he is a god. In fact we do just the opposite: we remind every man that he is nothing but an animal. This has been particularly so since Charles Darwin. That man is nothing but an evolution of a certain animal species has become a popular myth, although it is absolutely ungrounded and no proof exists for it. The Darwinians have not been able to provide a single proof that monkeys have become men. If it were true then we would see at least a few monkeys becoming men today also. There is no record of that. At least ten thousand-year-old scriptures exist: not at a single point has anybody seen a monkey becoming a man (laughter). Sometimes it happens that a man becomes a monkey (laughter) and goes crazy, nuts, but vice versa has never happened.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

But Darwinians go on believing it and they have polluted the whole mind of man for all these years and now everybody has accepted the idea. That idea has been one of the greatest hindrances in human evolution.

The old idea, that man comes from god, was far more significant because it gives you an impetus, a challenge. If you come from god than you are god; then there is a possibility for you to regain, to reclaim, your inheritance. But if you come from monkeys, what challenge is there? One just feels a little awkward, that's all; one wants to hide somewhere. And one feels as if one has come to the ultimate peak of evolution

-- what more can you do?

Monkeys have done great work. Buddha is a monkey, Jesus is a monkey, Lao Tzu is a monkey -- what else can you think of? Monkeys have done miracles! But this is just an absurd idea, utterly unscientific.

Science is burdened with many superstitions; this is one of the superstitions of science.

I insist that man comes from god. In fact I insist that even monkeys come from god; all that exists comes from god. God is our only source, and unless we again reach that source we will remain discontented.

Sannyas is a deliberate effort to regain our real source, to again become part of the reality from which we have become uprooted.

Rishiraj. Rishi is a very specific word. There is no equivalent in English for it, in fact in no other language is there an equivalent for it. All the languages have just one word for the poet; only Sanskrit has two words for the poet. One is "kavi" which is exactly synonymous with poetry; the other is "rishi" which is something plus -- but that plus is mysterious, very mysterious.

The rishi is a poet but in a very special sense. The poet composes poetry but there are only a few moments when he functions as a poet, otherwise he is an ordinary man. No poet is a poet for twenty-four hours a day. Yes, there are moments when windows open and he can see into the beyond and he can bring great treasures from that experience. But those windows open and close, and he is not the master of those windows; whenever they open they open....

Coleridge, a great English poet, died with thousands of incomplete poems. His friends insisted again and again "Why don't you complete these poems?" Sometimes only a single line was needed and the poem would be complete. It would be such a beautiful poem that it would be unfortunate if it remained incomplete. But Coleridge was insistent, he said, "No, I cannot complete it because I have not composed it.

Only once in a while am I a poet and at that moment something starts flowing through me. I cannot claim that I am the author of it but just the vehicle, so whatsoever comes, comes. If the process, if the energy, stops in the middle, I stop, I have to stop. I have tried many times to complete it but my line seems to be very far away from the other lines that have come on their own. It does not fit -- there is a qualitative difference." And he was right.

A rishi is a poet who is a poet twenty-four hours a day, who knows the art of opening the window whenever he wants to open it. The poet is in a way unconscious. The rishi is a conscious poet; he is an awakened poet, an enlightened poet.

It is not a question of him feeling poetry flowing through him once in a while; it is flowing all the time, twenty-four hours a day. That's the meaning of rishi.

And Raj means a king. A poet who is a poet twenty-four hours a day is certainly a king; he has found the real kingdom -- the kingdom of god.

Narayani. Narayani is a very significant name. 'Nar' means man, and Narayana means god in man.

Narayani is the feminine form of Narayana.

Man is not only man. From the outside he is man, from the inside he is god. Jesus says many times 'I am the son of man,' and many times 'I am the son of god.' For two thousand years Christian theologists have been pondering, discussing, analysing, arguing about why he uses these two expressions. Either he is a son of man or he is a son of god. How can he be both? But everybody is both, it is not only Jesus. Jesus is simply representing a truth about everybody: from the outside we are sons of man, from the inside we are sons of god. Our body comes from our parents and our consciousness comes from god himself. So we are the meeting place of these two, the physical and the supraphysical.

Narayani means the meeting of the physical and the non-physical. Unfortunate are those people who think themselves only physical. Those people are in a far better way, far more fortunate are those who think themselves spiritual. But the ultimate joy and the blessing and the benediction belongs to the third category that knows that we are both.

And that's exactly my approach, that man should live both sides, the exterior and the interior, 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

simultaneously, in deep harmony. There is no need to drop life and escape to a monastery, and there is no need to become just a worldly man, a Rotarian, etcetera. You have to be both because only when you are both does a synthesis happen in you, a synthesis which takes you beyond both, which leads you to the transcendental.

So my sannyasins have to live in the world without being part of the world. They have to be in the cyclone, but still rooted in their centres. Let the cyclone surround you -- it has its own beauty -- but you remain unaffected, calm and cool and centred, and then the beauty is a thousand times more.

Anuradha is the name of Krishna's beloved. The name is Anuradha but in love it can be pronounced Anuradhe. It becomes more beautiful, more rounded. Anuradha looks square, Anuradhe becomes circular.

Words also have shapes. Just a little change and a word becomes a totally different thing -- if its shape changes.

The woman, Anuradha, is very mysterious in a way, because no scripture mentions her. Because of that many historians think that it is a latter addition -- that's not true. In the ancient scriptures Anuradha is mentioned but not by her name, for the simple reason that she effaced herself totally. And that's what love can do: it can efface you totally, it can help you to become absolutely egoless. That's what happened to Anuradha.

The ancient scriptures only say that there was one woman who followed Krishna just like a shadow --

that's the only mention. No name is mentioned, nothing else is said about the woman except that she was just like a shadow. Love can do that miracle.

In love one becomes so one with the beloved that there is no need for a separate name. And 'just like a shadow' is also very significant. Lovers quarrelling, fighting, nagging each other, arguing, is something which is not love-like at all. But that's what the contemporary idea has become: lovers encountering.

Most of the time they encounter each other. Love is only just a break, a love break, and again the encounter starts. And here I have many sannyasins who are great encounter-addicts! (laughter) When they become tired of encountering then there is a little bit of love. That is just to keep things going on so that they remain glued together. Love is just like a glue. But the whole purpose is encounter!

That was not the ancient ideal of love; it was totally different, a completely different perspective. Lovers have to be so deeply in tune with each other that they lose all separate identity, they become shadows to each other. That's what I love in Anuradha -- that she is only mentioned as a shadow. Nobody knew who she was, what her name was, but she always followed Krishna wherever he went, just like a shadow serving him, loving him, showering him with her love, asking nothing in return. And she must have been absolutely non-possessive because Krishna had many women who loved him. There is not a single mention of any argument between Anuradha and Krishna, no encounter...

It will look unbelievable to modern psychologists who think lovers are nothing but intimate enemies.

And they are right as far as modern lovers are con-cerned: they are intimate enemies. In fact, they are only enemies; just to be polite we call them intimate enemies. The 'intimate' has to be put in brackets. It happens only once in a while, that intimacy. But the ancient ideal of love was certainly just intimacy, pure intimacy, a surrender. That is the message of your name,

To be with a master is an intimate love affair. It is not a logical relationship, not a rational phenomenon; it is utter irrational, absurd. You cannot prove it, you cannot convince anybody. You can simply say something has happened which is incomprehensible to others.

Just today I was reading about two young women, two twin sisters in England, who have become a problem to the psychologists. Never such a case has happened before. It is really something very unique: they have two bodies and one mind. Twins are alike physically, but these twins are psychologically alike. If one gets angry the other gets angry, immediately, for no reason at all. Not only that, their facial expression in anger is the same. Not only that, if they become angry -- that means if one becomes angry and starts saying something -- they start shouting both together and the same words come from both, as if one mind is functioning in two bodies. They are the same words, exactly same words. In any mood -- in love, in anger, whenever they are just warmed up -- they say the same words, they make the same gestures; even if they are in two separate rooms it happens the same way. If one falls ill, the other falls ill -- it is the same illness.

They may be far away, there is no question of infection, but they fall ill and they get healthy at the same time.

They both fell in love with one person. The man of course escaped, because he would have gone crazy with these two women! (laughter) Just one is enough, and two exactly alike... He escaped, he got married as 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

quickly as possible, because when you hare a woman you are protected, otherwise those two were chasing him. But he was a cabdriver, so whenever these two women found him driving the cab anywhere they would both fall in front of the cab and would start saying the same things. A crowd would gather, and it was a scene to watch: exactly the same words glowing!

Now psychologists are studying... They can only think that it is something like telepathy perhaps; they can find nothing else. But this has happened many times between a master and disciple. This has happened many times between lovers. With Anuradha it must have happened.

And when it happens between a master and disciple then one consciousness starts functioning between two bodies. That is communion, that is Satsanga -- and that's the whole purpose of this commune of sannyasins.

So be ready for some crazy things to happen! Right? Good!

Is the Grass Really Greener...?

Chapter #7

Chapter title: None

7 December 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8012075

ShortTitle: GREENR07

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Prem Sabine. Prem means love.

Love is the only quality that man goes on losing. As civilisation grows, love evaporates. The basic structure of the civilisation that we have chosen is anti-love, because it is head-oriented. It avoids the heart, it ignores the heart, it tries to bypass it.

The head of course is very efficient, it is needed, but it is a mechanism. And a man who lives only in the head becomes a robot. He is useful for the establishment but to himself he has almost committed suicide.

Only the man of love lives and lives in abundance. A man of love is always in spring, flowers and flowers bloom within his being. There is dance in his step, there is song even in his silence.

My whole teaching is based on love.

Sabine is a tribal name indicating a woman from the ancient Italian tribe of the Sabines. It signifies a state of society when civilisation had not yet entered, when people were still living natural lives, when they were more close to the earth, to the rocks, to the rivers, when they were almost part of the ecology. They belonged to the trees and to the stars. The home was not yet lost; they were at home in the universe.

Love can do that miracle again.

Man has to become capable of living naturally, lovingly, and yet able to use his mind when needed. But he should not become obsessed with the mind. He should live in the heart, and mind should be used only as a mechanism, just as you use your car or your radio or your television. One should not become addicted to the head.

A totally new kind of civilisation is needed: a heart-oriented civilisation.

Sannyas is the beginning of that new kind of civilisation. By becoming a sannyasin you are becoming part of the future, of that which is going to happen of that which has to happen if man is to survive, if life is 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

to exist on earth. The old has failed, utterly failed; the new is absolutely needed and as quickly as possible, because man is dying, his heart is missing beats. Man is in a state of heart failure -- only a great dose of love, an allopathic dose, can save him, otherwise there is no hope.

Anand David. Anand means bliss. David means a friend.

Love is a flower, friendliness is like fragrance. Love has some biological roots, it has something physiological in it, it has a chemistry but friendliness is a sheer miracle. There is no reason for it to exist at all, that's why I say it is a sheer miracle. If it did not exist nobody would ever be able to imagine that something was missing.

Nature does not need it. It helps in no way as far as nature is concerned; it is non-essential.

Love is rooted in the earth; friendship is an opening towards the sky -- that is a totally different dimension. Hence it is certainly far more superior to love or maybe it is the essential of love. When you have purified love of all biology then only friendliness remains.

And David also means a beloved of god.

Naturally when your love is so pure that it reaches the optimum you become a beloved of existence. And only a blissful person can attain to this state. The miserable person may create a certain kind of love relationship because that is his need -- if it is not there he feels empty, lonely. But friendliness is not a need; it is an overflowing joy, it is a sharing.

Love is a kind of begging, that's why lovers are always quarrelling, because both are beggars and both are trying to get as much as they can. It is a constant struggle, a fight. Friendliness is not a need at all, it is a luxury. Only very few blissful people have been able to afford it. It is the most luxurious phenomenon.

So bliss has to be the base of sannyas and friendliness will be the outcome of it. And the experience of god will be the ultimate grace of existence. One begins in blissfulness and reaches god; exactly in the middle is friendliness -- it is like a bridge.

And I am using the word 'friendliness' more than friendship because friendship is a very low kind of friendliness. It is limited, it is closer to love very close -- a little bit higher, but very close. Friendliness is very far away. Friendliness is not limited, it is not a relationship at all; it is just your quality. You are simply friendly to all that is -- and to me that defines sannyas, that defines religion.

Dhyan Regenbogen. Dhyan means meditation. Regenbogen means a rainbow.

The rainbow symbolises the meeting of the earth and the sky. And that's what meditation is: a rainbow, a meeting of the earth and the sky, a meeting of the material and the spiritual, a meeting of the visible and the invisible.

The old idea of religion was only of spirituality. It had no concern with the material part of existence. It was suppressive of the material, condemning the material, rejecting, renouncing the material. It created a very ugly situation because the material is there, it is fifty per cent, and it is essential for the spiritual; without it the spiritual cannot exist at all. The spiritual is rooted in the material.

Because the material was denied the old religious person was just airy-fairy, without roots, just hot air, an abstraction, but nothing concrete.

My effort here is to create a new kind of religiousness which is capable of absorbing the earth in it, which is vast enough to have both worlds together. Then it will have a richer quality. The old saints were poor people.

And when Jesus says 'Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of god'. I don't agree with him at all. I would like to say 'Blessed are the rich in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of god.' But to be rich in spirit needs multi-dimensionality. And these are two very basic dimensions: the material and the spiritual, the outer and the inner.

There is no need to create a split; we should try to bridge. We should create bridges, not walls. We should make man more an d more vast, including as much as possible. And as I see man can include all, he can become almost universal. He can have trees and rivers and mountains and stars within his being; he can be as vast as the sky.

But the old saint was certainly poor. He was linear, one-dimensional, flat.

Just today I was reading a joke: A Japanese soldier went to America after the Second World War and for the first time saw the Californian beauties. He was very much amazed. He said to his host with whom he was staying 'American women are very beautiful, particularly the Californian ones.' His host said 'But Japanese women are also beautiful.' And the Japanese said 'Yes, that is true, but American women have 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

dimensions. The Japanese women are a little flat!' (laughter) They are like saints, the old kind of saints. They are not my sannyasins. When they become my sannyasins they also start growing dimensions! (much laughter) Nobody can be my sannyasin without growing dimensions! (still more laughter)

And the most significant dimension is to have as much of the earthly and as much of the unearthly together. My sannyasin has to become Zorba the Buddha. It has never happened before. Buddha is poor and Zorba is also poor. Zorba is poor because he knows only one dimension -- the physical -- and Buddha is poor because he knows only one dimension -- the spiritual.

I am trying to introduce my people to a totally new world, a totally new perspective, where Zorba and Buddha can have a meeting -- where not only can they meet but they can merge and become one with each other.

That's the meaning of the rainbow -- and meditation can become that rainbow, that bridge.

Amido is one of the names of Gautam the Buddha.

We have given him many names -- we loved him so much. And he had so many qualities; to represent each quality we have given him one name. One of his names is Amitabh. Amitabh means infinite light.

'Amitabh' travelled from India to China and from China to Japan and by the time it reached Japan it became

'Amido'; and certainly it became far more beautiful, more musical.

'Amitabh' is a Sanskrit word; it has certain corners to it. When a stone starts rolling from the source of the Ganges -- Gangotri -- it may have corners but by the time it reaches Gangasagar, the end, where Ganges meets the ocean, it becomes round. That's how Shivalingas happened -- all these statues of Shiva's, so beautifully rounded. They are not made; it simply happens that a stone travelling from the Himalayas goes on becoming rounder and rounder and loses corners. That happens in language also.

Amitabh has a few corners, it is not so melodious; Amido has more melody, but its meaning also is infinite light. That is our innermost experience: when you reach your centre you experience infinite light and eternal light.

We are made of light. This is the only point where science and religion are in agreement. Science says matter is made of light -- electricity, in their jargon. And religion says everything is made of light.

The English word 'divine' comes from a Sanskrit root 'div'. Div means light; from div also comes the English word 'day' and 'divine'. They all originate in the root which means light.

The work of a sannyasin is to penetrate to his innermost core where light explodes. On the circumference there is darkness, at the centre there is light, but that light is like a seed. If you reach there it explodes; it is like an atomic explosion. That experience is called enlightenment, because light explodes.

And once you have known that light you have known all in that light. Nothing remains hidden for you all mysteries are revealed. One's journey is complete, one has arrived home.

Turio. One of the greatest enlightened masters of the whole of history was Patanjali, who found the school of yoga. He divides man's consciousness in four stages.

The first is the ordinary waking state; it is only so-called waking, it is not real awakening because only a superficial part, just the tip of the iceberg, has a little consciousness, but nine times bigger than this is the unconscious underneath it. It is a superficial consciousness, hence it is called so-called waking state.

The second state he calls dreaming. It is a strange phenomenon that we are closer to our reality in dreaming than we are in the so-called waking state, because when we are awake we are hypocrites. We not only deceive others, we deceive ourselves too; we pretend to be somebody who we are not; we say one thing, we do another. We have many masks. It is very difficult to find the original face of a person -- he himself has forgotten what his original face is. But in dreaming we a little closer to our real self.

Sigmund Freud, Carl Gustav Jung or Alfred Adler are not the first people to discover that the analysis of his dreams can give us many clues about the reality of a person; Patanjali was the first man. He existed exactly three thousand years before Sigmund Freud; he should be called the father of all psychology. He went farther and deeper than Sigmund Freud; he went the whole way, he has not left a single stone unturned.

Dreaming is the second stage, in which we are truer. If our dreams could be understood we would see our authenticity, because then we are not Christians nor Hindus nor Mohammedans, neither moral nor immoral, we are simply whatsoever we are. All masks disappear.

But Sigmund Freud and the Freudian school that grew out of his insight depends on a psychoanalyst.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

Now, he himself has a mind and when he starts analysing your dreams, of course his interpretation is his interpretation. That's why the same dream will be analysed in a different way by different psychoanalysts.

You can go to the Freudian and he will find nothing but sexuality in it. What you dream, that does not matter; he will manipulate it in such a way that it becomes sexual. If you dream of trees they are nothing but phallic symbols, if you dream of mountains they are nothing but phallic symbols, if you dream of rockets they are phallic symbols. Whatsoever you dream... you cannot find a dream which a Freudian will not be able to interpret as having a sexual colour. It is his idea and he is going to impose that idea upon it. Take the same dream to the Adlerian and he will interpret it as a will to power. The same rocket now becomes will to powers you want to rise higher and higher. The same tree is no more a phallic symbol; it simply means you desire to become bigger and bigger and grow like a tree touching the stars, the far-away stars. That is your destination, the power trip. Take the same dream to the Jungian and he will find something else, something very esoteric. And now there are many more schools available....

Patanjali is not in favour of the analysis of dreams. He says meditate on your dreams. Except for you nobody can know the exact meaning. Either go to a Buddha who has no mind of his own, who has no ideology, no dogma, to interpret it, to give it a certain colour, to emphasise a certain concept, a certain prejudice, that he is already carrying. Either go to a Buddha or the best way is to meditate over it, silently watch it, and in that watchfulness you will come across the third layer. Just hidden underneath the dreams is a third state of consciousness: dreamless sleep.

It happens every night. When you are not dreaming but simply sleeping, there are almost eight cycles every night. You will dream for a time then there is a dreamless pause, a rest, because dreaming is a very tiring process, very exhausting. So you take a little rest, and when you are rested you start dreaming again.

If you meditate you will find those small intervals. That will give you the insight into the third state --

dreamless sleep -- which is even closer to reality than dreams. Modern psychology has yet to discover it.

And then Patanjali says now the most difficult task for the seeker is to meditate on dreamless sleep. If one meditates and watches one's dreamless sleep, those pauses, then one becomes aware of the fourth. Turio simply means the fourth -- no name is given to it. And no name is given to it for a significant reason, it is simply called the fourth; so that you don't start interpreting it a number is given rather than a name.

This is the real awakening, this is the state of Buddhahood, of Christ-consciousness.

Only when you are in the fourth state will you know your original face. In the first you are the farthest away from your original face, in the second a little closer, in the third a little closer; in the fourth you are centred at the very core of your being. And that centring is the only revelation of truth, of freedom, of love, of bliss, of all that is worthwhile, of all that is significant. One enters into a world of eternal celebration; then there is no fall from it, then there is no going back. That is the ultimate goal of sannyas.

Nirguno literally means attributeless, without any qualities. That is the definition of God: he has no qualities because every quality would be a limitation.

If you call him white he cannot be black -- that becomes a limitation. If you call him any thing then you immediately enforce a limitation -- and God is infinite. He has all the qualities and yet he is quality-less; he has all the aspects and all possibilities but no aspect can define him. And all that has been tried up to now as far as a definition of god is concerned has created more trouble, it has not solved anything.

For example, Christians call him the father. Now the problem arises: who is the mother? And from where does this only begotten son, Jesus Christ come? Has the father himself given birth? Or is there some illegal connection between the father and the Holy Ghost? And who is this Holy Ghost anyway -- a man or woman? Now thousands of questions will arise -- and all that was done was just giving him a quality of fatherliness, not exactly calling him father but giving him a quality of fatherliness. But once you give him the quality you create problems. Call him anything and you are immediately in trouble.

The mystics of the East have called him attributeless, and that seems to be a far wiser step.He has no qualities, he is indefinable, and you can know him not by any definitions but only by becoming utterly silent; because if a definition is given the mind immediately starts working. If no definition is given then the mind has nothing to chew upon, then the mind becomes silent. And in that silence one comes to encounter the ultimate reality.

The message is: be silent. Don't try to think about God, rather drop thinking so that you can feel, then drop feeling too so that you can be. And these are the three layers: thinking, feeling, being.

Thinking creates a philosopher, feeling creates a poet, being creates a mystic -- and being is the dimension of the sannyasin.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

Prabuddho means the awakened one.

We are all born with the capacity to be awakened, in a sense we are all awakened, but we are not aware of this. A thin layer, just like a thin curtain, hides us from our own reality, but the curtain can be removed.

And it is a very thin curtain, almost transparent. The curtain consists of thoughts, desires, memories, fantasies, dreams, etcetera. These are all non-substantial things, so the curtain is made of non-substantial things. It is transparent, very thin, and it is very easy to remove it. One just has to know the knack of removing it -- and that knack is meditation.

It cannot be called a science, it cannot be called an art; the best thing to call it is a knack. Hence a close relationship with the master, an intimate relationship with the master, exactly a love affair is needed to learn the knack. If it were a science we could teach it in the schools, colleges, universities; if it were an art it would not be much of a problem. But because it is a knack only hints can be given, only fingers pointing to the moon. The problem is one may become too attached to the fingers and forget all about the moon.

That's what has happened thousands of times. Christians have become too obsessed with Christ -- that is getting fixated on the fingers and forgetting the moon. And the Buddhists are fixated on the figure of Buddha, his statue. Worshipping the statue means worshipping the fingers, and they have all forgotten the moon completely.

That is the problem with a knack, that only subtle hints can be given. Buddhas can only show you the way and that too, very indirectly. No clear-cut programme can be given, no definite map can be handed over to you and you told 'This is the map, this is the route' -- you simply can follow the map and the route and reach the destination. That is not possible.

One has to be with the master in a kind of communion so that slowly slowly, not only are the words understood but the gestures too, and not only the gestures, not only the words, but even the silences; so that one can learn the language of the master's eyes, his hands, the way he sits, the way he talks, the way he laughs, the way he eats, the way he sleeps. You never know from where you may get the right hint and your journey start.

Once you have learned the knack, the curtain can be very easily removed. Initiation simply means initiation into a very mysterious relationship -- not of this world and not very tangible. You cannot explain it to others. If questions are raised you will simply feel dumb. You will not be able to say why you have become a sannyasin, what got into your head, why you have gone crazy.

It is a crazy phenomenon and you will not be able to explain it, you will not be able to convince anybody -- nobody has ever been able to. The first disciples of Jesus were not able to say anything about why they were moving with this dangerous fellow. The first disciples of Buddha were not able to. They used to come to Buddha -- there are references -- to ask 'What should we say, because people ask why?

What got into your head? Why have you dropped your old way of life? It was comfortable, convenient, you were succeeding in the world and everything was going well -- what wont wrong? Why are you following this man?'

And Buddha would say 'It is impossible to explain to them. The only thing you can do is to bring them here. If in being with me something happens in their hearts only that will be a proof; if nothing happens, nothing can be done. Then forget all about them. In this life it is not going to be their cup of tea. Maybe in some other life, with some other Buddha, with some other master, it may click.'

Yes, it is a click.

So be here, open, available, vulnerable -- it may click! Don't stand aloof, detached -- then it cannot click.

Don't be an observer, be a participant. And dive headlong because one has nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Is the Grass Really Greener...?

Chapter #8

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

Chapter title: None

8 December 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8012085

ShortTitle: GREENR08

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Veet Leo. Veet means going beyond, surpassing, transcending. Leo means lion.

In India we have a beautiful story, a parable, that god has taken many incarnations and all those incarnations represent particular phases of human evolution. The idea of evolution is very ancient in the East, it is only in the West that the idea seems to be original -- just three hundred years old. But in the East we have a tradition of the idea which is at least ten thousand years old.

The Indian mythology of the incarnations of god is very significant. The first incarnation of god is a fish

-- and that's exactly what science says about how life started, as a fish. And then slowly other animals come in exactly in the middle Indian mythology has the incarnation of god called Narsima: half man, half lion.

That seems to be the exact middle point where man started separating from the animals. The lion slowly disappeared and man came into his own.

The lion is respected in all cultures, in all' societies, because we have always worshipped violence, destruction, cruelty. Of course we cover it up behind a beautiful veil of courage, but the real courage is creative, not destructive, and the real courage is non-violent, not violent. The real courage is to transcend all that is animal in oneself, the real courage is to become a Buddha, just pure humanness. But the past is dominated by the soldiers, the generals. Alexander to Great, Tamerlane, Nadir Shah. Genghis Khan. Our whole history is ugly.

Even if we mention Christ and Buddha and Zarathustra and Lao Tzu, we mention them in the footnotes they don't make our main current of history. They are just a few astray people, exceptions; they need not be counted.

In fact the whole of history should be rewritten. Alexander has not contributed anything to the worlds he was a disaster, just as Adolf Hitler was, Mussolini was, Stalin was. These people should be erased from history, their memory should not be continued. History should be written with a view to giving the idea of the evolution of consciousness. It should consist of Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu. Confucius, Ma Tzu, Buddha, Mahavir. Patanjali, Nagarjuna, Nanak, Kabir, Jesus. Plotinus, Heraclitus, Pythagoras -- people who have really contributed, who are the very salt of the earth. And that's what I mean by transcending the lion in you. It is in everybody. because we are carrying the whole animal past with us -- it is in our unconscious.

The whole purpose of sannyas is to help you to go beyond it, so the past is dropped and you are reborn, born anew, only then can you have a vision of god, only then will you be sensitive enough to feel the presence of the divine. It is not a question of argumentation, it is a question of sensitivity.

Antar Kim. Antar means inner, originating from the very source of your being, coming out of the centre and spreading towards the circumference. And Kim means dignity of character.

Character has beauty when it originates in your own being, when it is imposed by others on you it is ugly. A character imposed by others serves others, it does not serve you. It serves the established society, it serves the vested interests, it serves the church, the state, the people who are in power politically, religiously, in every possible way. They try to give a certain structure and pattern to every person so that he becomes servile, a servant. Of course they give beautiful labels to this servitude. They create conscience in you, they tell you what is right and what is wrong. And in fact nobody has the right to say to anybody what is right and what is wrong, for the simple reason that right and wrong are not qualities of certain acts.

One thing can be right in one situation and can be wrong in another situation -- the same thing. If by a small lie you can save a man's life then how will you decide what is right and what is wrong? You can tell 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

just a small lie, that 'I was not there, I and you were there,' but that can save a human life which may have infinite potential, infinite possibilities, which may blossom. The man may become a Buddha -- who knows?

Tomorrow is unpredictable, so is it right to say a lie or wrong? In this situation it is perfectly right to tell a lie, in other situations it would not be right to tell lies.

Who is going to decide? -- because ultimately. You have to encounter the situations. You cannot go on carrying the Bible and the Koran and the Vedas and consulting them. And how can they help you?

Mohammed may never have passed through such a situation, Buddha may never have come across such a situation -- how can they help you? Life goes on changing every moment. So the only determining factor can be inner, it cannot be outer.

Hence character can be of two types: one, which is just a fixed, ready-made thing given to you -- that is ugly, it can't have any dignity -- and a totally different kind of character which you have to create moment to moment, you cannot carry it with you ready-made. You have to be alert, watchful, responsible; you have to be alive to the situation. And you are not to bother what others have said to you; you have to look into the situation as one looks into a mirror and then let the moment decide. Of course, be totally present to the situation and out of that presence a character arises. That has dignity. certainly it has dignity, a tremendous beauty of its own, but it will not be a fixed entity, it will be a process, it will be a growth, a continuous movement. And you will have to contradict yourself many times, because life goes on changing.

A really alive person cannot be consistent, only a dead person can be consistent because the dead person has a certain routine that he follows. He runs like a railway train, the rails are fixed, the train cannot go into the jungle and have its own choice as to where to go and where not to go, it runs on the fixed rails.

A character like that is mechanical and no machine can have dignity. Dignity belongs to a soul.

A character has to be like a river, not running on fixed routines. Each moment has to be decisive, each turn has to be taken according to the situation. The past cannot determine it, the future cannot decide it, only the present is to be decisive. The real man of character lives in the present. If he has to go against his whole past he will, but he will not go against the present just to be consistent with the past. The past is dead; to be consistent with the past is simply stupid.

My sannyasins have to learn a totally new kind of character. It will look like characterlessness to others because it will not be a fixed thing, it will be fluid, liquid. And the people who think of character as a certain entity, fixed forever... Moses gave the Ten Commandments, now you have simply to follow them.

A real character cannot have that kind of quality. One has to follow one's own consciousness. It is risky, it is dangerous, because you cannot throw the responsibility on anybody else's shoulders; you are totally responsible for it. Each act is your act -- not Moses', not Jesus'. not Buddha's. To be a sannyasin means to accept the total responsibility of your whole life, of each of your acts and gestures. But that is the dignity of man, the dignity of being a human being. It is a priority.

Animals have fixed characters. You cannot find anything unexpected about animals. Everything is fixed, they are predictable. Man is unpredictable -- that is his beauty because that is his freedom. He creates himself by choosing what to be, how to be, what not to be, how not to be, each moment.It is a continuous creativity.

To be a sannyasin simply means to take this courageous leap in your life. Move from conscience to consciousness, move from the outer to the inner.

Veet Torben. Veet means go beyond, transcend. Torben comes from Scandinavian mythology; it means Thor's bear. Thor is a Scandinavian mythological god, the god of thunder, rain and farming. His symbol is a bear, and Torben means Thor's bear! No ordinary bear, of course, but a bear after all is a bear! (laughter) You have to go beyond it! (more laughter) And this Thor is also not a very beautiful god -- the god of thunder and rain and farming. He is very old fashioned. too childish and primitive! And in fact we don't need any more thunder; peace is needed. But in the ancient days every country was dominated by such gods.

They were just projections, they don't exist, they have never existed. But people always thought in terms of gods, if it was raining it meant somebody must be behind it.

In India we have a god, Indra -- that is Thor, the god of rains and thunder. And when it is lightning, that means Indra is very angry, he wants to punish. So priests used to worship, pray, make great yagnas, fire-worship -- wasting millions of rupees to pacify the god of lightning because he was very angry and he would not be pacified unless you made many sacrifices. Animals were sacrificed, even man was sacrificed...

just to pacify a foolish god. He exists nowhere, he has never existed.

For example, I am calling him foolish; if he existed he would do something immediately (much 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

laughter)... and nothing happens. I have tried many times -- no lightning, no thunder -- nothing! But the old mind of man was to create many gods for everything, everything had to be dominated by a god. Without a god how could it happen?

My sannyasins have to go beyond all these mythologies. They are still lingering in our unconscious; we have to get rid of them, we have to throw them out -- it is all junk. And unless you throw all this old furniture out one thing is certain you yourself cannot enter, there is no space.

So slowly go on pulling out whatsoever you can and throw it out, just create spaciousness. That's what sannyas is creating inner space, absolute space. In absolute spaciousness you will start feeling something mysterious which surrounds you, which is everywhere -- inside, outside, within, without. That mysterious presence is god. God is not a person but just a feeling of something mysterious, something incomprehensible to the mind.

Now thunder and rain and farming -- these things can be taken care of by science. There is no need for Thor; he can be freed. And the poor bear also has been with him for too long;he can also be freed from the god. They must be getting tired of each other, that's why I say go beyond them.

One has to go beyond the whole past. The whole past of humanity, of the so-called religions, is in many ways superstitious, stupid. It was okay in those old days because the human mind was so primitive that it could not understand better than that. But now man has come of age, we are now no more childish. Religion is lagging behind, far behind; science is in the twentieth century and religion is still pre-historical, near about three thousand years old. This gap of three thousand years between science and religion has to be bridged. If we cannot bridge it man will remain schizophrenic, divided. His religion will say one thing, his science will say another thing, and there will be no meeting point, no synthesis.

My whole approach is that of synthesis. Science and religion have to come so close that they can become almost one, two aspects of one truth science, the outer aspect, religion, the inner.

Pritamo. Pritamo means the beloved.

God should not be thought of as truth because the very word 'truth' is a little dry, juiceless, desert-like.

God should be thought of as the beloved.

Truth has a deep background of logic. The word 'beloved' changes the whole thing from logic to love.

And love, not logic, is the door to the divine. And the moment you start searching for the beloved, it is easy to find him, because love is a natural phenomenon.

The search for truth is arbitrary, in fact I have never come across a single person who is really interested in truth, who could sacrifice his life for truth. It is perfectly good to sit in your easy chair and think about truth and great philosophical things, but I don't see that that is really a longing. Maybe in very few exceptions, in people like Socrates, it is a longing, but they are so exceptional that they only prove the rule.

Love is a universal longing, everybody's heart is thirsty for love. So my emphasis is on love unless I find a man who is really interested in truth, because to seek god as truth one will have to take a totally different route. To seek god as the beloved you will pass through absolutely different routes, methods, devices, so to be clear is very decisive.

If you think of the ultimate as beloved your heart starts responding immediately. Suddenly a note is struck, suddenly a bell starts ringing in the heart -- and that is the beginning of prayer.

Kalyani means one who always thinks of the well-being of others. But it is possible only if you are blissful. A miserable person cannot really think of the well-being of others; it is intrinsically impossible.

He can force himself to serve others but that service will only be a means to some other end -- to reach heaven. to achieve heavenly pleasures; there must be some hidden goal. The miserable person is bound to have a secret goal. Even when he is serving others, is being compassionate, it is calculated, businesslike there is a certain arithmetic behind it. But the blissful person is simply a blessing to others -- that is exactly the meaning of Kalyani: to be a blessing.

But how can you be a blessing if you are not blissful yourself? You can give only that which you have already got. It is a sharing. The miserable person can only give his misery, the blissful person can only give his blissfulness.

My sannyasins have to be celebrants, always in the mood of festivity. dancing, singing, rejoicing. Out of this rejoicing arises compassion and love for others. And when you are overflowing with joy what can you do except share it?

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

Karuno means compassionate one.

Gautam the Buddha gave one criterion to judge whether you have succeeded in your meditation or not, and the criterion is compassion. If you have really realised yourself, if you have found the source of your life, if you have become centred, silent, blissful, then one thing is inevitable, all these things will happen inside you so only you will know or your master will know or the people who are your fellow travellers, who are reaching the same state of consciousness, will know, but the world at large cannot know anything about it. It will know only your compassion, your love.

Your unconditional love, non-possessive love, love for love's sake -- that's what compassion is all about.

One simply goes on showering love, giving to everybody -- to the worthy, to the unworthy, to the needful, to the not-so-needful. It is as when a flower opens, it releases fragrance to the winds -- unaddressed, or to whomsoever it may concern. If somebody happens to pass by he will rejoice in it; if nobody passes by it is none of the business of the flower. It is happy, it is dancing in the wind; it has done its work.

Be blissful, so blissful that your bliss starts overflowing and becomes love for the whole existence. Less than that cannot fulfil one, less than that and the journey is not yet complete.

Bhadren means graceful.

Grace is a by-product of meditation, the shadow of meditation. It follows meditation -- there is no need to cultivate it. Just become silent, peaceful, calm and collected, cool, relaxed, and you will suddenly be surprised that a shadow is following you. That shadow is grace -- it is a gift from God. It is given only to those who have achieved meditation. It is a certificate, it is a sanction. That's exactly the meaning of the English word 'saint', but Christians have used it in a very wrong way. They think a person is a saint if he is sanctioned, certified by the church, the pope, the Vatican. That is a strange idea.

A Saint is sanctioned by God, not by any pope, not by any church or a council of bishops. They themselves are not saints, what can they know about saints? And it has happened many times in the history of the church that they changed their decision. They made somebody a saint and then afterwards, even after a few centuries, they re-opened the case, found some faults and the man was no longer a saint! Not only that, they have been so stupid that now the man has been dead for two hundred or three hundred years and nothing can be done -- he lived as a saint and for three hundred years he was worshipped as a saint and he has to be punished. So to insult him his bones are dragged out of the grave to be spat upon and to be dragged into the marketplace so everybody can insult him -- because revenge has to be taken. Sanction has been taken back, he is no longer a saint.

And this Vatican has been so foolish that sometimes it has happened that they made the man a saint again! Some other pope re-opened the case, found out that those flaws were not right, that somebody was playing a trick and that somebody was against the man, and the man was sanctioned again, and his bones were brought back again in a ceremonial procession because he really was a saint; again his bones were worshipped and put into the grave.

The church has no idea of what a saint is. Only the whole can sanctify, but that sanction does not come as a written certificate, that "As far as I know this man is a saint," or "Hereby it is certified...". It comes as a grace. When you are settled and silent you are surrounded by grace. Anybody who has eyes can see it and anybody who has ears can hear the music of it.

And it is possible for you. In fact I was going to give you the name of a Ma; it is Mukta who has saved you, otherwise I was going to change your sex!

And once I have done it I never undo it! I never change my decisions -- she prevented me just in time saying "Wait, let him meditate a little... then he will automatically become feminine -- don't be worried. It is too early!"

Grace will come... and grace is a feminine quality. Nietzsche is right when he says that Buddha and Christ are feminine. Of course he is condemning them, but I take it not as condemnation but as the greatest compliments paid to Buddha and Christ. And any compliment from a man like Friedrich Nietzsche is of immense importance.

Sangati means communion.

Communication can happen anywhere because it is head-to-head. Something closer to communion, not exactly communion, happens between lovers because it is not head-to-head but heart-to-heart. But that too is only closer to communion. It is not exactly communion, just approximately. Real communion happens only between a master and a disciple, from being-to-being. These are the three possibilities: first, 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

head-to-head; second, heart-to-heart; third, being-to-being.

The head-to-head communication is argumentative, it is quarrelsome. The heart-to-heart communion is sympathetic, loving, but it is only approximately a communion. The real communion, being-to-being, is just a sharing of the energy, a pure sharing, with no words. It is silent. Two beings just merge into each other.

And when the master's being and the disciple's being are bridged, a miracle happens. That miracle is called the transmission of truth beyond the scriptures.

I am giving you one of the most significant names, Sangati. It carries the whole secret of sannyas.

Is the Grass Really Greener...?

Chapter #9

Chapter title: None

9 December 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8012095

ShortTitle: GREENR09

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Dhyan Shemesh. Dhyan means meditation. Shemesh means the center of being. It means the sun and also illumination, enlightenment. It is a beautiful word; it carries the whole dimension of meditation, all its aspects.

Meditation means reaching the center of your being. It is a journey inwards. The farther away you are from your center, the darker your life is; it is in the same proportion. The closer you are to the center, the less dark it gets, less and less dark. Then a moment comes when you are just in between darkness and light

-- twilight. In Zen they call it satori -- when the darkness is no more and the light is yet to be, just dawn, the boundary line between the night and the day.

One can fall from satori, one can be pulled back again by the darkness. Its forces are great because it is your whole past of thousands of lives. Its weight is great, mountainous. Hence one can fall from satori, one can turn back, one can get afraid.

Too much light ahead can create fear.

That is the moment when the master is needed.

There are only two moments when the master is absolutely needed. The first moment is when you start the journey, but even more important than that is the second moment when you reach the twilight zone. That is the most significant moment in the relationship of the master and the disciple because only the master can push you into the unknown world of light.

Once you have entered it you are pulled by the center as if through gravitation; it has its own magnetism. Once you are in the field of it you are pulled; then you cannot turn back, then there is no way to go back. Once you have reached the center... in India we have called it samadhi.

One cannot fall from samadhi. That is the difference between samadhi and satori. One can have one hundred satoris, but one can have only one samadhi. That is the moment when illumination happens. For the first time you are fully aware of who you are and what this life is all about. One can call it the state of Christ-consciousness or Buddhahood. It is literally enlightenment -- you have become the light. That's the goal of sannyas.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

Dhyan Dominique. Dhyan means meditation. Dominique means belonging to god, a child of god.

It is only through meditation that one comes to realise that one belongs to god, that one is not without roots in existence. that one is not an orphan. Without meditation one remains an orphan. That is the misery of the man who has never known the taste of meditation. He feels afraid; he is continuously surrounded by all kinds of anxieties and fears. Anguish is there because he cannot see anybody protecting him, there is no security, nobody to look after him. And one seems so small compared to the universe. The universe is so vast, almost like an ocean, and one is just a dewdrop.

The moment you understand that the ocean is not your enemy but your home, that you belong to it, that you are inseparably one with it, great rejoicing arises, you feel blessed. One is bathed in a new kind of light which goes on pouring from the beyond.

Meditation is nothing but the art of opening up to the beyond, of coming to terms with existence, of feeling at home, at rest. Then one lives blissfully, then life has the flavour of a continuous, unending celebration.

God cannot be believed in and should not be believed in; god has to be discovered, realised -- and that realisation happens only by becoming silent. Silence is meditation.

Anand Gerard. Anand means bliss. Gerard has two meanings. One is courageous, the other is a loyal heart. Both are significant as far as sannyas is concerned.

And bliss happens only to a courageous person who has deep trust in life, in existence. who has a loyal heart. In fact that's why courage is needed. Any coward can doubt -- that needs no guts In fact cowards continuously doubt; they live in doubts, they are surrounded by doubts. They doubt everything, they doubt themselves. There are doubts and doubts, it is an almost infinite regress. They even doubt their doubts! They cannot find any place where they can stand in deep trust and loyalty. And how can such a person be blissful? Doubts create misery.

Trust creates bliss. It is only in trust that life blossoms, that life becomes a prayer. And for trust courage is needed, because to trust means to be capable of opening up to danger, of leaving your doors open for the sun, for the rain, for the wind. But thieves can also enter from the same doors. To close the door because of the thief is to close the door to the sun and to the rain and to the wind. Your doubt, your fear, will create a grave around you; you will live a dead life. You will not be able to love, because who knows? -- the woman may deceive you. In the middle of the night she may cut your throat -- women are dangerous (laughter).

Who knows what she is going to do -- crazy people! To live with a woman in the same room and be fast asleep and snoring (laughter)... anything is possible!

Adolf Hitler never got married for the simple reason that he was very much afraid of getting too involved with anybody. He had many love affairs but he was very suspicious. He got married only at the last moment, when he decided to commit suicide -- just before that. Now there was no fear -- what could this woman do? He got married in the middle of the night and the next thing that they did was to commit suicide.

The person who has doubts cannot love, the person who has doubts cannot be friendly, the person who has doubts cannot enjoy life. He is always on guard, watching, 'Who is going to deceive me?' Everybody looks like an enemy. He lives in paranoia.

Sannyas means to live fearlessly, open, available, vulnerable, to existence.

And then bliss is a natural consequence. You need not seek bliss, it comes of its own accord. And when it comes of its own accord it never goes; then it is eternal, yours forever.

Prem Michael. Prem means love. Michael means godly.

Logic is the farthest from god and love the closest. Those who live in logic live without god; they cannot afford god. They can go on playing with words, theories, philosophies, ideologies, but their life will not have the fragrance of a divine experience. They will never know what Buddha tasted, they will never know what Lao Tzu became drunk with. They are the most unfortunate people on earth.

One has to shift one's energies from logic to love. They are polar opposites. Logic is reason, love is absolutely irrational. Logic is of the head and love of the heart; logic is thinking and love is feeling. And nobody, anywhere, is teaching you the art of feeling. From the kindergarten to the university you are taught how to think; you are trained, disciplined, to argue, to think, to philosophize. The whole discipline is of logic, and one gets so involved in it that one tends to forget one's heart. And that is the only door to god.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

My effort here is to help you to open that door -- and it opens only in one way, there is no other way: when all your energy is pulled out of its investment in logic it is a tremendous force. It rushes against the doors of the heart like a flood and the doors open. Suddenly you are face-to-face with god and for the first time you know what it means to realize god, what it means to feel god. It transforms you totally. Time disappears, mind disappears, death disappears. You are suddenly taken into a totally different dimension of timelessness and deathlessness; you become part of eternity.

Only then is there bliss, only then is one for the first time at rest. The journey is complete -- one has arrived.

Anandesh means god is bliss.

In the East the mystics have defined god as satchidanand. It consists of three words, 'sat', 'chid', 'anand'.

'Sat' means truth, that which is forever; 'chid' means consciousness, awareness, Buddhahood; and 'anand'

means bliss. Anand is the ultimate peak. When you enter into the dimension of the divine, first you encounter truth, then you encounter awareness and then you encounter bliss. This is the eastern trinity. It is certainly far more superior than the Christian idea of god and the holy ghost and the son -- that is very childish, juvenile. But these three qualities are really fundamental qualities and the most important is bliss.

My emphasis is that if one can choose to be blissful... And remember, it is a question of choice. Each moment presents you both alternatives, to be miserable or to be blissful. It is up to you.

A Hassid master was dying and his disciples asked 'Now tell us the secret. We have watched you for almost fifty years and we have never found you sad, not even for a single moment. And we have heard from our fathers and forefathers that in your youth you were a very sad and serious person -- then what happened? How did you become so cheerful?'

He said 'They are right, up to my thirtieth year I was a very sad and very serious person. Then one morning I thought "What am I doing? Why am I so sad and serious? Why should I waste my energies? Let me try today, just for a change, to be cheerful." I tried and it worked! Since then every morning when I wake up I ask myself, "Zusya" -- Zusya was his name -- "What do you want today? Do you want to be sad, serious and sad, miserable, or blissful?" And I always choose to be blissful. Since then I have been blissful.'

And I totally agree with this man Zusya, he is certainly right, it is only a question of choice.

So from tomorrow morning try it. You have been serious enough. Or you can start even now. There is no need to wait even for tomorrow, because who knows? -- tomorrow may come, may not come. Give it a try. And believe me, you will like it! (much laughter)

(Osho slips a mala over the head of the next initiate and touches his third eye. Just before handing him the names sheet, Osho comments: Another serious guy!

Where Anandesh did look like a 'serious guy', this new sannyasin dissolves into laughter along with the group.)

Dhyanesh means god of meditation. I am giving you a very serious name! (laughter) But whenever I am serious I am joking (much laughter)... and whenever I am joking I am serious (Osho chuckles). This you have to be absolutely aware of from the very beginning.

Meditation is a simple art, very simple. It need not be taken seriously. It is so simple that even a child can learn it, in fact a child can learn it more easily. The older one becomes, the more serious one becomes.

In fact it is thought that if you are mature you have to be serious. Seriousness and maturity somehow have been associated -- it is a wrong association.

A really mature person cannot be serious, there is nothing to be serious about. The whole of life is fun, it is a play, a play of consciousness. And that's what meditation reveals to you -- that the whole of life is a beautiful play of energy. The same energy is in the trees, in the stars, in the rivers, in the mountains, in you, in animals. It is the same energy dancing in different forms. We in the East have called it 'leela'; leela means god's play. But the Judaic attitude which is carried by Christianity and Islam is very serious.

The Talmud says god is not your uncle, and I say to you he is your uncle! (laughter) Forget all about him being your father -- that is a serious thing. He is your uncle and he is a very nice fellow! The Talmud insists that he is not nice, he is not your uncle, be afraid of him. And I say to you, don't be afraid of him, don't be afraid of existence. It is beautiful, there is no need to be afraid. It is not antagonistic to you, it is nourishing to you.

Meditation reveals many things but the first revelation is the playfulness of existence -- and then one 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

becomes like a child.

Jesus says 'Unless you are like small children you will not enter my kingdom of god.' He is right; you have to be like small children, so small that you don't have any weight of experience. Experience makes people serious and a meditator has tn drop all experience, the whole past. He has to bury his past, he has to die every moment to the past so that every moment he is renewed, so that every moment he is a new person.

And then miracles become possible. If you are cheerful the whole existence starts laughing with you!

The old proverb is right. Laugh and the whole world laughs with you, weep and you weep alone.

Gyanda means wisdom.

The most essential thing to remember about wisdom is that it is not knowledge. Knowledge is ignorance covered with information, a wound covered with flowers; but the wound goes on growing inside and the pus goes on gathering. It is not advisable to hide a wound; it is better to leave it open because if it is open then the wind and the sun and existence, can heal it. But people are very much afraid to show their ignorance, and the only way to hide it is to collect information. That's what knowledge is. Information is utterly useless because it is borrowed.

Wisdom is that which arises in you. It is a growth, not an accumulation; it does not come from the outside. The first step towards wisdom is to accept one's ignorance without any guilt, without any humiliation. It is so, such is the nature of things -- we are born ignorant.

And once you accept it without any judgement, like Socrates did... He said 'I know only one thing, that I know nothing.' That was the moment that the Oracle of the temple of Delphi declared him to be the wisest man in the whole world, because he had taken the first step. And the first step is the last step too, because it is a quantum leap. Once you accept your ignorance you become simple, you are no more a pretender, you are no more a hypocrite, you are not trying to deceive anybody. You have accepted the truth as you are and in that very acceptance something explodes within you. In that very acceptance wisdom starts arising.

And wisdom never becomes knowledge; it always remains insight, clarity. You are able to see things clearly and to find your way out of the jungle of life. It is always just unclouded consciousness, nothing else. It is not that by becoming wise you will be able to know all the secrets of life and you will be able to know everything that is there to know -- that is not so.

A wise person is one who has a clear insight, so whatsoever comes in his life, whatsoever challenge, whatsoever situation arises, he is capable of dealing with it with full awareness, with totality. He never feels repentant, because he did whatsoever he could. He never holds back, he is always total, his response is total.

And whenever one is total in one's acts life has a grace, a beauty of its own.

I call that grace sannyas, that beauty sannyas.

Rupda means the beautiful.

God can be approached in many ways; one of the doors is the door of beauty. It is from the door of beauty that the poets and the painters and the dancers and the musicians -- the people of sensitivity, the people of aesthetic consciousness -- enter. And to me that is the most beautiful door. On that path you will find beautiful flowers and birds singing and waterFalls and rivers and mountains.

There are other doors and other paths too, but no path is so enchanting, so magical. So unless I find that somebody is absolutely incapable of sensitivity I never suggest any other path. I suggest creativity, sensitivity, love, feeling, poetry, music, dance, sculpture -- all the possibilities of experiencing beauty and creating beauty. That is the most significant religiousness, the religion of the creator. And my sannyasins have to follow that path.

Yes, there will be a few people who will have to follow the door of truth, which is a desert path, but for a few people the desert is beautiful; it also has its own beauty. It depends on the person and his inner structure. Bet out of one hundred sannyasins ninety will find the door of beauty the closest to their heart.

Satsang is a very specific word. It is almost impossible to translate it, but the flavour can be transmitted.

Satsang means the miracle that transpires between the disciple and the master. Something does transpire; what it is exactly is indefinable. The disciple sits in silence with the master and the master is already absolutely silent; the master has nothing to say because the truth cannot be uttered, and the disciple has nothing to ask because whatsoever can be asked cannot be significant. The really significant question remains unasked. So the disciple sits in silence, waiting for the answer for which he has not asked the question and the master is already silent.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

Slowly slowly these two silences start meeting and merging into each other, because two silences cannot be two for long. It is like two zeroes: if they come closer and closer, they become one zero. It is just the reverse process of what happens in the life of amoebas. The amoeba becomes fatter and fatter -- like Vidya!

(Vidya, one of the office administrators, is sitting in the front row. Osho indicates her with a gesture of his left hand, not even glancing in her direction... which makes even more intimate the reference to her. There is much laughter.) Any day that miracle can happen here: Vidya can split in two and we will not be at a loss

-- we will have two Vidyas! (much laughter)

The amoeba goes on becoming fatter and fatter and then a point comes where it cannot hold itself together, it splits in two. So the amoeba never dies. And the amoeba is the only celibate animal in the world; there is no sexuality involved at all, it goes on giving birth without any sex. Then two amoebas start getting fatter and they split and they become four and this goes on and on, for eternity.

Just the opposite happens with the master; two zeroes start coming closer and closer and suddenly there is only one zero. That is the moment of satsang, when the master is not there and the disciple is not there but only a pervading silence, so vast that it comprehends both in oneness.

Nothing is said, nothing is heard, all is said, all is heard. Hence I call what transpires between the master and the disciple, a miracle.

Sannyas is only a preparation for satsang.

-- How long will you be here?

-- Six months.

-- Then it is possible. Good!

Is the Grass Really Greener...?

Chapter #10

Chapter title: None

10 December 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8012105

ShortTitle: GREENR10

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Surajprakash Bharti.

Only one thing to be remembered, my sannyas has two aspects to it -- one is non-renunciation of life, because life is god. To renounce it is irreligious, it is against existence.

One has to worship life, to live it totally, prayerfully of course, because it is divine. Hence there is no need to escape anywhere; and the escapist is not going to find god. He has been the cause of the whole misery of humanity. escapism is cowardliness but we have worshipped escapism for thousands of years.

That has taken away the most beautiful people from the A world, the people who would have benefitted, the people who would have made it a paradise. I am totally against that. My sannyasins have to love life, to live life, to rejoice in it.

And the second aspect of my sannyas is to be meditative. Be in life but very quiet, calm, silent. Life becomes the circumference and meditation becomes the centre. A sannyasin has to be a centre of the cyclone. Without the cyclone the centre is dead, without the centre the cyclone is mad. And the meeting of 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

both is what yoga really is; the meeting of the turmoil with the silent consciousness. At that meeting point god happens.

Dhyan Dante. Dante is really a significant name; it means the feminine. And all that is beautiful is feminine, all that is significant is feminine. It is the male mind that has destroyed the beauty of life. The male mind is aggressive, it is violent, it is destructive. Creativity belongs to the feminine mind, hence I appreciate the feminine. I would like the world to be more feminine than it has ever been.

In three thousand years five thousand wars have been fought -- this is what the male mind has done. I am in support of a matriarchal system. I would like the power to go to women because basically they are non -- aggressive; they are loving, they are compassionate. But it has nothing to do with biology really; even the male mind can become feminine. And the whole process of transforming the male mind is the art of meditation.

That is the meaning of Dhyan.

So your full name means the creation of the feminine quality through meditation. Respect the feminine

-- it is higher, certainly higher, than the male qualities. But the male chauvinist mind is incapable of accepting it. Out of an inferiority complex the male mind has tried to repress the feminine and of course because the male is aggressive, violent, destructive, he can repress it. The feminine is receptive, surrendering; it knows how to let go, it knows how to adjust, so it has become adjusted even to the male chauvinist attitude.

The whole past of humanity is ugly and the reason is that we have not allowed the feminine qualities to blossom.

So become more and more receptive, sensitive, creative, loving, dancing, singing -- and that's how you will go on becoming more and more meditative. And the more meditative you are, the more you will find feminine qualities blossoming in you. The moment the male energy becomes feminine a Buddha is born, a Christ is born.

Shanti Ann. Shanti means silence. Ann means prayer.

The ordinary idea of prayer is to say something to god -- which is absolutely foolish. There is nothing to say; one can only be silent before god. To say anything is to create a disturbance, to say anything is to bring your head in. And prayer is a heart-to-heart communion, it is not a communication.

So all the prayers which exist on the earth are pseudo -- Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, whatsoever they are, wherever they are. The temples, the mosques, the synagogues, the churches -- they are all involved in a pseudo kind of religion, because they all teach prayer as a dialogue.

I teach prayer as silence, not as dialogue. It is not a dialogue. We have nothing to say, rather, on the contrary, we have to listen. Listening to existence is prayer, and listening can happen only in deep silence.

And the beauty of silence is that it is neither Hindu nor Mohammedan nor Christian nor Jewish, it is simply silence. So the silent person goes beyond ail sects, cults and ideologies. And only the silent person is capable of knowing something of god.

Dhyan Itzik. Dhyan means meditation.

Meditation is a state of absolute silence where mind stops functioning. When the mind is no more present your mirror of consciousness is utterly empty -- no thoughts, no desires, no memories. The lake of consciousness is absolutely without waves, even without ripples.

And Itzik is tremendously significant; it means laughter.

The idea has gone very deep in the human mind that religious people have to be serious and sad, with long faces. Laughter seems to be too mundane. It is not so. Laughter is one of the most sacred phenomenon on the earth. In fact in profound laughter mind disappears exactly like it disappears in meditation. That's why laughter is so relaxing, so rejuvenating. A good laugh is a tonic, it is very vital for one's well-being.

The man who cannot laugh is ill, sick. A heartfelt laughter releases your hidden sources of energy. One thing is certain, when you are in real laughter, when it is not just polite, when it is not just polite, when it is not just to say that yes, you understand the humour of the situation or the meaning of the joke, when it is really arising out of your heart, when it is total, whole, when your whole being is throbbing with it, then it gives you a taste of meditation.

Mind disappears; it cannot exist in laughter. It melts, it evaporates, for a moment there is no mind, there is only laughter. There is no one who is laughing, there is pure laughter. And that's exactly what meditation 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

is. When the dancer disappears and there is only dance it is meditation, when the singer disappears and there is only singing it is meditation, when the lover disappears and there is only loving it is meditation, when the walker disappears and is only walking it is meditation. And laughter gives you the taste of meditation more easily than anything else.

So I teach a new kind of sannyas. It is non-serious -- sincere but not serious. It knows how to laugh and enjoy, it takes life as fun. It does not think of life as mundane, hence it has no egoistic idea of holier-than-thou.

I teach a dancing, singing, laughing, loving sannyas. It is urgently needed. We are tired of the sad saints

-- enough of all that junk! We should get rid of all those long faces. The temples will become alive again when people start dancing, singing, laughing, loving. When all these ordinary life activities start having this sacred dimension, only then can the earth be transformed into heaven, not before it.

And this earth is so beautiful -- it can become a paradise. All that is needed is a new kind of man. That's what my sannyas is: the beginning of a new kind of man.

Jayesh means the victorious.

There is only one victory, that is victory over oneself. The people who are trying to be victorious over others are simply deceiving themselves; sooner or later they will find they have wasted their life in something utterly futile. Death will come -- it is coming, every moment it is coming closer -- and it will take all your trophies and medals and degrees and honours and prizes. All your victories will be gone with it and you will be left alone, utterly defeated, empty.

Before it happens it is better to reconsider your life. The initiation into sannyas means a reconsideration of your lifestyle. One has to be very clear what is essential and what is non-essential.

The outside activities are non-essential; yes, they have to be done so they should be done, but one should not stake one's whole life on them -- on money, power, prestige. One should think more of the inner dimension -- the real kingdom of god is there and we have to conquer it. And it can be easily conquered because it is already inside us; we just have to discover it. The very discovery becomes the victory.

Sujato means well-born.

The first birth is only physical; it can only be called a so-called birth. It gives you the opportunity for a second birth, it is meaningful only in reference to the second birth. The second birth happens through meditation. When you become aware of yourself, when you become immensely contented with your consciousness, when you suddenly explore the eternity of your being, then you become really well-born.

The first birth will end with the death; the second birth will not end with death. The second birth will make you part of the eternal process of life. Then there is no beginning and no end, then it is a continuity.

And when one is completely beyond death all fears disappear -- life becomes a blessing, a benediction.

Navino means the new.

We are conditioned by the old, to live according to the old, to live for the old, to sacrifice ourselves for the old. That means we are dominated by the grave-yard. That our whole life is continuously pulled backwards. This is not the true way to live; it may be a good way to commit slow suicide but it is not a way to live.

To live authentically one has to go on dying to the past every moment, so every moment one is new and fresh, as fresh as the dewdrops in the early morning sun, as fresh as a lotus just opening in the lake. Each moment should be fresh, young, alive, innocent, unburdened by the past. Then life brings so many surprises, so many wonders, so many gifts, that there is no way to repay it. Only tears of gratitude, only a heart throbbing with thankfulness -- that's all we can give... and that's what prayer is. Only the person who is not burdened by the past can be prayerful.

Prayer means a deep gratitude towards existence, but you can feel the gratitude only when you have enjoyed existence. People are dragging, they are not dancing, and they are carrying a mountainous burden, the Himalayas. And they cling to their burden; they are dying under the burden but they think it is very precious. They think all that is old is gold. That is sheer nonsense. Only the new is divine.

And each moment one has to discover it. One should not lag behind, there should not be a gap between oneself and the moment. The bigger the gap, the bigger the misery, the lesser the gap, the lesser the misery.

If there is no gap then there is no misery, no suffering; then the whole of life is nothing but a sheer joy.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

Pradipo means a lamp, a light.

We in India make small earthen lamps. Those earthen lamps are called 'pradip'. A pradip is just a small bowl made of earth; it represents the human being.

Our body is made of earth, that's why man is called Adam; Adam means earth. The body is made of earth but inside the body there is a flame which is not part of the earth, which belongs to god, to the beyond.

So looking at an earthen lamp you have the whole representation of humanity: the earth is represented and the flame represents consciousness.

The flame is continuously going upwards. To go upwards is natural for the flame, for the flame gravitation does not exist. It follows another law. In the East we have called it the law of levitation; science has yet to discover it. They have found gravitation and they know that each law has to be counterbalanced by another law on the opposite pole. If there is a law which pulls things downwards there must be a law that pulls things upwards, only then can there be a balance.

So the body is pulled downwards and your consciousness is pulled upwards. Take care of the body but don't forget the flame -- that's all I expect from my sannyasins.

The body is a beautiful place because it is enshrining in itself the beyond -- but remember the beyond because in fact that flame is our real being. The body is only a host, remember the guest! It has been staying in many bodies in the past; this is only one of the caravanserais. And when you stay in a caravanserai you know that in the morning you have to go.

So don't forget the journey, the ultimate journey. Remembering it transforms the quality of your whole life. And meditation helps you to discover the flame.

It is unfortunate that millions of people live only as the earth and they never come to know their inner heaven. My effort here is to help you to discover it. It is already the case, nothing has to be done -- just a little digging is needed. And it is a simple process, just like digging a well in the earth; and soon you will find the water. Maybe a few rocks have to be removed or sometimes maybe dynamite has to be used (laughter). For that I have found the dynamic meditation -- that is the dynamite!

Navajata means newly born.

Sannyas is a birth.

Socrates says that the master is a midwife -- and he is right. The master simply helps you to come out of a certain womb.

The first birth is the coming out of the womb of the mother. The mother's womb is a physiological thing, but then one lives in a psychological womb and the master can bring you out of your psychological womb.

The moment you are out of your psychological womb, for the first time you know that you are not the mind, you are something transcendental to both body and mind. And to know it is to know all. Knowing it makes one feel utterly contented, absolutely contented. One has come home, one has found the goal; all desires are fulfilled, the deepest longing of the heart is satisfied. And the moment there is no desire, no longing, that is the moment when bliss happens, or one can say nirvana happens or god happens. These are different words to say the same thing.

Unless one comes out of the mind one remains in a cocoon -- closed to the wind, to the rain, to the sun, to the stars, to the infinity of existence and to all its joys and all its gifts; and they are immense, incalculable.

To remain confined to one's own mind is to live in a grave. To come out of it is to allow the hidden splendour to be released. And with it comes thousands of flowers -- love, freedom, light, silence.

-- How long will you be here?

-- Till the baby is born.

(One's eyes instinctively fall on Navajata's body. Perhaps she is physically pregnant too; whatever the case, Osho chuckles in response.)

-- That's good. I am your midwife! (laughter)

Mandir means a temple.

Man is a temple but from the outside you can only see the walls. It is very strange that not only do people see you from the outside, you also see yourself from the outside. You look in the mirror to find your face, you look into people's eyes to find your image, you listen to people's opinions to know who you are --

good, bad, moral, immoral, saint, sinner. This is really strange, because we can know ourselves from within; there is no need for any mirror, there is no need to depend on other's opinions, because their opinions will 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

only tell us about the walls, the outer walls of our temples. They cannot tell us anything about the deity within.

And sannyas is nothing but the change, the shift, the radical shift, from looking at oneself from outside to looking at oneself from inside. It is sitting inside and looking, not depending on other's opinions, scriptures, etcetera, but just watching yourself from your innermost core and asking 'Who am I?', not depending on anybody else's answer. One has to find one's own answer, only that can be fulfilling. And the moment you sit at the centre of your being and you watch, you are amazed your body is only a temple, god is inside you. And there is no way to find it from outside, there is no need to find it from the outside.

Once you have discovered your god within yourself then you will be able to see it in other people also, the same; you will know they are also temples and that god is bound to be there because they are alive and life is god.

To me life and god are synonymous, interchangeable. And if I have to choose between the two words I would like to choose the word 'life' instead of 'god', because 'god' has been exploited by the priests for so long that they have made the word almost dirty, obscene. It is better to use the word 'life' and not even with a capital 'L', but with a lower case 'l'. Just the simple life, the ordinary life, is divine.

The moment you can see your god within, your life within, your truth within, you will find it everywhere too. Then you will see it in the trees, in the people, in the animals, everywhere you will see it.

Wherever life is, god is. Then the whole existence becomes his temple and then there is no need to go to the Hindu temple or the Christian temple or the Jewish temple -- that looks childish.

Dhyan Madira.

I am giving you a very paradoxical name for the simple reason that life is paradoxical, existence is a paradox, hence it cannot be understood by logic, because a paradox is beyond logic. To logic it looks absurd. It can be understood only by a very loving heart, not by a logical mind. One has to change the gestalt from logic to love.

Your name means meditative drunkenness. Meditation means awareness; and this is my observation, that as you become more meditative, both things grow together in you. It is illogical, but what can I do? --

that's how it is. On one hand you become more alert, more aware; on the other hand you become more drunk; and they go on growing simultaneously. That's the beauty of it, because if one is simply aware then it will be dry, without any juice. It will be arithmetical but there will be no poetry in it; it will be scientific but something will be missing in it. It will be objective but it will not have the inner dimension of subjectivity, of interiority. It will be measurable but that means it will be limited. It will not have the quality of indefinability. It will not have any music; it will have mathematics but no music.

Drunkenness means poetry, music, dance. And if there is only drunkenness and no awareness then too something is missing; then you become unconscious, you go into a coma. They balance each other, they both nourish each other; they are opposite only for those who have not experienced the state. For those who have experienced it, they are complementary, not opposite. The drunkenness makes awareness green, alive, flowering, and awareness makes the drunkenness not dark, not unconscious, not falling into a coma; it keeps it above unconsciousness.

So there is a kind of dance in it, but that dance remains fully alert, conscious at the centre. And only when these two things happen together is one able to understand life in its totality; otherwise the approach is partial, and a partial approach is not going to give you fulfilment. Only the whole can fulfil you.

For me to be whole is to be holy. And this is the most beautiful whole!

Is the Grass Really Greener...?

Chapter #12

Chapter title: None

12 December 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

Archive code: 8012115

ShortTitle: GREENR12

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Dhyan Alberto. Dhyan means meditation. Alberto means noble, brilliant.

Meditation brings both a kind of nobility and a grace, a beauty. It has a certain aristocracy of the inner.

It does not depend on birth nor on money nor on power nor on respectability; it depends on your inner unfolding. When what is potential starts becoming actual you are no more the same. On the surface you are the same, but because the inner centre starts becoming aflame it is radiated by your surface too; one becomes luminous. And everything is sharpened: your intelligence, your love, your creativity, sensitivity, compassion. Everything suddenly flares up, becomes aflame.

That's what sannyas is all about: creating the aristocracy of the inner, of the spiritual.

Dhyan Francesco. Dhyan means meditation. Francesco means freedom.

There are many kinds of freedom -- the social, the political, the economic -- but they are only superficial. The true freedom has a totally different dimension to it. It is not concerned with the outside world at all; it arises in your interiority. It is freedom from conditioning, from all kinds of conditioning, religious ideologies, political philosophies. All that has been imposed by others on you fetters you, chains you, imprisons you, makes you spiritually a slave.

Meditation is nothing but the destroying of all these fetters, conditionings, the destroying of the whole prison so that you can again be under the sky, under the stars, in the open, available to existence.

The moment you are available to existence, existence is available to you. And the meeting of those two availabilities is the ultimate peak of bliss. But it can happen only in freedom. Freedom is the highest value; there is nothing higher than that.

Veet Neal. Veet means go beyond, transcend. Neal means father, daddy, etcetera.

The idea of the father is arbitrary, artificial. The mother is natural but the father is a social invention; it is an institution. One has to go beyond all institutions and this is the root of all other institutions. It is not accidental that god is called the father and the pope is called the father; the word 'pope' also means Neal --

'po-pa' or 'papa'. Translated exactly into contemporary language it will be 'daddy'.

Why is man seeking a father-figure? Why does he need to depend on the priest, on the pope, on god the father? -- because we make every child psychologically retarded. We don't allow him to grow, we don't allow him to become independent, so for the whole of his life he is searching for a father-figure. He always wants somebody authoritative to dominate him, to dictate to him, to show him the way, to tell him what to do and what not to do and at the same time he resists it. That creates a dichotomy. He does not want to be dependent, he wants to be independent, but his growth has been retarded, prevented, and he does not know how to get rid of that retardation, so he has to be dependent. So on one hand he seeks some dependence and on the other he fights.

Either he worships god or he tries to kill god, but in both ways he is behaving childishly. The atheist and the theist are not very different; both are in some way concerned with the father-figure, the ultimate father-figure.

Just be a human being; there is no need to be a father, because you can be a father only if you retard the growth of your child.

You can enjoy that, people are enjoying that ego trip -- crippling and paralysing children and enjoying their children being dependent on them. This is ugly, this is sickening. The children should be helped to be independent as quickly as possible. But the father is an institution and all institutions are prisons.

An institution means something that is not natural, something that has been invented by man. So I take the word 'father' as symbolic of all invented institutions. And there is no other kind.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

One has to go beyond being a husband, being a father, being a wife, one has to go beyond all these stupid ideas. One has just to be human, loving -- and then a miracle happens in life then you can love somebody else's child as deeply as your own. Once the idea of father is dropped your love is free, then there is no limitation to it. And we will need a totally different kind of humanity.

All people should not be fathers, should not be mothers; only very few people should be allowed to reproduce, only very few women should be allowed to be pregnant -- and it is not necessary that they be pregnant by their own husbands -- only then will we be able to improve the human race.

We have done it as far as the animal species are concerned but we are not so scientific with man; with man we remain superstitious. That's why there is so much misery, so much psychological mediocrity, so much illness. All these things can disappear from the earth but then we have to choose who is going to be the parent. And the father of your child need not be the same person with whom you are in love. But for that we will need a far bigger consciousness, a very non-possessive consciousness.

The family as it has existed up to now has to disappear. Just a few days ago the Pope has said that 'we are against birth control, against abortion, against interfering in human life, because if these things are allowed then the family will be destroyed, and the church depends on the family' -- his own words. And what he is saying is right; the church depends on the family. All religions depend on the family, all nations depend on the family, hence I am basically against the family because unless the family is uprooted all these foolishnesses will continue. The nation, the race, the church, the state -- they will continue if the family remains. The family is the basic unit. And I am hammering on the basic unit because unless you cut the roots you cannot change the tree; it will remain. You can go on pruning the leaves, it won't help; it will simply make the foliage thicker.

Up to now no revolution has succeeded for the simple reason that no revolution has happened to the basic foundation of the society and that is the family. Even in communist Russia, in the beginning they tried, just for five years, to disperse the family, but soon they recognised that if the family was destroyed then the state would not exist. Immediately they stopped that whole programme, they dropped the very idea, and now in Soviet Russia the family is more strict than it is anywhere else in the West, it is very orthodox, because they immediately saw the relationship between the state and the family: if you destroy the family you are cutting your own roots.

So go beyond the idea of the family, of the father, of the husband, of all institutionalised ideas, and only then can you understand my message.

Dhyan Babbo. Dhyan means meditation and Babbo creates again the same trouble, it means the father, the daddy. So many daddies today! (laughter)

So you have to meditate over it because that is the only way to get rid of it. Meditation is a miracle. If you want to get rid of anything simply meditate over it and you will get rid of it. If you cannot get rid of it by meditation that simply means it is natural and there is no need to get rid of it. So meditation is very decisive; it decides what is nature and what is not nature, what is nurture. Once you start meditating on anything... For example, if you meditate on love, love starts growing, it starts spreading, it starts having wings. You cannot destroy love by meditation; it deepens, it becomes vaster. But possessiveness will disappear, jealousy will disappear, anger will disappear, hatred will disappear.

So when something disappears by meditation that simply means that it was just human, an arbitrary arrangement. When something deepens, becomes bigger, that means it is a gift of god. And except for meditation there is no criterion for knowing what is nurture and what is nature; they have both got so mixed up. But meditation simply gives you absolute discrimination, it cuts the essential and the non-essential apart.

And I call it a miracle because the non-essential simply starts evaporating and the energy that was involved in the non-essential starts getting into the roots of the essential so the essential starts becoming bigger and stronger.

So this is your meditations start meditating on your fatherhood. And once it disappears you will be a totally new man because your whole vision and perspective will be new.

And it is only a question of succeeding in one thing through meditation, then you know the key, then you can go on opening all the locks because it is a master key.

Kalyana means welfare of the others.

The moment one becomes blissful he becomes a blessing to others. That is Kalyana. It is not a question 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

of serving others. You cannot serve unless you have something to share. If you are miserable and you start serving others you will simply complicate their lives because your misery will infect them.

That's why all the so-called public servants have proved very dangerous to human society. The missionaries, the public servants, the social reformers, they are all mischievous people. If they all disappear the world will be in a better shape. And the reason why they go on creating trouble is that they are full of trouble themselves. Their service to humanity is only an escape from their own personal problems.

My approach is totally different. It is individualistic. First you have to become blissful. Once you are blissful then the bliss starts flowing over you -- and that overflowing bliss is the only true service. But then it is absolutely unselfconscious; you go on doing things because you love to do them. There is no motivation in it, no desire to attain to some pleasures in heaven, some rewards from god. There is no end in your service, it is sheer joy; it is not future-oriented at all -- and then it has a beauty of its own.

Sandhano means enquiry.

The truth has not to be believed, it has to be enquired into.

My sannyas does not begin in belief, it begins in enquiry. For thousands of years humanity has been told that believing is seeing; I say to you seeing is believing. So the question is not of believing, the question is of seeing. Even a blind man can believe in light, in fact only a blind man believes in light; the man who has eyes need not believe at all -- he knows Belief is a poor substitute for knowing and knowing never happens through belief. The very first step has gone wrong.

So start within any belief or disbelief -- because disbelief is to believe upside-down. Start with an open mind, with no a priori conclusion. Start from a state of not-knowing and then you are on the right track.

Then truth is not very far away, it is just around the corner. For the enquirer it is just around the corner, for the believer it doesn't exist at all.

Nandita means the blissful one.

My effort here is not religious in the ordinary sense. I don't teach a doctrine, a dogma, a creed. This is not a cult because I don't have any ideology. I only teach blissfulness, how to enjoy the small things of life, because my experience is that if you start enjoying the small things of life you start feeling the extraordinary in the ordinary. Then even drinking a cup of tea becomes a meditation, or taking a shower becomes a prayer. Wherever bliss is there is meditation, there is prayer.

One has to change one's whole lifestyle. We have been brought up in such a way that misery has become our life-style. We become happy once in a while, when there is really something to be happy about, but that too remains only for a moment.

You have won the lottery and for a moment you are happy, and then the happiness disappears because it goes against your habit. So the lottery breaks the ice but only for a moment; again the old habit suffocates your happiness. You start worrying about what to do with this money, what not to do, and a thousand and one things start happening. Now you cannot sleep in the night because fantasies go on and on, and the next morning you are more tired than ever.

Just the opposite should be the case: one should be naturally happy unless there is really some cause to be unhappy. That would be a normal, natural phenomenon. Happiness should be like breathing: unless something goes wrong so that your breathing is disturbed it should continue smoothly. And if one is happy twenty-four hours a day, then even when there is a cause to be miserable it will not go very deep. It will remain superficial because it will be going against your nature -- just as right now even when there is a cause to be happy you can be only for a moment or for a time being, because it goes against your habit. And remember, a habit is not so deep as nature.

Once you are naturally blissful then even when there is a cause to be unhappy you will not feel unhappy; you will be able to pass through it, calm and cool and quiet. That's what sannyas is a transformation of your total life-style from misery to bliss.

And that's the meaning of your name, Nandita.

From this very moment start feeling happy for no reason at all. Feel unhappy only when there is really some reason to be. And you will be surprised: it is very difficult to find a reason to be unhappy. For twenty-five years I have been trying and I have not found one! (laughter) So I don't think you will be able to find it.

Whenever you feel something entering your being creating unhappiness, immediately try to find out what there is to be miserable about. Go deep into it and you will not find anything. And whenever there is 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

bliss no need to bother about why it is there, just enjoy it. People do just the opposite.

A psychiatrist sent one of his patients to the mountains for a holiday and the next day he received a telegram. The patient wrote: 'I am feeling very happy -- why?'

People ask why they are happy. Every day I receive questions saying 'Osho, I am feeling very happy --

why? There seems to be no reason.'

There is no need for any reason; happiness is our nature. Nobody asks 'I am breathing -- why? I am alive

-- why?' In the same way one is blissful; there is no need to be searching for a cause. But certainly when you are not feeling good find out the cause. And the deeper you go into it, the more you will find it doesn't exist at all, it was imagination. You had imagined it in the first place, so it evaporates.

Anubhavo means experience.

Truth is not a concept, it is an experience. God is not a person, it is an experience. Love is not an idea, it is an experience. All that is really significant is experience. And people go on living in ideas. Love is just an idea, a beautiful idea. God is just a name, an abstraction. Beauty, freedom, truth -- all are just words, and if these words are repeated again and again, one becomes hypnotised by them. One starts believing in these words and forgets that these are mere words, they are not the reality.

The word 'god' is not god, the word 'love' is not love. Insist on experience because only experience liberates and only experience makes your potential actual. It is only through experiencing the multi-dimensional life that one grows, that one comes one day to the ultimate peak where one becomes crowned a Christ, where one is awakened from all unconsciousness and becomes a Buddha.

So remember: don't get lost in the jungle of words; it is easy to get lost in words. Always insist on experience, because except for experience all is just dreamstuff, a sheer wastage of life, time and energy.

Being here with me means getting ready to experience things, risking everything for experience.

Nityama means the eternal.

We are not confined between birth and death, we have been before birth and we will be after death.

Birth and death are simply episodes in the eternal stream of life, but you are not to believe in what I am saying; What I am saying has only to be taken as a hypothesis, so that you can enquire whether it is right or wrong. I am the last person to ask anybody to believe in me, because what I am saying is so true that just a little effort on your part and it can become your experience, and when it is your experience, only then has it any value.

You can love me -- that love will help you to go into the enquiry -- but you need not believe in my words -- that will hinder you. So there is a great distinction to be always remembered: love me but don't believe in the words, Mm? words are words, whether they are mine or Jesus, or Buddha's makes no difference. Your love for me should not become your love for my words; your love for me should only be a nourishment, an encouragement, to go into the enquiry.

Trusting me does not mean that whatsoever I say you have to believe in; trusting me only means that you are ready to enquiry. Trust is needed to enquire, not to believe, because enquiry means going into the unknown. Unless you trust me it will be impossible for you to risk the known for the unknown. But you need not believe in the other shore unless you have found it. And I know that because it is there, it can be found.

If I can find it, you can find it. We are all born equal, with the same potential, with the same possibilities.

Vedanto means going beyond words, scriptures, philosophies.

Truth is beyond words, inexpressible; there is no way to say it. The master only shows it, he does not say it. The master is a finger pointing towards the moon, he shows it. But the world is so full of fools that they start worshipping the finger, they don't look at the moon at all; hence there are Christians.... Christians means the people who are worshipping the finger of Christ and the Buddhists mean the people who are worshipping the finger of Buddha. And the irony is that both fingers were pointing to the same moon and now these fools are quarrelling for centuries, arguing that I'am right. 'Your finger is small and my finger is big, and look how beautiful my finger is and your finger is not so beautiful, and my finger is white and yours is black.' Thousands of books have been written about these fingers, possible and impossible things have been said about the fingers, and the argument has become so vast that nobody bothers about the moon

-- nobody has time!

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

First one has to decide which one is the real finger, which one is the finger authorised by god. And that is not possible to decide at all, there is no criterion to decide it -- the argument will continue, theologians will go on writing treatises. And the miracle is that nobody reads those treatises, only other theologians read them and they refute them.

For five thousand years the followers of Krishna, Patanjali, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Jesus, Mohammed, Nanak, Kabir, they have all been arguing -- I have looked into their argument: all their arguments are about the finger. Nobody is talking about the moon.

My function here is to help you to see the moon. So don't get concerned with the finger. All scriptures are fingers, all words are fingers, all theories are fingers. Use them but don't get obsessed by them, use them and forget all about them. When you have found the moon then you have to look at the moon; then don't let the finger come in between you and the moon.

That's the meaning of your name. Let it also become the meaning of your life.

-- How long will you be here?

-- I think always... no end to it.

-- That's good! See you on the moon! (much laughter)

Is the Grass Really Greener...?

Chapter #13

Chapter title: None

13 December 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8012125

ShortTitle: GREENR13

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Dhyan Gail. Dhyan means meditation. Gail means source of joy.

Pleasure is possible without meditation, but it is soon bound to be momentary and physical. The physical part of ourself is the most superficial; without meditation at the most one can have certain glimpses of happiness which are deeper than pleasure.

Happiness is psychological but that too will remain momentary. It will have a little more depth than the pleasure derived from food and sex, it will have more aesthetic sensitivity to it, but that too will pass away and will leave you in deeper despair than before. Each time you experience happiness it is followed by despair. One falls from the peak into the valley -- it hurts.

Joy is possible only through meditation. Meditation is a method to go beyond body and mind, it is to enter into the deepest core of your being. The moment you transcend body and mind, you also transcend time; hence joy is eternal, it is forever. That is the only thing worth achieving in life, everything else is only a toy to play with.

I am not against pleasure, not against happiness, but one should not think that that is all there is to life; there is far more.

The word 'gail' is very beautiful; it comes from two words. One is 'abi' abi means the source; and 'gil'

means to dance.

The moment you are so joyful that your whole energy starts a dance of its own accord, when you cannot 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

contain it, when it starts overflowing you like the perfume of a flower, not only do you become blissful, the whole existence feels blessed by your bliss.

Anand Manuel. Anand means bliss Manuel means god is with us.

Originally the name was reserved only for Christ, because he declared 'I and my father are one.'

The moment you know that you and existence are not separate -- that's the ultimate peak of understanding, of being, there is nothing higher than that -- that's the moment when one becomes a Christ.

Christ simply means the crowned one; one is crowned by glory, crowned by the meeting and merger with the divine.

It is possible only for a very blissful person.

The people who go to the churches and the synagogues and the temples and the mosques are almost always a miserable lot. They go there not to celebrate life but to ask something from god. They go there as beggars; and god is not for beggars, god does not exist for beggars. The beggar is full of desires and desires are the hindrances. God exists only for the emperors, and by 'emperor' I mean a person who has seen the futility of all desiring.

When you see that desiring is futile bliss explodes. It is desire that creates misery. If it is not fulfilled you are miserable, if it is fulfilled then too you are miserable, because when it is fulfilled you see that nothing is fulfilled, you are the same person. You wanted a big house and now it is yours. You wasted years and years for it and dreamt about it and spent so much energy; now the house is yours but you don't see the bliss that you were dreaming, fantasising, about.

Nothing fails like success, so if a desire is fulfilled you are miserable, if it is not fulfilled, you are miserable. Either way it brings misery. Seeing this the man of understanding drops desiring and in that very dropping is the explosion of bliss. And when you are dancing and rejoicing in each moment of life you will find god is with you, within you, god is you.

That's the goal of sannyas, to experience oneself as divine. Nothing less is going to fulfil, nothing less is going to help. And it is not a far-away goal; it is within everybody's reach, we just have not tried in the right direction.

Blissfulness is the right direction, the way that leads to god. Misery is the way that leads you farther and farther away.

Dhyan means meditation. Nadia means hope.

The only hope is meditation. And remember, I say the only hope -- all else is just hopeless. One can have money, power, prestige, but ultimately one finds everything has betrayed one. Even a man like Alexander the Great dies in deep frustration and hopelessness. But the man of meditation lives with tremendous ecstasy and dies too with the same ecstasy, with the same dance.

Just before Buddha died his disciples naturally started crying and weeping; they could not contain their tears. He said, "Stop! You should rejoice because I have fulfilled my mission in life. There is nothing more for me to do here. I have known whatsoever was worth knowing, I have realized whatsoever was my potential. My death is not the end of life but the ultimate crescendo, the climax. Weeping and crying you can do later on; right now while I am still here, rejoice!"

Meditation is the only hope. One should put one's whole energy into meditation. It means the exploration of your own interiority. It is a journey from the circumference to the center. The moment you reach the center you have come home. Then suddenly spring is there and the birds start singing and the flowers suddenly appear from nowhere and the whole of life is fragrant.

It is better to move into meditation as quickly as possible. Every moment that is not meditative is lost.

We save only that time which goes into meditation -- that is the only real life. And once you know how to live at your center you need not renounce life; you live in life, amidst life, but still you are centered, rooted in your self.

The meditative person is not an escapist; he is creative. That is the criterion of real meditation: if it helps you to be creative only then is it true meditation; otherwise you are carrying something pseudo in the name of meditation. If it creates the longing to escape from life -- to the monastery, to the caves to the mountains

-- that is not true meditation.

One has to be blissful wherever one is.

Prem Michael. Prem means love. Michael means godly.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

There are a few experiences which can only be called godly, there is no other way to define them. Love is one of those few rare experiences. Meditation, bliss, love -- these can be only indicated by the word

'godly', because whenever you are in love or in bliss or in meditation suddenly you become aware of a translucent presence, surrounding the whole existence. You see it within, you see it without. It has always been there, it is just that you were blind. You are breathing it every moment, you are living in it. Just lives in the ocean we are living in god. All that is needed is a certain clarity, a certain ability to see.

And love helps immensely to cleanse your eyes, because fundamentally love is the dropping of the ego, and the moment ego is dropped a curtain that was on your eyes disappears. The clouds that were surrounding you are no more there, the sky is clear and you can see the farthest stars.

God is not a person but a presence, hence you will not meet a person the way Christians have been talking about god, the father -- a very ancient, old man. His beard must have reached the floor by now, it just be sweeping the floor, because I have never heard that there are barbers in paradise; nobody has ever thought about barbers and hair-cutting salons. He must be completely covered with hair! There are all kinds of gods invented by religious people, but they are all inventions, imagination, fiction -- you can call them spiritual fiction. Just as there is science fiction, so there is spiritual fiction. But the truth is that god is not a person at all, you cannot make any image.

God is beauty, not beautiful. God is love, not loving. God is bliss, not somebody who is blissful.

And when you start seeing god as beauty, as truth, as love, as bliss, as ecstasy, your whole vision goes through a radical change. And love can become one of the most significant steps. One can enter god through love very easily.

Use it as a device, as a bridge.

Dhyan Beate. Dhyan means meditation. Beate means the blessed.

We don't know how blessed we are because we are not aware of our own inexhaustible treasures. We are not even thinking about the inner -- experiencing is a far-away thing. We are continuously thinking about everything except our own being.

Sannyas means the change of the whole gestalt. It means turning in, looking at one's own self, because unless one knows who one is, all other knowledge is futile.

Albert Einstein is one of the most intelligent persons who has ever walked on earth but he died in deep misery. Just two days before his death he said 'If I am born again, I would not like to be a scientist.' Now a man of the calibre of Albert Einstein saying that means much. What is the point of knowing about stars and electrons and neutrons and protons when you don't know anything about yourself? And whatsoever you do without knowing about yourself is going to be wrong.

The most important thing in life is to become acquainted with oneself. And the moment you have a little acquaintance you suddenly see your blessedness.

Beate is a beautiful name. It exactly means bhagwan. The word 'bhagwan' also means the blessed one.

Beate may have certain far-away connections with the root of bhagwan. It may have come from the same Sanskrit root. In Sanskrit bhagwan does not mean god -- that is a secondary meaning; it simply means the blessed one, one who has known his blessedness.

Buddha never believed in any god, still we called him bhagwan because he was one of the most blessed people who has ever walked on the earth. Mahavira never believed in any god, still we call him bhagwan, for the simple reason that we have never seen any person as blessed as him.

Beate is significant, but the discovery has to be made. It is there, somewhere within you, you just have to dig within so many layers of thoughts, desires, conditionings. Just a little bit of searching inside and you will see, because it is just like a Kohinoor: it is so brilliant, your innermost self, so luminous, that nothing can hide it. Just a little search and the miracle happens.

Nadma means the ultimate sound which is heard when all other noise in the head stops.

It is always there but the head is so full of noise you cannot hear it. It is a very subtle sound, so subtle that the mystics have called it a soundless sound. It is not like somebody hammering on your door, it is not even a whisper; it is just like a breeze passing through the trees. Unless you are very alert, silent, you hear it.

Once you have heard it then you will be able to hear it even in the marketplace; then no noise can distract you from it because it has such a magnetic beauty, it is so alluring, it is so hypnotising. Once it is found it is never lost.

So all that we have to do is to put the mind in a calmer and quieter space. And it happens easily if you 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

watch; if you watch the mind processes they start withering away. One day suddenly you are left alone, just a watchfulness with nothing to watch.

In that pregnant moment the soundless sound is heard, the sound of one hand clapping -- and your life is transported into a totally different existence. You are no more part of earth, you become part of the sky, of the beyond.

Anahata is one of the most significant words. Literally it simply means unstruck sound.

The mystics have found -- and it is one of the ancientmost discoveries, at least ten thousand years old --

that life, that the whole of existence, is made of sound, of subtle vibrations of sound.

Modern physics discovered it too from a very different route; because of their different routes their definitions are a little bit different. But anybody who has some perception, who can think in both ways --

scientifically and mystically -- can see the unity, can see that they are talking about the same thing in different languages, different jargon.

Modern physics says that the world, existence, consists of electricity. The whole existence is nothing but electrical vibration. And if you ask them what sound is, they will say it is nothing but a certain kind of vibration in the electric energy. If you ask the mystics what electricity is, they say it is a certain form of sound vibrations -- and then things become very clear.

The mystics discovered sound first, hence they define electricity by sound. In the East there has been a certain melody called 'deepak rag' light melody. It is said that there have been singers... And it seems to be almost an historical fact, not just a mythology, because there are so many records about it and very recent records -- five hundred years old.

In the great emperor Akbar's court there was a musician, Tansen, who was expert in that melody. It is a certain music can help the unlit lamp to become lit. The musician simply plays on his sitar, surrounded by unlit lamps and by and by they start becoming suddenly aflame. It is possible because a sound can hit the air in a certain way that it can create heat -- that's a known phenomenon. Sound can create heat. If it can create heat it can create fire; if it can create fire it can create electricity and vice versa is also true.

The mystics and the physicists have travelled towards the same destination from different angles.

Anahata means the sound of which we are made, so it is unstruck. When you play on a guitar or then it is a struck sound; but there is a melody inside which is continuously there. In fact the mystics say that when that melody disappears we die, when that melody becomes disturbed we become ill. When we feel well-being it is really because of that melody; it is going as it should, there is no hindrance in it.

The mystics have also experienced -- and I can vouch for them, I can be a witness for them that they are saying something really significant -- that there is a way in which you can resonate with the whole existence in the same tune. That's meditation: resonating with the whole universe without any disturbance, falling in step with the melody of the whole. Then your ego disappears, then you are no more there. Then there is only music -- that music is Anahat, and to experience it is to know what bliss is.

Ageya means the unknowable.

These three words have to be remembered: the known, the knowable and the unknowable.

The known was unknown yesterday. The knowable is unknown today but tomorrow it may become knowable, known. Science believes in only two categories, the known and the unknown. But the unknown means the knowable; up to now we have not been able to know it but sooner or later we will know it. Hence science believes a moment will come in history, some time in the future, where there will be nothing left to know, when the whole unknown will have become known. But religion has a third category also, the unknowable, which always remains unknowable. It was unknowable yesterday, it is unknowable today, it will remain unknowable tomorrow.

Science thinks that existence can be demystified, religion knows it cannot be demystified because that unknowable will always remain a mystery. And that unknowable is called god, truth, nirvana -- so many names have been given to it -- tao, dhamma, logos, but one quality is definitely there in all these words: it is unknowable, it is an absolute mystery. You can enter into it, you can become part of it but you cannot know it.

You can live it but you cannot know it, you can taste it but you cannot say anything about it, You can feel it in your belly but you will be absolutely dumb. And that is the most precious experience. It is experienceable but not expressible. That's why it cannot become part of the known.

Many people have experienced it -- Buddha experienced it, Lao Tzu experienced it, Patanjali 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

experienced it, Kabir experienced it, but nobody has ever been able to say anything about it. All that they say is how to find it, but they never say anything about that which you are going to find.

Lao Tzu begins his book, TAO TE CHING: 'Truth is that which cannot be expressed. Remember this,'

he says 'and then you can read my book. Don't forget it -- because truth you will not find in the words.

Perhaps one can find it in the gaps between the words or between the lines but not in the words, not in the lines themselves.'

That is our search -- the unknowable. And the only way to seek it is to dissolve into the whole just like a dewdrop dissolves into the ocean and becomes it.

Videha means the bodyless.

We are in the body but we are not the body; the body is the host, we are the guest. So be thankful to the body, but don't get identified with it. Take care of the body -- it is a temple -- love it, respect it, but don't become addicted with it, obsessed with it, because it is only an overnight's stay; in the morning we have to go.

We have been in many bodies and we will be in many bodies, we have changed forms many times. One has to go on changing forms unless one comes to experience the formless. That's why buddhas are never born again. Once you have experienced the formless you have gone beyond birth and death, then there is no need to come back.

As a first step start creating a little distance between you and your body. And that same distance will automatically happen with the mind because the mind and body are not two, but two aspects of one reality.

The body is the outer part of the mind, the mind is the inner part of the body, so if you create distance from the body, the same distance is created with the mind too. A little distance is needed, and the simplest way to create the distance is to watch your body in it's acts and your mind in it's functionings. The watcher slowly slowly becomes separate; attains a coolness, remains undisturbed. Events happen in the body-mind; to the observer, to the consciousness, nothing ever happens -- it is always the same, unchangingly the same.

There is no past for it, no future for it. There is only the present. It is always now, here.

So this is going to be your work upon yourself: disidentification with the body-mind structure. Once that is done, everything else becomes very easy. You have taken the most significant step towards self-realization.

Is the Grass Really Greener...?

Chapter #14

Chapter title: None

14 December 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8012135

ShortTitle: GREENR14

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Veet Madison. Veet means go beyond. Madison means might in battle.

Man needs now peace, not war. Man needs love, no violence. We have been tortured enough by the idea of becoming heroes in war, of destruction, of violence. It is time that it be completely, totally stopped.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

In the past it was possible to afford it but now it is impossible, because science has given us so much destructive power that if we go on living according to the old values and ideals then humanity is finished.

The warrior, the soldier, the general, should become criminals in the future. The future belongs to the sannyasins, not to the soldiers, it belongs to the lovers. Only love can give us the balance.

But humanity has lived against love up to now and that's why there is so much misery; it is bound to be so: we have lived destructively, in an insane way.

Now there are only two alternatives: either we have to change totally from the very roots, root and all, or we have to be ready for a global suicide.

So go beyond the idea of being a mighty warrior -- enough of it. It is a mad idea. So Madison will remind you that it is a mad idea!

Love insanity, war is madness. And when we can live according to a now vision of life there is no need to go on carrying the old values just because they are old. Their time is over, they are outdated. We have to put a full stop to the past, we have to break the continuity with the past -- and my whole work consists of that, to make humanity discontinuous with its own past so we can start afresh.

So my people are really Adams and Eves and we have to start from the very beginning. It is a tremendous challenge, it is worth accepting it. It is the greatest adventure, and it is possible now. It was not possible before.

Man can live in ecstasy on the earth, there is no need for a paradise after death. It can be before death too.

Veet Holm. Veet means to go beyond. Holm means an island.

Man is not an island but we live with the false notion of being an island. We are part of the whole, we are not apart. We belong to the continent, and the continent is infinite, there is no demarcation line.

The ego is an island but your being is not an island. To follow the dictates of the ego is to make a mess of your life, because it is basically taking you away from the organic unity of existence. It is trying to create a separate entity, which is impossible. The whole project is doomed from the very beginning, it cannot happen because it is not according to the law of existence. How can the tree be separate from the earth? It is impossible. How can the leaf be separate from the tree? The moment it is separate it is dead. Life is being with the tree, being part of it.

Ego is a dead thing, a dead weight. The bigger the ego, the more dead is the man because it suffocates his being. The moment you drop the ego you are free again, free from all imprisonment, free from all chains. Then this whole universe belongs to you. Then all the stars and the mountains and the rivers are part of you, just as you are part of them.

To feel that unity, that synchronicity, that affinity, is sannyas. To feel that music, that resonance, is sannyas.

Vidyasagar Bharti. Vidyasagar is a beautiful name. It has tremendous significance.

The Upanishads define science as 'avidya', ignorance, and the science of the self as 'vidya', as wisdom.

The objective science is defined as ignorance and the subjective science is defined as knowing, wisdom. It is a very strange definition. Nowhere else has science been defined as avidya, ignorance, but the Upanishads are right. The word 'ignorance' simply means that you have been ignoring the essential; it comes from ignoring. The person who is too much concerned with the objective world is ignoring himself. So it is perfectly right to define science as ignorance: it is becoming concerned with the non-essential. While life was an opportunity to discover the essential we wasted it in the non-essential. While we could have found the immeasurable treasure of our being we wasted our time collecting seashells and coloured stones on the sea beach. We rushed hither and thither and there was so much hurry and so much worry to no purpose at all; it was much ado about nothing.

It is right, perfectly right, that the Upanishads call it ignorance.

The true knowledge can only be of your consciousness. That is the morning of Vidya.

And Sagar means ocean. The moment you know yourself you become oceanic. Then all boundaries disappear; you lose all limitations of body, of mind, of caste, creed, cult, nation. All boundaries simply disappear because consciousness is neither Hindu nor Mohammedan nor Christian, neither Indian nor German nor English, neither black nor white; consciousness is just consciousness with no adjective attached to it. Because it has no adjective it has immense freedom, it is not tethered to anything.

The moment one enters into oneself one is entering into infinity. To know oneself is to know that one is 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

vast, as vast as the universe itself. And there cannot be two vastnesses, remember. If there are two vastnesses they cannot be vast; they will define each other, there will be a demarcation, a boundary line.

There can be only one vastness, only one infinity. So the moment you know that you are infinite, you also know that you are not, only the whole is.

So self-knowing is a very paradoxical phenomenon: first you become very much intrigued by the existence of the self, but as you go deeper the self starts evaporating. Ultimately what is found is pure consciousness -- no self at all. That's why Buddha called it anatta, no-self, just to give you the feel that you have become the whole.

The word 'vidyasagar' contains both the definition of knowing and the experience of knowing. And it all happens through a very simple process of meditation. One just has to learn to be silent, related, calm and quiet, so all turmoil settles. Slowly slowly a moment comes when there is no movement within you, all movement has disappeared. In that very moment the miracle of knowing happens and one is transformed, one is born anew. That is the beginning of a divine existence.

Dhyan Wolf. Dhyan means meditation. Meditation means awareness, watchfulness, a silent witnessing of all the processes of the mind. And the magic of watching is that as your watchfulness deepens, the mind starts evaporating. When the watchfulness is absolute mind becomes nil, a zero. And the disappearance of the mind gives you clarity, absolute clarity, transparency; you can see through and through, you become a mirror. And then life is reflected as it is -- not according to any doctrine, not according to the Bible or the Koran or the Gita but as it is. And to know life as it is, is to know god.

In Germany mythology wolf is a symbol for two things: cunningness and courage. Meditation will help you to get rid of cunningness and it will nourish your courage. The cunning part cannot survive meditation.

Meditation is like fire. When you put gold into fire all that is not gold is burned and then gold comes out of it absolutely purified. The same happens through meditation: put anything into it and that which is wrong will be burned and that which is right will come up in its total fragrance.

Courage is an essential quality, cunningness is a learned trick. Cunningness is not inborn. One learns it from society because one has to live with cunning people -- just to survive you have to be cunning. But courage is an inborn quality, intrinsic. Every child is courageous. In fact it is the parents who make him a coward. They talk about ghosts, they talk about thieves and murderers and they make him afraid of darkness. They go on making him afraid of a thousand and one things. Slowly slowly he loses heart, he becomes nervous. If there are so many fears surrounding one, one has to be very cunning just to survive.

And by and by he finds that the parents are right because society consists of all kinds of deceptive people.

So his courage by and by becomes covered with layers of cunningness. And cunningness cannot give you anything because it is something imposed from the outside. It has to be burned, removed, then courage bursts forth!

My definition of right and wrong, of good and bad, of essential and non-essential, is always derived from meditation. When you go through meditativeness whatsoever survives is right, is good, is moral, is beautiful, is natural, is divine. Whatsoever is burned through meditation was wrong, was not natural.

So in a way the word 'wolf' is good; is symbolizes two things: the essential part of you, courage, and the non-essential part, cunningness.

Sannyasins have to be courageous but not cunning. In fact to be cunning is cowardly, it is not really courageous; cunningness goes against courage.

For example the really courageous animals are not cunning; the lion is not cunning, the elephant is not cunning. The wolf is cunning, the fox is very cunning, but they are not very courageous people. They are cunning just to supplement what they are lacking: they are lacking courage. They need something else to be added to them -- that is cunningness. But the tiger or the lion or the elephant need not have any cunningness; the elephant is the most simple and the most courageous animal -- very simple and very innocent, just childlike.

Go through meditation and you will see that much is just weeds within you -- those weeds will be burned and only roses will be saved. And when one's life is full of roses one has arrived, one has found the source of joy.

Dhyan Hendrik. Dhyan means meditation. Hendrik means home.

A man without meditation is a man without a home, he is homeless. He lives accidentally; he has nothing running through his life as a connecting link. He has no idea of what he is doing, or why he is doing 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

it. He has no vision of who he is or why he is. He has not even thought about from where he comes, to where he is bound. He is just like driftwood, at the mercy of the wind and the waves -- wherever the winds are going or the waves are going. He lives in this way but this kind of life cannot have any significance, it cannot have meaning and poetry. It will be like a monkey sitting on a typewriter, knowing nothing about the typewriter, but he has watched people typing so he can imitate them. But do you think that some poetry will come out of it?

There are scientists who say that in infinite time there is a possibility that if the monkey goes on typing and typing for millions and trillions of years, maybe one day he will turn out a beautiful poem. But that is a very far, far-away, very remote possibility -- so remote that one can take it for granted that it will not happen, it cannot happen. But that's how people are living: monkeys sitting on typewriters, just sitting here and there and hoping that they will become Shakespeares and Miltons and Shelleys and Byrons -- and what comes out is just rubbish.

That's how people's lives are -- monkeyish, imitative. They do hard work but because there is no clear-cut perception, nothing ever comes out of it, all their efforts are wasted.

Meditation gives you a home, it gives you a shelter. It gives you a certain inner security, a balance, an understanding, a vision to live by and to live for, or if the need arises, even to die for. Then not only does life become significant but even death becomes significant.

And the man who can transform his life and death into significant poetry has succeeded, has not been a failure. Very few people have succeeded in the past. The irony is that everybody has the potential to succeed but we never look at our own potential.

Meditation is nothing but looking at your own potential, searching for it; exploring your inner territory to find out what you have brought into the world, what seeds are there, what kind of soil you need, what kind of climate will be helpful for your inner growth.

I don't give you any idea about what you have to become; I only give you a key so you can explore within yourself what script you have brought with you, what seeds you already have within you. Somebody will become a rose and somebody may become a lotus, so no idea has to be imposed from the outside.

I don't give you any discipline but I certainly give you a key which can help you to unlock the doors of your own home, of your own being. And that's the most precious thing that can happen to a man; there is nothing more precious than finding the key.

Meditation is the key.

Agneya means aflame, afire.

We are carrying fire within our souls. Of course it is covered with much dust, so much so that we have completely forgotten about it. But that fire is our very source of life; even though it is covered, it is through it that we are alive.

The moment it is really gone we are dead. That's why warmth is symbolic of life and coldness symbolic of death. But people live only at the minimum because their fire is covered, so only a little bit of it reaches them, a very small fragment.

Scientists have discovered that people use only five per cent of their potential in their whole life, ninety-five per cent of their potential remains unused. Even the greatest geniuses like Albert Einstein don't use more than fifteen per cent. Only Buddhas have used one hundred per cent of their potential -- and then of course, their life has a dance incomparable, a joy overflowing, inexhaustible. They are not only blissful, they are a blessing to others.

This fire has to be discovered.

I have chosen orange as the colour for my sannyasins to remind them of fire. So all shades of red...

because fire has all the shades of red.

There is the religion of Zarathustra. He was very much in love with fire. But his followers have misunderstood him as everybody's followers have always done -- that is the routine way. Zarathustra's followers started worshipping fire; rather than finding the fire within they started making temples of fire.

Now those followers exist only in India. Zarathustra was born in Iran; the whole of Iran once was under his impact but Mohammedans forcibly converted those simple people to Islam. Only a few could escape, only a few thousand could escape from Iran. They landed in Bombay, so now Bombay is the only place where the followers of Zarathustra are living -- just one hundred thousand, not more than that.

But what they are doing is strange: they have carried the original fire from Iran and they are still maintaining it -- that fire has remained continuous. Their temples are called 'agyaris', fire temples, and their 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

whole effort is that the old ancient fire should not be in any way lost -- it is their god.

So for twenty-four hours a day for three thousand years -- because Zarathustra's religion is three thousand years old -- they have gone on adding fuel. For three thousand years they have carried the fire on and they have kept it burning. The whole thing is useless.

The real thing is to discover the fire within. And it has been there from eternity, so why bother about the fire outside? But that's always happening: the master talks about the inner and the followers translate it into the outer. In that translation everything gets lost.

My work here is to help you to discover your inner temple of fire. I love Zarathustra, he has given a very significant message, and his followers have been really simple, innocent people, very straight, not cunning at all, very life-affirmative, very loving, intelligent, but even then they have missed the point.

So remember it: the temple is not on the outside, you are the temple and your life source is your fire.

And once you have found it you have found eternity. Then there is no misery, no darkness, no death.

Svarupanand means bliss is your self-nature.

It is not something that happens to you; it is already the case. It is that you are not there, present, you are somewhere else, dreaming of other places, dreaming of the future, dreaming of the past and never in the present, never herenow.

Withdraw yourself from the past and the future, withdraw all your energies from everywhere and let them rest herenow, in this moment, within yourself, just like a child in the womb of the mother. So become a mother and let your whole energy rest in your womb and you will be surprised; for the first time you will understand the meaning of what Jesus says, 'The kingdom of god is within you.'

There is so much bliss that one cannot believe it. For the first time one misses a few heartbeats -- it is such a shock that it has always been within you and you have always been running somewhere else to find it. And the whole ridiculousness of it: how can you find it anywhere else if it is within you. There is no way to find it anywhere else.

So first there is a shock, one is stunned, one misses a few heartbeats, then one sees the ridiculousness of one's life, effort, investment and then laughter arises; one laughs at oneself. That is the beginning of Buddhahood, when one starts laughing at oneself.

It is easy to laugh at others, the ego enjoys it, but laughing at oneself becomes the death of the ego.

It is said that after his enlightenment Bodhidharma laughed for seven days continuously; he could not even sleep. His disciples and friends would put him to bed and he would pop up again (laughter)... and start laughing. They said 'Have you gone mad or what is the matter with you?' And he said 'For the first time I have gone sane -- up to now I have been mad -- that's why I am laughing. I cannot believe how it was possible to miss for so long something that was so close by!'

Just a little understanding -- it is not a question of much effort but only of a little understanding, a little alertness, watchfulness, turning in and seeing -- and a totally new dimension opens its doors.

Videhanand means the experience that you are not the body, is the experience of bliss. The identity with the body, that 'I am the body' is the root cause of our misery. So it is very simple arithmetic: if one thinks oneself the body one will live in hell; if one becomes aware of the fact that 'How can I be the body? -- I can watch my body, I can watch my mind. Certainly I am separate from that which I can watch....'

The observer is certainly different from the observed. The body is there, the mind is there and you can see both, their functionings, their activities. The body is ill but you are not ill. You can see that the body is ill -- there is a headache -- you can watch it, you can see it is there, and when it goes away you know it has gone; you are not it. You are separate from all that happens in the body and the mind.

This is the beginning of bliss. The moment you are totally aware of your separation from the body-mind complex your life is rooted in deep bliss. It becomes so blissful, every moment is so infinitely sweet, fragrant, that one cannot resist the idea of prayer; one has to thank existence. It is impossible not to thank it, one has to feel gratitude, because we have not earned it -- it is a gift. We don't deserve it; it has simply been given to us for no reason at all. As far as we are concerned we are not even worthy of it; hence the gratitude, hence the prayer.

There is no god as a person to listen to your prayers. Prayers do not say anything about the existence of god; prayers only say something about the gratitude of the man who has come to know bliss. It has some reference to you and to your experience but it has no reference to god at all; god does not come into it.

This is a simple process of non-identification. So from this moment watch: 'I am not the body; I am not 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

the mind; I am just the awareness, the pure mirror, that reflects all. And slowly slowly it becomes so deep --

rooted that it remains with you twenty-four hours a day. Even in deep sleep a certain awareness remains like a flame burning in you, fully alert, that the body is asleep, you are just the watcher.

Is the Grass Really Greener...?

Chapter #15

Chapter title: None

15 December 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8012145

ShortTitle: GREENR15

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Dhyan Joy. Dhyan means meditation.

Meditation is a way of silencing your being. Ordinarily it is in a turmoil, but it has the capacity to become silent. In fact unless there is a capacity to be silent there cannot be turmoil. The opposites always go together. If there is one polarity one can assume without any doubt that the opposite polarity must be in existence, we have only to discover it. Just as electricity cannot exist without the negative and the positive, everything in life is balanced by its opposite. But we can focus our mind on one pole and we can completely forget the other -- that's what the situation is ordinarily. And to live in turmoil is to live in misery. To move towards silence is to enter into the world of joy, bliss, ecstasy.

Meditation is the path from misery to ecstasy. Initiation into sannyas is really initiation into meditation.

The sannyasin's whole life work is to create as much silence as possible because when one is absolutely silent one comes into contact with god; not as a person, of course, but only as a presence, overflooding the whole existence.

Anand Arabella. Anand means bliss, Arabella means yielding to prayer.

It is one of the strange phenomenon that miserable people pray -- and it is impossible for the miserable person to pray; out of misery prayer cannot arise.

Misery is like a desert, nothing grows in it; certainly prayer is impossible. Prayer is the most beautiful flowering in existence, there is nothing comparable to it. It can happen only when one is blissful; bliss becomes the foundation. When one is blissful prayer is natural: one has to thank existence. The miserable person has nothing to be thankful for; he has a thousand and one things to complain about, but he has nothing to be thankful for.

One of the characters in Dostoevsky's greatest novel BROTHERS KARAMAZOV says 'If I meet god the only thing that I want to ask is "Why did you create me? -- and without my permission. This is unjust, unfair; at least you could have asked me!" And the next thing,' he says 'I will do, I will give him back the ticket and tell him that I don't want to exist any more.'

The existentialist philosopher, Marcel, says the only real philosophical problem is whether to commit suicide or not -- and he is right in a sense. If you have not tasted bliss then of course there is only one question which is bound to assert itself again and again: why go on living, for what? Then the whole of life becomes just a waiting for God, who never comes, nothing ever happens. It seems such a futile exercise, so 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

much ado about nothing -- how can one yield to prayer? There is no point. And if one does pray then that prayer will be pseudo, phony, false.

The temples, the mosques, the synagogues, the churches, the gurudwaras, are all full of pseudo and phony people, for the simple reason that they have gone there to complain, not to pray; they have gone there to ask for something not to thank. And prayer essentially is not a desire, you cannot ask for anything, but that's what it has become. To pray means to pray for something. It has become synonymous with desiring while it is exactly the opposite of desiring; it is gratitude. One feels tremendously overwhelmed by what existence has done. One also feels one's unworthiness and yet existence goes on showering a thousand and one blessings.

Feeling that, one bows down, not to a particular god -- Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan -- but to the whole: to the stars, to the sky, to the mountains, to the oceans, to the trees, to all that is. One simply bows down, feeling immensely grateful. That is yielding to prayer.

So I don't teach prayer, I teach bliss, because prayer is a natural consequence of blissfulness. I say to my sannyasins be blissful and prayer will come of its own accord. And when it comes of its own accord, it is neither Christian nor Hindu nor Mohammedan; it is simply prayer. Then it does not divide you, then it unites you, not only with humanity but with animals, with trees, with rocks. It simply unites you with existence, it becomes a bridge.

Ordinarily we are living surrounded by walls, All those walls disappear and suddenly the same bricks that were creating those walls start making a new form, a new gestalt, a bridge, which spreads from your heart to the heartbeat of the universe. Then the whole of life becomes prayer, then to breathe is prayer, then to be is prayer. And only when everything is prayer has one come to know the mystery which is there at the very centre of prayer.

Prayer is a lotus that opens only when the sun of bliss is shining.

Vinamro Maximilian, Vinamro means egoless. Maximilian means the greatest (laughter).

Jesus says blessed are the meek, blessed are the humble, the egoless, for theirs is the kingdom of god.

Religion is a paradox: you have to become nothing to become all, you have to become nobody to become a god, you have to prepare for nothingness and then the wholeness descends in you. They are two sides of the same phenomenon.

So the person who is not, is the greatest; the person who thinks he is the greatest, he is just an idiot and a very ordinary idiot at that -- not even an extraordinary idiot! For example, Mohammed Ali, the Greatest Alexander the Great -- these people are basically stupid. Their whole desire is a kind of megalomania. And of course they suffer much. They themselves are responsible for their suffering: they go on puffing up the balloon of their ego, then one day it bursts.

It need not be burst by somebody else. Although just a pinprick will do, even that is not needed. If you go on making the balloon bigger and bigger a point comes when it bursts automatically. It becomes so thin and the pressure of the air inside is so much that it bursts of its own accord. Every ego goes on becoming bigger and bigger and bigger and a moment comes when the puncture happens, when everything goes flat (laughter)... just like a flat tire and a flat tire on an Indian road! That's what they call hell! (laughter) Ego is the root cause of it, it is bound to create hell.

Egolessness is paradise, that's why Jesus' statement is significant. He has many beatitudes like this but this one has one special quality about it: in other beatitudes he says... For example, those who are last shall be the first in the kingdom of god -- note the difference: he is using the future tense, 'They shall be the first', but when he says blessed are the meek for theirs is the kingdom of god, he is not using the future tense, he is using the present tense.

The moment you are meek, humble, egoless, then it is not a question of waiting for some future, that one day you will enter into the kingdom of god; it is already the kingdom of god, to be egoless is to be in the kingdom of god. They are synonymous so there is no gap, no time gap between the two.

So become more and more Vinamro and less and less Maximilian. The day Maximilian disappears completely and only Vinamro remains you have arrived!

These two words will be very decisive now. Pull your energy out from Maximilian, go on withdrawing from the idea of the greatest. Everybody has it -- it is just that you are honest, your parents were honest, they gave you the name. But everybody has the idea, everybody is basically trying to be the greatest. And the whole project is doomed, it cannot succeed; it has never succeeded. It is against existence.

Ego means you are trying to win against the whole. That's not possible. No-ego means you dissolve with 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

the whole, you are in a state of let-go. You say 'Thy kingdom come, thy will be done' -- and suddenly life is a totally new phenomenon, it has tremendous beauty, bliss, benediction.

Sahajanando means spontaneous bliss.

That is one of the most significant things to understand about bliss: it is spontaneous, you cannot cultivate it, you cannot practise it. A practised blissfulness is bound to be phony. You will be smiling but that smile will be a Jimmy Carter smile. You may show all your teeth but it will be just an exercise of the lips -- maybe good for the lips and for the teeth, a little bit of open air and (laughter) not joy, it is not heartfelt, it is not coming from your being. It is just painted, it is a mask, not a reality, Bliss, to be true, has to be spontaneous. Then the problem arises, what does one have to do for it? If it cannot be cultivated, cannot be practised, and it is not there, then what is one supposed to do about it? One can only remove the barriers. There are barriers. For example, the light is there but you are sitting with closed eyes: just open your eyes. You are not to create the light, it is already there, but if you keep your eyes closed you remain unavailable. Open your eyes, remove the barrier and suddenly it is light.

If you are sitting in the room with closed doors and you are feeling the stuffy atmosphere, only you are responsible. Open the doors and the windows and the wind is ready to come in and the sun is ready to come in and the fragrance of the flowers is ready to flow in.

We only have to remove barriers. Once the barriers are removed bliss starts flowing naturally, spontaneously. It is like removing rocks and then the spring starts flowing. And the rocks are very subtle so we don't think of them as rocks. Thoughts, desires, memories, dreams, expectations -- these are the rocks and they are hindering your self-nature in asserting itself. Remove them.

Removing them is the whole art of sannyas. And they can be easily removed; once you know these are the causes of your misery, they can be removed. In fact just to understand that they are the causes of your misery is enough; one need not even remove them, they simply disappear. You were supporting them up to now thinking they were very essential for your joy, for your life, for your success, this and that. You were supporting them, you were clinging to them; once you open your hands they start disappearing on their own.

They are not clinging to you.

But bliss is spontaneous. That's the beauty of it: it is a natural fragrance of our being. So we have not to find it somewhere else, we are not to go anywhere else to find it, we are not supposed to do anything positively; only a few negative things have to be dono: opening the doors, and the windows and the eyes, removing a few thoughts, desires, creating a few gaps so that in those gaps you become connected with existence. And that connection immediately starts a dance in you.

When the trees dance something dances in you -- if you are connected; when the flowers open something opens in you -- if you are connected; when the sun rises something rises in you -- if you are connected. And the whole existence is a celebration. When you are connected with existence each moment a new experience, a new ecstasy, is waiting for you, is ready to welcome you.

Veet Nito. Veet means going beyond. Nito means morality.

There is a morality which is beyond all moralities, there is a religion which is beyond all religions -- and that is the true morality and the true religion.

Our so-called moralities are just utilitarian. For thousands of years we have been programmed for them, so we go on following them, but we don't have any clear-cut perception of our own whether what we are doing is right or wrong.

Moses has said that something is right and something else is wrong and so has Manu and so has Mohammed, but it is not your heart. And the ultimate decision has to be yours. How can Manu, Moses or Mohammed decide for you? -- everything has changed. So much water has gone down the Ganges since Manu. Manu existed five thousand years ago and Hindus are still following his dictates; he has decided what is moral and what is immoral. No, this is sheer nonsense.

Life has completely changed. If Manu comes back he will not be able to recognise anything he will be simply bewildered. He will only be able to understand his own book, MANUSMRATI, the book that he wrote five thousand years ago; everything else has changed. But he will certainly laugh at the foolishness of the Hindus -- that they are still following him.

In a totally different world, in a totally different situation, a different response is needed.

So I don't give any morality to you, I don't give any discipline to you. That has been done again and again and it has always failed, it has not helped humanity. I believe in the individual and my effort is 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

basically different from all the efforts that have preceded me. They all depended upon giving you certain instructions, detailed instructions.

In Buddhist scriptures there are thirty-three thousand rules of morality. Now even to remember them is impossible -- thirty-three thousand moral rules, such a detailed description on how to sit, how to walk, how far to look ahead when you are walking -- only four feet ahead, not even four feet, six inches. You are not supposed to look sideways because some women may be passing. Just four feet, that is the minimum that one needs for walking, otherwise one will stumble into a woman and everything will be lost! (laughter) Just four feet so one can see the feet, nothing else: if a woman is coming, only her feet. And you can escape immediately; seeing by her feet that a woman is coming, the monk escapes.

Such a fear, such a fear-oriented morality...

Don't talk to a woman because they are very seductive; don't touch a woman. Even this is a rule for the Buddhist monks, that if a woman has been sitting... for example, that place that you have been sitting in (Osho nods towards her former place in the line of waiting would-be sannyasins ) for nine minutes no monk should sit there -- this is just absurd -- because it is vibrating with feminine energy! You may destroy the monk's life.

Now Vishwasa is just sitting behind you -- he may already be in hell! (Vishwasa, the resident artist, looks up from his drawing to laugh.) But he is not looking anywhere, he is just doing his painting. Afraid --

so many women...

(Osho's words are lost in laughter; Vishwasa has retreated into his work.)

... not even four feet, just down on his page! This is how a Buddhist should behave! (much laughter) This type of nonsense has been thought of as a moral discipline.

I teach you consciousness, not conscience: just be alert, watchful, aware, and let your acts come out of your watchfulness, your awareness. So whatsoever comes out of awareness is moral -- that is my only definition -- and whatsoever comes out of unawareness is immoral. So no need for thirty-three thousand rules, only two rules, only two commandments, not even ten commandments; and in fact not two, it is really one commandment. The other is just its negative part. Act in awareness, that's all, and whatsoever you do is good because out of awareness nothing wrong can ever happen. And it's other side is: out of unconsciousness nothing right can ever happen.

So go beyond the so-called taught moralities of all the religions and puritans and the so-called great thinkers. Get rid of them. Live your life as authentically and fully, with as much awareness, as possible.

A life lived totally in awareness is a divine life.

Veet Parigraha. Veet means going beyond. Parigraha means possessiveness.

The old religions have taught people to go beyond possessions; I teach you to go beyond possessiveness

-- and there is a vast difference between the two.

Going beyond possessions is a masochistic thing. Then you are unnecessarily torturing yourself.

Mahavira lived naked, he carried the idea of non-possessions to the ultimate extreme, so he did not even have clothes. He had to live naked -- that is the logical consequence of the idea of not possessing anything, not even the begging bowl which was allowed in India for the monks, for all kinds of mystics. But Mahavira would not have anything to do even with a begging bowl. He would eat with his hands, he would beg with his hands.

But this is in a way masochistic. When it was cold he must have been shivering and when it was hot and when it was raining.... Seasons change and this is going to be unnecessarily hard on your body, which is a gift from god. You need not torture it. This is committing a slow suicide.

Buddha does not go to that extreme. That's why the followers of Mahavira are angry at him, they don't accept him as the ultimate embodiment of enlightenment. He is thought a little lower than Mahavira, because he allowed three changes of clothes and a begging bowl for his monks and for himself. Three changes of clothes -- two to wear and one could be washed -- and a begging bowl so you could carry your food. It is not much, but according to Mahavira's concept it is too much! It is luxury! And of course, if you saw Mahavira shivering in winter and Buddha sitting under a tree, wearing two garments and having a third spare one, it was luxury! And when you saw Mahavira taking his food in his hands and Buddha having a beautiful begging bowl, on which some disciple had carried drawings, then of course it looked luxurious.

Luxury always means comparison.

I don't teach against possessions, because I am not against the body or against comforts or against luxury, but I teach non-possessiveness. That is a totally different phenomenon, possessing and yet not 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

possessing, having and yet not having.

Use everything that is available. If a palace is available why live in a hut? -- live in the palace. If a hut is available why live under a tree? -- live in the hut. If the tree is available why live under the sky? -- live under the tree. Whatsoever is available make the best out of it, but don't be possessive, don't claim that it is yours. That idea has to be dropped. We come empty-handed into the world and we go empty-handed from the world, so there is no need to be possessive.

My feeling is that the people who taught against having possessions were afraid of being possessive. If you are afraid of even having a begging bowl, that simply means if the begging bowl is there then you will become possessive -- that fear is there, so better not to have the bowl. You have destroyed the thing and you can live with the idea that you have destroyed your possessiveness. That is not necessarily true.

You may live in a hut and you may desire a palace. You may have renounced the palace, you may have escaped from the palace, but the very escape shows your fear. And a man full of fear cannot be full of joy.

You cannot afford both together.

So I am bringing a totally new concept of sannyas. Sannyas means non-possessiveness. There is no need to leave your wife, your children, your parents; there is no need to leave anybody. Be in the world but remember that nothing belongs to you, that sooner or later you will have to go, so don't cling. Non-clinging is what I teach. Use everything possible, but don't cling. In short, be in the world but don't let the world be in you.

Veet Samayo. Veet means go beyond. Samayo means time.

Meditation is going beyond time. Time is mind. Mind consists of past and future; mind has no experience of the present. It is thought that time has three tenses: past, present and future. I don't agree, my own experience is totally different; time consists only of two tenses, past and future. The present is not part of time, the present is part of eternity. It is a totally different thing. Past and future are horizontal and present is vertical.

Mind lives horizontally, meditation is a vertical phenomenon. When you drop out of the past and the future, suddenly you enter into the present, and that is beyond time. And that is the beginning of god, of truth, the beginning of that which is.

The whole science of meditation is to help you to get rid of past and future; and in fact it is not much of a work, because the past is no more and the future is not yet, so you are simply getting rid of something which is not yet, it is not much of a work. And you are getting rid of something which is no more -- that too is not much of a work. You are entering into which is and which always is. Hence meditation is simple, just a right understanding is needed.

But in the name of meditation so many stupidities go on in the world that people have become very much confused; what is meditation? People are changing mantras, doing certain rituals, worshipping, bowing down to statues. All kinds of things are being done. The Tibetan Buddhists go on doing things the whole day: lying down on the ground and touching the ground with their head. And the more you do, the more meditative you become. There are people who do it one thousand times a day, two thousand times a day, three thousand times a day -- the bigger the number, the greater you are. And just think, a person doing this nonsense of lying down on the earth and touching the earth with his head for the whole day -- of course he will become mindless... but that is not meditation. That is falling below mind, not going above mind. He will become idiotic but he will not become a buddha. He may become very robust because this is a good exercise, continuously doing it for the whole day. He may enjoy good health but he will be utterly in an illusion if he thinks, that he knows what meditation is.

Then people are chanting mantras continuously -- they become mechanical, they go on chanting and they go on thinking also. Mind is capable of doing many things, you just have to learn the trick. You can try it -- you can chant "Rama, Rama, Rama, Rama..." and after a few days you start counting, "One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, Rama, Rama, one, two, three, four, Rama...", and both will start happening together. You will have both together. "Rama, Rama and one, two, three, four," then a woman passes by and you look and you miss and that too enters in the head and you start fighting, feeling this is not good.

The mind is capable of many processes together, so just by chanting a mantra you cannot get rid of it.

All that is needed is a great understanding, awareness, alertness, not to get into past memories and not to get into trips about the future.

Slowly slowly one settles in the present.

The moment you are here-now you have found it.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

Is the Grass Really Greener...?

Chapter #16

Chapter title: None

16 December 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8012155

ShortTitle: GREENR16

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Deva Heribert. Deva means divine. Heribert means glorious.

Man is unaware of his glory, of his splendor. He lives in absolute ignorance of himself; that's why there is so much misery, anxiety, anguish. Not knowing oneself means whatsoever you do will be amiss. You may be doing something good, at least your intention may be good, but the result will not be good. Out of an unconscious being, there is no possibility of any good arising, no virtue is possible, no flowering is possible.

The first and the most important thing in life is to become aware of one's being. The moment you turn in you become aware -- it is a simple as that. We are focussed on the outside; we have to relax our focussing on the outside, we have to make our muscles a little flexible so we can look in. That's what sannyas is all about: a turning in.

And once you have seen your own inner world you have seen all that is worth seeing, the most glorious, splendrous phenomenon. And after that whatsoever you do is right. Each act becomes virtuous and each act has a beauty, sensitivity, grace. Then life is a dance, a celebration.

Anand Edgar. Anand means bliss. Edgar means rich.

A man can possess the whole world and yet can remain poor, a beggar. And vice versa is also trues a man may not possess anything and yet be immensely rich. Richness has something to do with inner exploration; it is not an achievement in the outside world. It is neither money nor power nor prestige nor respectability; it is bliss, and bliss rises out of your own being. There is no other way to find it, no other place to find it.

One has to learn to dive within one's own depths. It is there where the source of bliss is and all that is needed is a courageous heart -- that is the other meaning of Edgar, a courageous heart.

The mind is a coward because it is always calculating, The mind is always thinking in terms of getting more, risking less, of putting in less and taking out more. It is always bargaining, it is businesslike. The heart is a gambler -- and the inner world opens only to the gamblers.

One has to be courageous enough to risk all for it. If you cannot risk, you cannot take the jump into the unknown, you will remain tethered to the known, you will go on clinging to the known. Although you know it is misery and nothing else, at least there is one consolation, that you are familiar with it.

Courage means dropping the familiar, if it is giving your misery, for the unknown. Of course you cannot decide what is going to happen through the unknown; that's the risk. You may fall into greater misery or you may achieve to bliss -- it is unpredictable, that's why I say it is only for the gambler.

Sannyas is a gamble, meditation is a gamble; religion is nothing but gambling. And all the religions are 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

against gambling for the simple reason that religion itself is the ultimate gamble. Don't waste your gambling energy anywhere else -- that's why they are against it, so that you can gather your courage into one pool.

And you will need it for the jump is big It is not only a jump with a calculated step; you are jumping into an abyss. But those who have jumped have always found bliss, without any exception.

That's the purpose of the master: to encourage you, to seduce you into the unknown. The master is a salesman for the unknown.

So get ready for the jump.

Sannyas is only a gesture from your side that you are willing -- and if you are willing, I am willing too!

Dhyan Michael. Dhyan means meditation. Michael means godly.

The only thing that can become a proof for god is meditation. No other argument can help, no other proof is possible.

Philosophers have been giving many proofs, but all those proofs are just stupid. If you look a little bit deeply into them you will find that their basic assumption is ungrounded. They themselves need proof, they are not self-evident. For example, the greatest proof that the philosophers have been giving all over the world is that everything needs a creator and if this immense universe exists then it must have a creator. It looks logical but only on the surface; just scratch the surface and a new problem will arises who created the creator?

If everything needs a creator then according to the same law the creator will have to be created by somebody. And the argument seems stupid, idiotic, because if this god needs another god, then this other god will need still another god; and you will fall into an infinite regress. Ultimately you will come to a point where you will have to say that this is not created by anybody. But then the whole argument is lost. That was the very first assumption, that everything needs a creator.

There is no self-evident proof for god, not through logic -- but yes there is a way to experience. It is not intellectual, it is existential. Meditation is an existential way to experience god and all that is godly. And meditation is a simple process of becoming silent, utterly silent. When the mind has lost all its nonsense and noise, when the mind traffic is nil, when the mind has stopped completely, has come to a standstill, suddenly in that silence you experience a presence that has always been there within and without, but of which you were not aware because the mind was too noisy; it was impossible to hear the still, small voice.

And once you have heard it your life is transformed. Then for the first time you know the taste of religion.

And the taste of religion is the taste of neither Christianity nor Hinduism nor of Judaism nor of Mohammedanism; the taste of religion is simply the taste of religiousness. It has nothing to do with all those cults and sects and dogmas and churches, synagogues, temples, mosques -- it has nothing to do with these.

This is sheer politics played in the name of religion.

When you have experienced just a dewdrop of true religiousness through silence, you don't belong to any religion, although for the first time you are religious.

I teach a religionless religiousness -- and that is the need of today and of all the tomorrows that are going to follow. The old kind of religion is outdated; its time is finished, in fact it has been living a posthumous kind of existence for centuries. It is dead already, we are only carrying a corpse and it is stinking.

Meditation is the only way to experience god, to experience religion. You cannot get it from the Bible, from the Gita, from the Koran, from the Talmud -- no words, no scriptures can give it to you. Only silence is able to receive god, is able to become pregnant with god. And that is the greatest ecstasy in life -- to be pregnant with god, to carry god in your very belly, in your very heartbeat, in your breathing, to feel him everywhere, in everybody!

Dhyan Ferdinand. Dhyan means meditation. Ferdinand means adventure.

There are adventures and adventures but no adventure can be compared with the adventure of meditation. It is the ultimate adventure, because you are not going to Everest or to the moon or to Mars, you are going to your innermost bring.

It is easy to go to Everest; it is not very difficult to go to the moon now -- soon man will be able to reach other stars. The most arduous journey is to reach your own centre, for the simple reason that you have to go through a great transformation before you can reach the centre. Going to the moon you don't need any transformation, you remain the same person. The people who went to the moon remained the same people, no transformation. Yes, they collected a few stones and rocks and came back. They were just the same, no 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

change happened in them. It cannot happen that way. It was a technical phenomenon, something on the outside. But going in is a non-technical phenomenon. No scientific device can help you. You have to learn a new style of life.

Mind knows how to think; you will have to know how not to think. Mind knows how to go on creating, manufacturing more and more noise, words upon words, theories, philosophies, ideologies -- it is very skilful in that. It is a factory which goes on creating abstractions. You will have to learn how to stop this constant flow of words, thoughts, concepts, dreams, desires. Mind knows how to be ambitious; you will have to learn how not to be ambitious. Mind is always on some ego trip; you will have to learn how not to be on an ego trip.

This is a great transformation. So much is involved in it that you will be born anew, you will have a new life if you go through all this transformation; that's the ultimate adventure. Getting out of the mind is the only challenge worth accepting. Getting beyond mind is the most arduous but the most beautiful journey too, because it is through this journey that you come back home.

Every other journey takes you away from yourself, farther and farther away, this is the only journey that brings you home. And what we are really searching for is the home, the source -- because the source is also the goal and it is only in finding the home that one can relax and be at ease and enjoy and dance and sing and create.

Your name also means journey, venture, adventurous life. It is a beautiful name -- it exactly defines meditation.

Saroja means a lotus flower.

The lotus does two things: one, it arises out of mud, and two, it floats on the water but remains untouched by the water. And both these things are very significant for a sannyasin.

Unless we know our consciousness we are nothing but mud. That is the meaning of the word 'adam'; adam means mud, earth -- because the first man was made by god, just as a potter makes a pot, out of mud.

Unless we know our consciousness we are just mud. Once you know your consciousness the mud is transformed into a lotus, a miracle happens. One could never have thought that this dirty mud would create such a beautiful flower. The lotus is the king of all the flowers, incomparable, unique. And the second thing is that it remains in the water but is untouched by it.

That's the quality of a sannyasin, first he has to go beyond the body of mud and become a lotus of consciousness; second he has to live in the world but be untouched by it. He is not to escape from the world.

I am against the escapist attitude, I am all for the world -- it is a beautiful world. And the people who have been teaching to escape are cowards. They have destroyed much, they have destroyed the whole possibility of humanity turning religious, because they created this idea that unless you go into the mountains, into the desert and you escape from all responsibilities -- your wife, your husband, your children -- you cannot be religious. So people thought, 'This is not for us, at least not now. Right now we have to be in the world and we have to be worldly. God willing, some day, in this life or in some other life, we will also have the possibility of becoming a sannyasin, of going to the desert or to the mountains or moving into a monastery, turning our backs towards the world...' It is because of this ideology of escapist that millions of people have been prevented from being religious.

I am giving sannyas a totally new meaning, the real meaning that it should have. There is no need to go anywhere. Live here and now, live wherever you are, but live silently, peacefully, centred, grounded, alert, aware. Live like a lotus flower and your life will have all the blessings possible and all the benedictions possible.

Sucheta means awareness, alertness, watchfulness.

People live robot-like, they live mechanically. They live like sleepwalkers, somnambulists; they are not aware of what they are doing, what they are saying, what they are being. A sannyasin has to learn the art of awareness -- that is the most precious treasure, the treasure of all treasures.

So three dimensions of awareness have to be learned. First: watch your bodily activities. In walking, be alert about your walking. In talking, be alert about your talking. In listening, be alert about your listening.

Bring your awareness again and again to your bodily acts, whatsoever you are doing -- cleaning the floor or cooking the food or taking a shower. Just watch, as if you are separate; in fact you are separate. In the beginning it is 'as if', soon you will realize it is not 'as if' -- it is the truth: you can watch, you can watch as if you are watching somebody else.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

Once this watchfulness has settled, then enter into the second dimension: watch your thoughts -- this dimension is more subtle -- your desires, your dreams, and you will be able too because you are separate.

The dreams are just passing in front of you the way you watch pictures moving on the TV screen. Mind is just a TV screen, and a very crazy TV screen at that.

Many channels are working simultaneously -- many stories going simultaneously in all directions. To watch it is the second step. As you become skilful in watching it then try the third dimension, the most subtle: watch your emotions, your moods. That is the subtlest.

First is the body, second the mind, third is the heart -- and when you have become aware of all these three the fourth -- turiya, the fourth -- happens of its own accord. Suddenly, one day, you become aware of awareness itself. And that is the moment when one experiences truth, bliss, peace, god, nirvana -- these are all names for the same experience.

Sangit means music.

Man can live either in mathematics or in music. Mathematics is mind, music is being. Your being is nothing but a tremendous harmony. It is a multi-dimensional harmony: it is harmonious within itself, it is harmonious with the universe; and the universe means many dimensions. It is harmonious with the sun, with the moon, with the stars, with the trees, with the wind, with the rain -- with all that is. There is a bridge of rhythm, but we are too hung up in the head, in the world of mathematics. We are continuously calculating, counting, trying to possess more and more.

The mind is never satisfied, it goes on asking for more; and it always remains empty. Whatsoever you give to it simply disappears and is again there asking for more. It is a beggar. It makes a beggar of you because in keeping company with a beggar you become a beggar.

The moment you start moving from mathematics to music, from prose to poetry, from mind to being, you start becoming an emperor. Without any empire you start becoming an emperor, because the richness of the inner harmony is such, the light of the inner being is such, the beauty, the sweetness... it is nectar. That's what alchemists have been searching and searching for, for centuries.

They were not really searching for what it says they were in the books. That was a facade, a trick, because Christianity was so repressive that it did not allow anybody to function outside the church. The church tried to monopolise everything, no individual search was allowed. And in fact a search can only be individual, it cannot be organised. An organised religion is no more religion, it becomes politics. And it is not strange that the pope became both the religious head and the temporal head. Still... of course, his empire is not very big -- just a small place, the Vatican, only a few square miles -- but he is also a political head.

The empire has shrunken very much but still, it is just the tail-end. The elephant is gone but the Polack pope is hanging onto the tail. Only the tail is left, there is nothing much of the elephant anywhere; but still he is a temporal head, he is the head of the state, the state of the Vatican, and he is the head of the church.

Christianity tried to monopolise everything so deeply that the individual seekers had to hide and work in such a way that nobody came to know what they were doing, so they created this facade of alchemy. It was just a strategy to hide behind. It was just for the masses, to show them that they were doing something with chemicals, that they were trying to transform baser metals into gold. But behind this whole trick they were really searching for the innermost harmony, for the soul. That's what they used to call gold.

The ordinary man is a baser metal, when he becomes a Buddha or a Jesus or a Moses or a Mohammed, then he becomes gold. These were just symbols, code words. But this is the real search, the search for the inner nectar, because once you have drunk out of it you become an immortal. Then there is no death; the body dies but not you. And then there is no birth, because once you have known your timelessness, your eternity, you have learned the lesson. There is no need to come back to the school of life again. Then you disappear into the universal bliss.

That's what god is all about: the universal bliss, the universal harmony, the celestial music.

(The last for sannyas is Feroze, a Pakistani, to whom Osho gives the name Anand Bodhisattva.) Anand means bliss. Bodhisattva means a Buddha in the seed.

Everybody is a Buddha in the seed. The only difference between the Buddha and the one who is not a Buddha is that of manifestation.

Ordinary human beings are just closed flowers, buds or seeds. They have the potential, the same potential, but they have not tried to make it actual. Once it is actualised your life is bliss. If it is not actualized you are a prison. A seed means thousands of flowers are imprisoned. They want to get out of it, 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

they want to sway in the wind, they want to release their fragrance, they want to whisper with the clouds, they want to have a communion with the stars and the sun -- and they are imprisoned in the seed. Hence a seed means misery.

When the seed becomes a tree there is joy and when the tree comes to flowering and fulfilment the tree becomes a Buddha -- that is the meaning of the Buddha. Buddha is not the name of any person; it is a state.

Mohammed is a Buddha and Jesus is a Buddha and Jalaluddin is a Buddha, and Krishna is a Buddha.

Anybody who has realised his potential, one who has manifested his total being, whose lotus has opened up, is a Buddha. And the difference between us and the Buddhas is not of any quality; essentially we are the same, it is just that we Are asleep. But the person who is asleep can be awakened; in fact only the person who can be awakened can be asleep. They are two poles of the same phenomenon.

So one should rejoice that one has the potential to become the ultimate peak of consciousness, of bliss and of truth -- and then one should start working for it. And the work consists of a simple process of meditation, of becoming silent, of resting in one's own being, of withdrawing from unnecessary turmoil, of dropping out of all that is non-essential.

If one can discriminate between the non-essential and the essential, then it is not very far away that the lotus, the one-thousand petalled lotus, will open up.

-- How long will you be here?

-- I will be here for about a week.

-- Good. Much has to be done there in your country -- continue.

-- Yes. There are very few people there. (Presumably Bodhisattva is referring to sannyasins.)

-- But still nothing to be worried about. Just a few seeds and the whole country can become a garden. Just go on working. Good!

Is the Grass Really Greener...?

Chapter #17

Chapter title: None

17 December 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8012165

ShortTitle: GREENR17

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Anando Joachim. Anando means rejoice. Joachim means appointed by god.

Man is not an accident. But that's what science still believes, that man is an accident. According to science everything is accidental; the world itself has no meaning, it has no inner unity, it is not an organic whole. It is just a chaos, and in the chaos things are happening but they are accidental, not intentional. That's the basic difference between the religious attitude and the scientific. Religion says the world is a cosmos, not a chaos, and whatsoever is happening is not accidental but intentional, that there is a purpose behind it, that there is an undercurrent of meaning holding everything together and that man is the most significant phenomenon.

Hence to say that man is accidental is to destroy all his joy. One cannot feel joyous if one is a mere accident. One will start feeling empty, rejected, not wanted, not needed. That's what is happening all around 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

the world because of science: the modern man is feeling very miserable, sad, meaningless, and then once life starts losing meaning, sooner or later suicide remains the only way to get out of it.

Man is coming, individually, socially, universally, closer and closer to suicide, Except through religion man cannot be saved. Man needs to feel meaningful; and it is not a question of inventing meaning, meaning is already there -- it has to be discovered. Once you discover some meaning in your life there is great rejoicing. You are needed by existence, you are not superfluous, you cannot be discarded like rubbish. You will be missed if you are not there, without you, something will be lacking.

That's the meaning of Joachim -- your being appointed by god means the universe intentionally wants you, the whole universe wants you. And it is not only the question of you; even a small blade of grass is as much needed as the greatest star. The very ordinary person is as much needed as any Albert Einstein. There is no hierarchy in existence. Existence is absolutely just, it treats everybody equally. Animals, birds, trees, planets, man -- all are joined together for a certain ultimate destiny.

The conscious search for that destiny is sannyas, the deliberate effort to discover the meaning of life is sannyas. Sannyas is the science of discovering meaning, significance.

Anand Bela. Anand means bliss. Bela means beautiful.

The only thing really beautiful is blissfulness. And the only thing ugly is sadness, misery. But because the majority of human beings live in misery, they worship misery. They are afraid of bliss, they are afraid of blissful people. They cannot believe that somebody is really blissful, hence they deny the Buddhas, the Christs. The whole effort of the mob psychology is to say that such persons have never existed and if they exist it is better, immediately, to destroy them, because they create a disturbance in their minds. The disturbance is, "If somebody is blissful that means that is my possibility too, and I am miserable, so I have to change myself, I have to go through a transformation, and that seems to be very arduous, an uphill task."

It is not coincidental that the awakened, the enlightened, the really beautiful people, have always been mistreated by the mob. For the simple reason that they have become accustomed to their misery, to their ugliness and they don't want to encounter any mirror, they don't want to see their own faces. Rather than seeing their faces and seeing the ugliness, they would rather like to destroy the mirror. They will say, "It is because of the mirror that we are looking ugly; the mirror is responsible. Destroy the mirror and we are perfectly okay as we have always been."

Beautiful people have existed very rarely. To be beautiful is risky, dangerous, but the risk has to be taken, otherwise one misses the whole of life. It is better to live for a single moment in total bliss than to live a long life of misery. It is better to live in bliss and be crucified than to live in misery, carrying your own cross for the whole of your life; then life is pointless.

My sannyasins have to accept the challenge, they have to learn how to be blissful. That's my only work here, to help you to be blissful, to be beautiful, to attain to an inner harmony and grace; then whatsoever the cost, one has to pay it.

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

I don't know.

Be here. You seem to belong here! Good.

Anand Hannes. Anand means bliss. Hannes means god's gracious gift.

Misery is man's invention, bliss is a gift from the beyond, so if one stops creating misery one becomes blissful: the gift is always there. But we go on ignoring it. We are too occupied in creating our misery.

Continuously, twenty-four hours a day, people are working hard, overtime, to create misery. They are doing great work. If you watch yourself you will understand what I mean (laughter). Nobody misses a single opportunity to be miserable And one cannot be both miserable and blissful together. If you are so full of misery and continuously creating it there is no space for bliss to enter you. It remains standing at the door.

Unless you empty yourself of all misery it cannot enter.

Meditation means emptying yourself of the misery that you have created in the past and not creating the same misery again.

Just today I was reading the definition of a bachelors A bachelor is a person who has not committed the same mistake even once! (laughter)

But if you cannot be a bachelor, at least don't get married again, don't commit it twice. And there are people who are committing the same mistake millions of times. If a man is alert he can see all around what people are doing and that will be enough... but that much understanding is rare. But one can learn at least 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

from one's own experience. Reconsider what you have done to yourself in the past and you will see you have been wounding yourself. And you don't allow your wounds to heal; you go on opening them again and again, you go on scratching them again and again. Then slowly slowly it becomes just a mechanical habit, then one goes around in a vicious circle from one misery to another, and one becomes of course, more and more skilful. Whatsoever you do remember, you will become efficient in it, you will become an expert. And I have come across so many experts in creating misery that I sometimes wonder what people are doing with their lives. With the same energy, with the same effort, with the same commitment, they would have achieved the greatest bliss possible.

And people are doing the work of creating misery so religiously, so devotedly, that if you want to stop them they won't listen to you.

To become a sannyasin means you have to stop your old patterns and you have to learn a new style of life. Start, even though you have to start from the very beginning; learn the ABC of cheerfulness, blissfulness and slowly slowly you will become an expert in that too.

And the whole expertise in bliss is simple; the expertise in misery is very complex, it needs many people, it needs many things. It needs money, power, prestige, family, wife, husband, children -- thousands of things. It needs politics and the church, and political ideology and what not. One has to arrange a whole junkyard around oneself, then finally one succeeds in being miserable.

Being blissful needs nothing. You have just to be spacious, empty, and bliss starts pouring... yes, dogs and cats! It is not just a shower, it really pours! (laughter) Deva Prita. Deva means divine. Prita means love.

Love is one of the most divine qualities. One can enter into God from many doors. Love is one of the doors and one of the most beautiful doors to enter into God because it is more aesthetic, more musical, more poetic.

Truth is also a door but it is dry, desertlike, logical. There are people who may like to enter from the desert route -- that is their choice -- but when one can go through the garden path, with birds singing and flowers and fragrances, why unnecessarily go through a desert? If one is a masochist, if one enjoys torturing oneself, then it is another matter. But rarely are there people who would like to torture themselves. Even if they continue torturing themselves because they have been taught to, deep down they don't want it.

Everybody would like to live a life in a beautiful way, in a sensitive way.

Love is the most beautiful path towards God, but one has to go on purifying it.

The ordinary love is too full of jealousy, possessiveness, anger, hatred, domination, ego -- these are all enemies of love, these are parasites. As these parasites are removed, love starts becoming purer, more alive, more intense, total.

First, love is a relationship, and then love is only a friendship. Then love is only a loving quality, and ultimately one becomes love itself. That is the meaning of your name: the ultimate love, the divine love.

Then one is simply love, not even loving.

When one's whole energy is transformed into love, then the lotus of one's consciousness opens up. That is the highest peak, and our hearts are longing for it. And it is possible to fulfill it, one just needs a little intelligence and watchfulness so that one can discriminate between what is love and what is not love., When you see what is not love -- and it is not difficult... Even the possessive person can see that possessiveness is not love, that jealousy is not love, that domination is not love. And when you see it, then don't just go on seeing it, do something, move towards the opposite pole.

If possessiveness is there then become non-possessive. If jealousy is there then become more and more non-jealous, allow space and freedom. If you see domination is there then drop the ego. The other has to be respected, the other has not to be reduced to a commodity. Nobody is a means for you, everybody is an end unto himself or herself.

This respect for the other is a basic requirement if one wants to move on the path which leads ultimately to God.

How long will you be here?

I don't know.

Be here forever! Good.

Sanjayo means the victorious.

There are two kinds of victories. One, which is a pseudo victory, a fool's paradise, is over others. It is 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

soon shattered. Death comes and shatters all your victories over others. Suddenly you are standing naked without anything and the realisation that you have wasted your life. But now it is too late: death does not wait, it does not give time, it does not give you a few more opportunities.

The other victory, the true victory, is victory over oneself, when you become conscious and start changing all that is unconscious in yourself, you have started fighting with your darkness. And one's darkness consists of ego, violence, anger, greed, lust -- all that is ugly and monstrous. All these monsters go on hiding in the darkness.

There is no need to fight with each monster separately because that would be a long, long process; one life would not be enough. That's why Hindus have to think of many lives, because if you have to fight with each monster separately then it would take thousands of lives to be finished with all.

There is no need to fight with each wrong separately. There is a simple process of increasing your consciousness, of making yourself more alert and more aware. As consciousness spreads and the unconscious starts dispersing, with the unconscious all the monsters disappear of their own accord. They cannot exist without darkness, they are inseparable from darkness. So there is no need to fight with anger and lust and greed separately. That is absolutely foolish. The whole effort should be focussed on awareness

-- that is the key.

A sannyasin has to become as much aware as possible, and the more aware you become, the more you are aware that there is still territory within you which is dark. But one day the point comes when there is nothing which is dark in you. That is the point when one is awakened, enlightened, when one becomes a Buddha. That is true victory.

Veet Puratan. Veet means surpassing, transcending. Puratan means the old.

The old is very heavy on us. It is a mountainous load that everybody is carrying and is being crushed under. It is impossible to move, the load is so much. Centuries and centuries have gone before you and it has all become accumulated and you are carrying that load. We have become beasts of burden. We are dying under the weight, but we cling to the weight, we think it is very precious. It is not precious at all. It is death, it is not life. One has to get rid of it.

And it is not that the load is clinging to you, it is you who is clinging to it. If the load were clinging to you then it would be impossible to get rid of it, but there is great hope because it is up to you to cling to it or not to cling to it.

One has to live each moment anew, fresh, young. One has to be so young each moment as if one is born again and again. In other words, one has to die each moment to all that is old and one has to be born again to the new, only then does one come to know what this existence is. Then it is tremendously ecstatic, it is just pure bliss and nothing else. But our eyes are so covered with the dust of the old, and we think that the old is gold. It is just rubbish, rotten! But thinking it is gold we go on carrying it.

Sannyas means a new life, so new that it is always a surprise, so new that you live in awe and wonder, so new that it is unpredictable. Then every small thing becomes so extraordinary, so exquisite, so beautiful, that it is unbelievable.

So just do one thing and do it in a single blows don't go on doing it chunk by chunk because it is a very big load; if you try to do it chunk by chunk your life will be wasted. Do it in a single blow and never look back and never repent for it, and never feel guilty about it.

The moment you are free of the old you will taste freedom for the first time -- and freedom is another name of god.

Satyo Pratita. Satyo means truth. Pratita means experiencing.

Truth can only be experienced, it cannot be expressed. One can know it, but one cannot say it. It is like a taste; you cannot communicate it to somebody who has not tasted it. And those who have tasted it need not be told about it; they know themselves. So all the theories about truth are false. They are about truth, that's why they are false. The word 'about' means around. About and about they go, around and around they go, but they never touch the center, they move on the circumference.

Philosophy is the circumference and religion is the center. The basic difference is that philosophy thinks, religion experiences.

Now, a blind man can become a philosopher about light. He can think much about light. He can go on making great systems of thought about light. He can imagine, and he has much more freedom to imagine than the person who has eyes, because the person who has eyes knows what light is; he cannot imagine 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

something contrary to reality. The blind man can imagine in every direction, in every possible way. He can be very imaginative and he can be very logical; he can make a systematic, logical philosophy about light out of his blindness, but it will be about light. And beware of the word 'about'. Unless somebody sees light, all that he is saying is nonsense.

The mystics have always said that philosophy is nonsense because it is thinking. It is like a thirsty man thinking about water. Even if he discovers the formula H2O it is not going to help him; he is thirsty, he needs water, not H2O. And we need truth, not theories about truth. We need experience, not Christianity, Hinduism, Mohammedanism -- these are all ideologies about truth. And experience only comes through meditation, there is no other way.

Mind gives you thinking, meditation gives you experiencing. So the shift has to happen from mind to no-mind. Meditation is a state of no-mind.

Veet Atita. Veet means transcending. Atita means the past.

Life is always now and here, and mind is never now and here -- it is always somewhere else, it is always then and there. It is either in the past or in the future; but the future is not different from the past, it is a projection of the past. In the past you have experienced many things -- good and bad, beautiful and ugly, pleasant and painful. Out of all that experience you project a future. It is chosen out of the past. It is a collage: all that is pleasant you have chosen and you have dropped all that is painful. All that was sad you have put aside and all that you think was nice you have chosen and projected, you have magnified. So future is not really separate from the past; it is a selected past but it is the past all the same.

Life is in the present and mind is in the past. Mind means the past, mind means the memory, the memory system. It is a computer: it collects all information, it goes on collecting all that is happening. It is good to use it for ordinary purposes: to remember a phone number, somebody's name, somebody's face. Of course one has to remember that this man is your boyfriend! If you transcend the past completely and you go back home and you ask your boyfriend, "Who are you and what are you doing here?" (much laughter) For ordinary purposes it is okay but for deeper purposes it is dangerous. It is good to remember the boyfriend but it is bad to remember what he has done in the past. That is psychological memory -- one has to forget all about it so that each day the boyfriend is new. People need new boyfriends because they cannot make the old one new. The old one goes on becoming older and older and older (laughter) and then so much dust is dumped on him. Then one gets completely lost -- where has the old boyfriend gone? It is just dust piled up! So one starts looking for somebody new.

If one can drop the past from the mind -- I mean the psychological past, not the factual past -- then each moment is new, then each experience is new because you are not interpreting it according to the past; you are simply seeing it as it is. And then life becomes really vast, infinite, and then it has all the splendor one can imagine and dream about. It is really far more beautiful than the sweetest dream, far more beautiful than the greatest poetry and far more penetrating than the highest music. But one has to learn one thing, very fundamental: to go on dropping the past.

Never project the future, because whatsoever you project about the future will give you misery. If it is fulfilled it will be nothing but a repetition of the past. And no repetition can ever be fulfilling; it is always boring, tiring. If it is not fulfilled then you will be disappointed; you had hoped so much. If you project the future, either way you are disappointed: if it is fulfilled you are miserable, if it is not fulfilled you are miserable. So the best way is not to project it. But if the past is carried along then you will be projecting it, you are bound to project it.

It is intrinsic in carrying the past to project the future. Dropping the past means you have destroyed the project itself, now nothing can be projected. The past becomes psychologically clean and the future remains open. In an open future whatsoever happens is blissful. One feels immensely blessed.

The only true way to live one's life is to live in the present. To be herenow is what I mean by sannyas.

(Osho pauses and grins before he asks:)

How long are you going to be here? (much laughter)

-A few more weeks.

That's not right! -- come back again. Good!

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

Is the Grass Really Greener...?

Chapter #18

Chapter title: None

18 December 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8012175

ShortTitle: GREENR18

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

(To a twelve-year-old Indian child:) Puneet is a beautiful name; it means pure, clean, clear, innocent.

That's how every child is born, but sooner or later the society disturbs all purity, all cleanliness, all innocence; it corrupts everybody.

The only significant thing is not to be corrupted, not to allow anybody to corrupt you. It is a difficult task, but not impossible. And if one is alert from the very beginning one can save oneself from all that is imposed by others.

One should be courageous enough to live as individually as possible. It is better to commit mistakes rather than follow. somebody and not commit mistakes, because one learns through mistakes; one never learns by imitating anybody.

Never be an imitator because imitators finally prove only to be carbon copies, and all carbon copies are dead and ugly. One has to be one's original self.

Becoming a sannyasi at this age is significant. If you can protect yourself, if you can remain a little alert, courageous, then nobody can disfigure your original face. And that's the whole meaning of sannyas. The individual is the most precious phenomenon, the individual cannot be sacrificed for the society, the individual is the goal, not the society.

Deva Josef. Deva means divine. Josef means increasing faithfulness.

There are very few things which can be called divine; trust is one of them. Love, bliss, awareness, freedom, trust -- only these few things can be called divine. And trust is certainly the most fundamental of all, because it is needed in love, it is needed in awareness, it is needed in freedom, it is needed in bliss It is an essential ingredient of all that is divine.

But one thing has to be remembered: faithfulness does not mean belief, it means trust -- and these are totally different things. What the dictionaries say is wrong. The existential experience is the only decisive factor. Belief is of the head, borrowed; faith is of the heart, your own.

Through belief one becomes a Christian, a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Jew; through faith one becomes simply religious. And to be religious is divine. To be Christian is worthless, to be Hindu is meaningless, to be Mohammed an is to degrade yourself, because all these are cults imposed by others on you. Maybe those others are your parents, your well-wishers -- that does not make any difference. Whenever you allow others to impose anything upon you they destroy you, even though their intentions are good. The results prove that even good intentions do not necessarily bring good results. And the ultimate criterion is the result, not the intention.

Faith is a totally different phenomenon. It is trust, trust in existence, not in god. Belief is in god -- then there are many gods, each religion has its own image. Trust is in existence because we are born out of existence, we are part of it. Every moment we are breathing it in and out. We are not separate even for a 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

single second. Trusting this universe out of which we have arisen and into which one day we will disappear again is really trusting yourself, because you are an intrinsic part of existence; existence is your innermost core, your very being. Trusting in existence is trusting in yourself. And the person who trusts in himself and in existence starts growing, but his growth is individual. It is not according to others, not according to their expectations. He may frustrate others, in fact it is almost inevitable that he will.

Gautam the Buddha frustrated the Hindus; he was born a Hindu but he rejected the imposed religion. He started growing individually, he became a dropout from the society.

Jesus was born a Jew but he started having his own lifestyle. That's what angered people, annoyed them: they were not only frustrated, they were annoyed. The individual always irritates the crowd. The mind of the crowd says 'How can you dare to be an individual when we are not? When we are all just behaving like sheep, how can you behave like a lion. And of course, they are the majority, they have great numbers with them -- the tradition, the state, the church -- they can destroy the individual. But it is better to die as an individual rather than to live as a non-entity, rather than to live as a cog in the wheel -- that is not to live at all.

So trust yourself, trust totally and risk everything for it. This is what I call sannyas. It is not trusting in god, in the Bible, in the Koran, in the Gita, it is trusting in your own existence. And out of that grows all that is beautiful and graceful. Life becomes fragrant, it becomes a constant revolution. One goos on moving from one peak to another, and there is no end to this growth -- it is infinite!

Prem Elisabeth. Prem means love. Elisabeth means consecrated to god, surrendered to god.

God is a code word. It does not mean anything because it is not an ordinary word, it is just a code word.

He should not write simply god, we should write g-o-d, then it will be right, because it consists of three symbols. It is an ancient symbol from the mystery schools.

There is a possibility that it came from a civilisation which has completely disappeared from the earth, the civilisation of Atlantis. The whole continent disappeared into the ocean; the Atlantic ocean is still hiding a whole continent within it It was one of the greatest catastrophes. Perhaps all the stories in all the religions about the great flood have something to do with that catastrophe that happened to Atlantis: the whole continent simply went into the sea.

But a few things were saved. They were kept in one of the greatest libraries of the world in Alexandria, but Mohammedans destroyed it. Calipha Omar, who burned the library went with a torch in one hand and the Koran in the other, and he said to the librarian 'I have two questions to ask to you. The first is: You have millions of books in this library, very ancient books -- do they contain only that which is contained in the Koran?'

And before the librarian could answer he himself said 'If they contain the same as the Koran then they are not needed. The second question: Do they contain something which is not contained in the Koran?'

Again he didn't wait for the answer but answered his question himself, saying 'If they contain something else than the Koran then they cannot be allowed to exist, because all that is true is in the Koran, neither less nor more -- Koran is all.'

And he put the torch to the library, he started the fire. The library was so big, it is said in the records that it took six months for the fire to destroy the whole library. That library contained many scriptures from Atlantis; a few pieces may have even been taken away while the library was being burned. 'God' seems to be one of the code words that has travelled from Atlantis to us.

G means that, o means which, d means is: -- that which is. That's the meaning of god. It does not mean an old man who created the world. Nobody ever created the world; the world has always been here. The universe is eternal, it is not a creation and god is not a creator. God simply means existence -- that which is

-- and to be surrendered to existence is the ultimate peak of love.

When the whole existence becomes your beloved -- the stars and the Milky Way and the sun and the moon and the clouds and the mountains, rivers, this whole, vast, multi-dimensional existence -- when you shower it with your love you start becoming bigger and bigger with it.

Remember, the secret of expansion is to love something bigger than you. If you love something smaller than you, you will have to shrink; if you love something bigger than you, you expand. And when you love the whole universe you become unlimited, you become as vast as the universe itself. And that's what a religious person should be: vast, containing all, excluding nothing, including everything that is.

Veet Thomas. Veet means transcending, Thomas means a seeker of truth.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

The very idea of seeking the truth has to be transcended; the very idea is basically wrong.

Lao Tzu says if you seek the truth you will not find it because truth is already in you. It has not to be sought; it is in the seeker himself. The idea of seeking means it is somewhere else: you are the seeker and the truth is out there, somewhere. And truth is really the very existence of the seeker himself. So when all seeking disappears and one simply sits, doing nothing, searching for nothing; when one simply relaxes into oneself, one simply rests into oneself, one finds it.

Seek and you are sure to miss, don't seek and you are sure to find it. It is a very paradoxical law, but unless one understands it, one cannot be a meditator. The seekers of truth become philosophers and the people who drop all seeking and searching become mystics -- and only they are the people who come to know, only they are the people who experience.

Science is a search, religion is not.

Anand Nancy. Anand means bliss, Nancy means prayer.

The only true prayer -- and I emphasise the only true prayer -- is blissfulness. Nothing has to be said, no words are needed. The ready-made prayers of Christians and Hindus and Mohammedans are just rubbish, but one can become addicted to words, to just repeating again and again the same words, morning and evening. If you don't repeat them you miss them, you feel something is wrong because the mind has become programmed. And if you repeat them you don't gain anything; there is no ecstasy in it. How can the same words repeated again and again -- your own words -- give you ecstasy? They can only give you boredom.

The so-called religious people are very boring people. The churches are full of the vibe of boredom, because so many bored people gathered together...

In a church the priest announced after the sermon, 'After fifteen minutes' break there will be a meeting of the board.' He was very much surprised because one man, a stranger, was there in the meeting, just sitting by his side. He told him 'This is a meeting of the board...' The man said 'That I know -- I have never been so bored in my whole life! That's why I am here. I heard your announcement, so I thought that if I have suffered so much, let me suffer a little more.'

Religious people are boring because they themselves are bored. What they call prayer is not prayer, it is a monologue, they are talking to themselves. It is meaningless. It is not a dialogue, because there is no god as a person with whom you can have a dialogue. God is an experience, not a person.

So blissfulness has to be the only prayer. Be blissful, cheerful, dancing, celebrating. Life is such a great opportunity, we should not miss a single moment. And then you will by and by become aware, through your blissfulness, of a totally new presence that surrounds the whole existence. That presence is the ultimate bliss. And you can become aware of it only when you are blissful because only the same can know the same. When you start vibrating in the same rhythm you become aware of the ultimate bliss You can call it god but it is better to call it the ultimate bliss.

In your own small way be blissful so that you can resonate in the same beat as the whole universe is already resonating. The universe is a dance and we have to fall in step with it -- that's what prayer is.

Dhyan Barry. Dhyan means meditation. Barry is a Celtic mythological symbol. Literally it means a spear, but in Celtic mythology the spear represents the life-giving force. So your name will means meditation, the life-giving force.

We are alive but we don't know from where our life springs. We are breathing, we are conscious, we are living, but we are unaware of our own roots. Meditation is a search for the roots, for the very source of our being and existence.

Unless we know that source we cannot know the goal, because the source is the goal too. We have to go back to where we started the journey, then only is the circle complete -- and the completion of the circle is the fulfillment of life. Hence the source has to be searched for. Without knowing the source nobody can know about the goal. Whatsoever goals we project without knowing the source are going to be only temporary. By the time you reach them you will have to invent new goals again.

Unless you know the source you cannot know the ultimate goal. And the whole energy that we put into temporary goals is a sheer wastage. That's why life remains a misery, a hell; in knowing the source life becomes clear. Then you know where you have to go, then you know what has to be done, what path has to be taken, then you know what has to be avoided. Then you have a certain criterion to discriminate between the essential and the non-essential; then you don't get lost in the non-essential and you can go on following the essential. It is just a ray of light, but it is enough. In following it one comes back home.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

The moment you enter your source again you have come home. And the feeling of coming home can only be described as rejoicing. That's why the people like Zarathustra, Buddha, Krishna, are so full of joys they have arrived, now there is nowhere to go. The journey is complete, the pilgrimage fulfilled. They have blossomed!

Meditation is the only way to find the source because meditation is an inward Journey; it is digging for your own roots.

By becoming a sannyasin one is only expected to learn a simple discipline of meditativeness. So I don't give you many commandments but a single commandment; I call it the eleventh commandment! But that single one fulfils all ten -- the eleventh existed before all ten!

Premsindhu means ocean of love.

A sannyasin has not to put any limit to his love. To limit love is to kill it, to destroy it. Love can exist only in its unlimitedness. The moment you draw a boundary you have already started poisoning it. It may look like love but it will only be a corpse; it will not be alive any more.

It is like you see a bird on the wing, it is so beautiful in the clouds, or singing in the trees, so colourful, so musical, and then you catch hold of the bird and you put it in a golden cage. The cage is very precious and the bird looks the same, but it is not the same bird. The bird on the wing, in the clouds, had freedom; this bird is a prisoner. It is qualitatively different. Out of old habit it may still sing but its heart won't be in the song. It will be mechanical, like a gramophone record. It looks like the same bird but it only looks it --

and don't be deceived by the appearance.

This is what we are continuously doing with loves we always make it a possessiveness, a jealousy, an ego trip, and immediately the freedom is lost, the song is lost, the heartbeat disappears. We can go on carrying the corpse but then it does not fulfil anything.

Love can give you all that is needed to become absolutely contented, but then one has to be alert not to destroy it, not to limit it. That's the meaning of your name; let it become the meaning of your life too. Let your love be oceanic, unbounded, and you will find god through it.

Premmadhu means love is as sweet as honey. But very few people ever come to know its sweetness; the majority comes to know only its bitterness.

Yes, in poetry it is always sweet, but in actual experience it is very bitter. And it is not only now that it is so, it has always been so. Thousands of monks and nuns have escaped from the world. They are not really escaping from the world -- 'world' is a very deceptive word -- they are escaping from love. They use the word 'world' to hide something else. They are escaping from love because all their love relationships have proven frustrating, failures; they have all turned into nightmares. Again and again they have experienced agony,

They expected ecstasy but sooner or later they become aware that they are expecting something which is not possible; then they escape from the world. They are really escaping from all the situations where love can arise; and they can be caught again, because in their dreams they still dream of its sweetness. But my observation is that they are wrong. Rather than changing their idea of love, they escape from the opportunity of love.

One has to change the idea of love, then it is really sweet, it is pure nectar. If it is not then something is wrong with us, not with love. But this is one of the tricks of the ego, that it never wants to accept any responsibility; it always throws the responsibility on others, it always finds excuses and shrinks from taking responsibility.

My sannyasins have to learn to accept the responsibility. If love is bitter that means we have not learned the art of love. If I give you a sitar and you only make noise out of it that does not mean that the sitar is noisy; it only means you don't know how to play it. You have to learn.

Humanity lives under a very strange illusion that everybody knows love. Nobody really knows love unless you learn. It is one of the greatest arts. Playing the sitar is nothing compared to playing on the mystery of love.

My sannyasins have to learn what love is and what love is not. And then they have to drop all that is not love, and this can be done only through medita-tion. Meditation can make you aware, can make you capable of discriminating, of dividing that which is valuable from all that is not valuable. Meditation can be said to be the science of purifying love. And by the time you have come to the purity of love it is just fragrance --

fragrance of the beyond -- and it gives you a taste of eternity, of god, of truth, of life in its immense 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

splendour.

Premvan means the jungle of love.

Love is not a garden. A garden is man-made; it is artificial, arbitrary. Love is wild. It is because of so much civilisation that we have lost the knack of love; we have become too civilised, too cultured, too cultivated, so our life is like an English garden, Victorian style (laughter). Everything is symmetrical and everything is pruned, cut, given shape and form. But the more you give it shape and form, the more you are destroying the reality.

In Japan they have the art of bonzai. It is not an art, it is pure murder. They have four-hundred -- year old trees just six inches tall. They think it is an art. They go on cutting the roots. They place the tree into a pot with no bottom and they go on pruning the roots. Because the roots cannot grow the tree goes on becoming old but it cannot grow; it ages but it cannot become big. So you can see from its texture that it is an ancient tree but a pygmy tree. It may have risen to one hundred feet, it is only six inches high -- and they call it an art! It is like cutting a child so he becomes old but is only six inches tall (laughter) ... with a white beard (more laughter)... And you call it art -- it is pure murder!

But bonzai is being practised on every child. All over the world, all the cultures have been doing something like bonzai. That's why love has disappeared, love can exist only in its wild state.

My sannyasins have to remain at least ninety-nine per cent wild. One per cent is enough for day-to-day work, your offices in the market (laughter). By the time you come home you should again become wild, a jungle, no more a garden -- certain not an English garden. If you want to become a garden then look around my garden, be something like my garden -- it is a jungle!

Man has to learn something so that he can become a little uncivilised. It is good when you are in a Rotary club to be civilised -- I am not against it. In a Rotary club it is perfectly good to be false, pseudo, phony, otherwise you cannot be a member of the Rotary club. But by the time you are out of these clubs and the offices and the factories, be wild! Be a child again. Be a primitive again and you will be surprised how many wonders are there repressed within you and how many mysteries start opening up.

My whole effort here is to give you roots, to stop this whole art of practising bonzai on you. And everybody has practised on you, they have all cut you. Whenever I see a person I see he has been cut and pruned from everywhere; nothing of the real is left. Somehow he goes on living but his life is no more a joy, it cannot be. To be a joy it needs to be natural, spontaneous. And then you will see love growing in you to such dimensions that it is unbelievable. And the ultimate peak of love is the realisation of god.

God and love are synonymous to me.

Premshanti means love and peace.

It is very difficult! It is like putting a cat and a dog in a room (laughter)... but I enjoy it! (much laughter) I create as many difficulties as possible because only through difficulties does one grow. So if the dog and the cat are in a room the encounter is going to happen, primal therapy is going to happen; all kinds of bizarre things are going to happen. But there is a possibility that they may fall in love, they may become friendly, they may start enjoying and sharing, they may start having a communion. And if it happens then something really beautiful has started.

Love is easy if you don't ask for peace, because love is a kind of war -- the so-called love, I mean. The real love is certainly peaceful. But if peace suddenly comes, these who have not known real love will think love has died, because then the peace will look very cold to them; they have become accustomed to the heat of fighting, nagging, continuously quarrelling. That gives excitement, it feels as if one is alive. But without peace love is feverish, it is sick; and peace without love is also easy but then it is dead, it has no ecstasy in it. It is the peace of the cemetery, the grave -- white-washed. You can even plant roses on the grave, but a grave is a grave.

Peace alone is a grave, love alone is insanity; both together and a magic happens: the grave becomes alive and the insanity disappears and the energy that was involved in being insane starts becoming ecstasy.

It starts having a new flavour, a new meaning, a new significance, a new dance, a new song.

This is my understanding, that both together make a man go to the ultimate heights. They are like two wings, with one wing you cannot go to the ultimate heights; you need both wing, functioning. When both wings are functioning you can reach the stars. But both wings are in a way opposite to each other. One goes towards the left, the other goes towards the right -- they are contradictory in a way but complementary too.

Peace and love are contradictory and complementary.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

So one has to keep a balance between the two, otherwise things become lopsided. And to be lopsided is to be crazy; to be balanced is to be whole and healthy.

Is the Grass Really Greener...?

Chapter #19

Chapter title: None

19 December 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8012185

ShortTitle: GREENR19

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Anand Renate. Anand means bliss. Renate means reborn, born anew.

Man brings tremendous bliss with himself but only as a potential, as a seed; it needs the right atmosphere, the climate, the soil, to grow. And society does not allow it to grow, it wants miserable people.

There is some reason why all societies all over the world in the whole past of humanity have wanted miserable people.

First, the miserable person is always dependent; he is dependent on the parents, he is dependent on the priest, he is dependent on the state, dependent on the politician. He basically hankers for dependence; he is not able to stand on his own. He cannot trust himself. He is in such a misery -- how can he trust himself, his intelligence? He lives in distrust of himself; he knows that I'am unworthy, I have failed, whatsoever I do goes wrong, everything turns sour, so it is better to listen to those who are in power.'

It is one of the basic needs of the establishment to keep people miserable, only then will they be dependent. And when they are dependent they are obedient too; they cannot risk disobedience, they cannot revolt. They are trembling inside with fear; their guts are destroyed, their courage is crippled. And whenever there has been a blissful person he has been a danger to the establishment. The society has learned that.

Jesus was a danger, Buddha was a danger, Lao Tzu was a danger. So it is better to cut from the very roots all possibilities of somebody ever becoming a rebel. And the best way that they have found is to keep people in misery. In misery they cannot bring their potential to actuality. And unless one becomes actual, a flowering, one is missing the whole opportunity of life. One is not really born; only physically is one born, but spiritually one is still in the womb.

Sannyas means a spiritual birth. And the beginning of that birth is to learn the art of being blissful Rejoice -- there is much to rejoice in. We just have to decide that we will start looking for all that helps blissfulness. It is only a question of choosing. There are thorns, there are roses; the miserable person chooses the thorns, the person who decides to be blissful chooses the roses. And then a miracle starts happening: the more full of roses you are, the less thorns there are. When the whole being is full of roses thorns simply disappear, they don't exist any more for you. For the blissful person there is no misery anywhere; for the enlightened person there is no darkness anywhere, for the really alive there is no death.

Amano Robert. Amano means no-mind. Robert means bright, intelligent.

Mind is intellect, not intelligence. Intellect is a poor substitute for intelligence; and they are diametrically opposite. Intellect is brought in from the outside. That's what we go on doing in the schools, 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

colleges, universities, we create intellect. And as a person becomes more intellectual his own intelligence remains in a latent form. So much intellect is piled upon the intelligence that one tends to forget all about it.

Intellectual people are basically unintelligent people.

It is very rare to find a scholar, a professor, who is intelligent. I never came across one; as a student I never came across a single professor who was really intelligent. Then I became a professor in a university; for nine years I searched and searched but I could not find a single professor who was really intelligent --

they were intellectual.

If you are intellectual it means, you are full of readymade answers, so if the situation is old, which it never is, then you have the answer, but if the situation is new, you are at a loss. Intelligence means spontaneous responsibility, the capacity to respond to the new. Intellect means carrying readymade answers like a computer.

A computer can never be intelligent. It can have immense intellect, more than any man can ever have. A computer can be fed all kinds of information -- its memory is infinite -- it can store everything that you go on feeding it and whenever you need it, just the push of a button and the answer is there. But a computer can never be intelligent. Any new situation for which the answer has not already been put into the computer and the computer will be at a loss. It may be a small thing, a very small thing, but the computer will not be able to cope with it. And that's what our scholars, professors, pundits, priests, the so-called learned people are: computers.

They have no spontaneity; parrotlike they go on repeating answers that they have collected from the scriptures, from every possible source.

Intelligence is a totally different thing. You have to put intellect aside so that you can be alert, aware, of the situation; and the answer has to come from your being not from your memory, then the answer is immediate and it is always right. You respond with your total heart, with your wholeness, and then there is never any repentance. Whether you succeed or fail, that is irrelevant, but intelligence never repents because whatsoever was possible you did totally, there was nothing more for you to do. You were not holding anything back, you went into it totally.

Amano, no-mind, helps you to bring your intelligence to the surface. Mind represses your intelligence.

We have yet to discover the right method of education in which intelligence is more significant than intellect. Right now things are upside-down; nobody bothers about intelligence; the whole system is to cultivate intellect. That is not the meaning of the word 'education'; it is not education, it is MISeducation.

Education means to draw out. Certainly this is not what is happening in the universities and the colleges and the schools. We are not drawing out anything from the person; we are stuffing him from the outside. It is as if we go on throwing rocks into a well; sooner or later the well will be covered with rocks, there will be no water available. That's what has happened to man; in the name of education we have been putting rocks upon rocks into him and behind those rocks his intelligence is almost lost.

The function of meditation is to withdraw all those rocks, to take you to your original source, to the very springs of your life -- and then a person is intelligent. Every person can be utterly intelligent, one just has to be ready to put the mind aside. And that's my whole work here, to help you to put the mind aside, to shift your energy from the head to the heart, from mind to no-mind.

Once the energy starts functioning without the mind, your whole life has the flavor of intelligence, awareness, brightness. You are fully alive to the moment -- and that brings bliss, that brings thousands of blessings.

Dhyan Toni. Dhyan means meditation. Toni means inestimable.

Mind is limited; it can be estimated, it can be measured. Meditation is immeasurable, inestimable.

Meditation is when the mind stops functioning, when all the noise of the mind and the traffic of the mind disappears, when there is pure silence and you are just a witness, not thinking, not feeling, but just being.

That silence and that being is meditation. That state opens the doors of the divine. Suddenly you are open to the infinity, to the eternal, to all that is.

Toni also has a few other meanings -- it is a beautiful word. It also means priceless. Meditation cannot be purchased; you have to earn it, you have to deserve it. Money cannot purchase it, power cannot snatch it, otherwise the Alexanders would have been the greatest meditators and the Rockefellers would have purchased all the meditation available in the world. But there is no way to purchase it, no ways to catch hold of it. You have to become worthy of it. For that a certain inner transformation is needed; nothing else can be of any help.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

And Toni also means beyond praise.

Whatsoever we say about meditation falls short. All words prove to be inadequate. It remains indefinable, it remains beyond praise, it remains beyond all expression.

One Zen master was asked by a learned scholar 'What is meditation?' The master was sitting on the sand by the bank of a river. He remained as if nothing had been asked, as if nobody had come. He didn't take any notice of the scholar or his question. The scholar said 'What is the matter? Are you dead or something?' The master said 'I have answered your question; you asked me "What is meditation?" and I showed you: it is silence. If I say something it will be untrue. The moment you say something about meditation it becomes untrue, that's why I remained silent. I showed you, I was meditation, but you massed the point. You were waiting for some words, and meditation is not anything which can be caught in the net of words.

So we cannot praise it, we cannot purchase it, we cannot measure it. Because we cannot purchase it and cannot praise it and cannot measure it, it is the only thing worth having, it is the only treasure worth possessing. It is what Jesus means when he says the kingdom of god.

Premda means one who is capable of giving love.

The world can be full of love but it is absolutely loveless; it is full of hate instead, and for the very simple reason that everybody wants love but nobody gives it. If everybody wants it and nobody gives it, then how can love happen? -- it is impossible. We have to change the whole arithmetics everybody should give and nobody should want.

If it comes without desiring, be thankful; if it does not come, accept that it is not coming, that 'Perhaps this is not the right time, perhaps I don't deserve it, perhaps I have to wait a little more,' but don't desire.

Even when love is not coming, go on giving. And it is absolutely certain that when you give, you get and you get a thousandfold, not less than that.

The whole of existence loves the lover. The lover is the most precious being in existence, so the whole of existence showers love on him, it rejoices with him. If you go on giving love to people, even to strangers, to animals, to birds, to trees, to rocks, they will all respond and from thousands of directions love will start coming towards you -- it will bounce back! And then you will be so full of love that you would like to give because now you know the more you give, the more you have.

Up to now humanity has lived a very loveless existence for the simple reason that everybody wants, tries to snatch, to steal and in every possible way to force the other to give to them. Everybody wants; and not only helpless people, even powerful people are asking for love. If it were a small child asking love from his parents, one could understand it; but even parents are asking for love from the small child.

The mother comes and wants the small child to smile and to welcome her and the poor child may not be in a state to smile at all, but he has to smile. He starts learning diplomacy; he smiles, he simply stretches his lips. He may be ready to cry, he may be hungry, but he smiles because he knows that a smile works. If the mother is happy then he may get some love, some food, otherwise he will be ignored. And the mother also goes on doing that, bribing the child: whenever he is showing love she will feed him, hug him, and whenever the child is not showing love she will punish him, in a thousand and one ways she will ignore him, neglect him.

So from his very childhood the child is surrounded by beggars. They are all asking 'Give us love! I am your -- daddy, I am your mummy -- give me love!' The poor child has no idea what is happening, but he has to pretend at least. From that moment he pretends for his whole life, he will be a hypocrite. Then one day he will show love to his wife without feeling any love, because if you don't show love to your wife she will create trouble. She may put more salt in your vegetables (laughter), she may give you tea without sugar; she will devise all kinds of strategies. She will throw things and she will break pots and she will create chaos.

So it is better, just to keep things silent (The crash from the region of Vrindavan canteen -- which runs under the hand and heart of Italian Deeksha -- could hardly be better timed. The group in front of Osho bursts into laughter, and Osho grins.)... This is mother Deeksha! (much laughter) She immediately did some...(Osho's sentence peters off as more laughter breaks out.) And this goes on for the whole of one's life. When you are old you are trying to get love and pretending that you love, and others are also pretending that they love you, so the whole of life becomes pretentious, phony.

And to live a phony life is not to live at all. It is better to commit suicide than to live a phony life, because at least suicide will be authentic, not phony. Nobody can commit a phony suicide. People try that too, particularly women. They will take sleeping pills but always such a quantity that they don't die!

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

(laughter) That is phony suicide, a phony attempted suicide, we should call it.

Give love and don't ask. Give authentically -- that's the way of sannyas -- and you will be rewarded.

That is without any question, that is inevitable. But one has to know it by experience whether what I am saying works or not.

Here you can see so much love, so much over-flowing love, because everybody is giving it and nobody is trying to snatch. Those who are trying to snatch are miserable even here, in this place where love is the only rule, the only discipline. Here also are a few people who are sitting thirsty on the bank of the river, crying and weeping. But sooner or later they learn that this is stupid: when everybody is jumping in the river, why waste time? It is hesitantly, but one day they jump. Once they have jumped suddenly they become aware that they have been unnecessarily sitting and waiting for somebody to come and give love to them. There is nobody to come and give love to you, unless you go and give it to others. Then they will respond. Whatsoever you give comes back to you, and a thousandfold.

Veet Manu. Veet means transcending. Manu means mind.

Sannyas can be defined as a transcendence of the mind. Mind is the root cause of all our misery. Mind means the past, the future, memories and desires. All our thoughts are either memories or desires, and existence is now; it is neither past nor future. It is never past, never future; it is always present, it is always now, and the mind does not know how to be herenow. And it cannot be taught to be here and now. Its very construction is such that it can exist only in the past or in the future.

In the present what exists is a state of no-mind. You can try it any moment, just be silent, utterly herenow, and you will be surprised: there is no mind. Memories have been put aside, desires have been put aside and in the gap between the memory and the desire the whole existence opens up. But it is not mind, it is not thought, it is reality itself.

The experience of this reality is meditation. The moment you have experienced it you know that reality and god are synonymous. You can call it god if you like, you can call it truth if you like, you can call it liberation, freedom, but all these words simply indicate one thing: the real.

Mind is the unreal, the world of the unreal, as we have to come out of the unreal to meet, to merge, to melt into the real.

Pankaj means a lotus, but the English word 'lotus does not have that quality which the Sanskrit word

'pankaj' has. 'Pank' means the mud and 'pankaj' means born out of the mud.

The lotus arises out of mud; hence it contains a significant message: we are mud but we can be lotuses also. That potential is there.

The Hebrew word 'Adam' means mud, in fact, red mud, because the earth in Israel is red. And god of course created the first man in Israel and out of red mud. God must have loved red as I love it! (laughter) Otherwise why bother to go to Israel? He could have found mud anywhere, but if you are looking for red mud you have to go to Israel.

Man is nothing but mud; the lotus is only a potentiality. It is possible if we work for it, but if we don't work for it we will remain mud and we will be lost in mud.

Sannyas means making a deliberate effort to transform the mud into a lotus. And the lotus is the greatest flower, it is incomparable. No other flower is so big, no other flower is so fragrant. It is the emperor of all flowers; hence it has become symbolic of Buddhahood, because when consciousness unfolds in the mud of the ordinary humanity it is a one-thousand petalled lotus. It is such a revolution from the mud to the lotus; it is unbelievable that out of dirty mud such a delicate flower can arise.

That's why Buddhas have always been suspected, people can't believe it, because they are aware of their muddiness but they have no idea of their lotusness. So when somebody's lotus opens up they cannot believe it, they think it is just illusion: either the person is deluding himself or he is trying to deceive others. People could not believe in Jesus, people could not believe in Socrates, people could not believe in Pythagoras --

people have never believed in any Buddha for the simple reason -- and it is understandable too -- that they are just mud. How can they believe that out of such mud -- lust, greed, anger, hate -- such compassion, such love, such prayer can arise? Impossible! It seems illogical. But if one accepts the possibility even hypothetically then a search begins.

So I don't say believe in the existence of the Buddhas; I say only hypothetically assume that perhaps that is a possibility. That 'perhaps' will open a door in you. You will be able to know only when the lotus has opened in you. Unless one is a Buddha oneself one cannot understand any other Buddha. There is no other 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

way.

So my effort here is not to make you Christians but Christs, not Buddhists but Buddhas, because unless you have experienced it within your being all the stories of those great, fragrant people will remain only stories. They are beautiful stories, but not factual, not real -- fables. And I say to you they are not fables, they are realities. But I don't want you to believe in them -- I want you to experience those realities.

Nilima literally means blueness, but symbolically it is of immense significance. It symbolises two things; one is depth.

Whenever water is deep it starts looking blue. When it is shallow it does not have the colour blue but depth gives it the colour blue. Scientists say the sky is not blue, it has no colour but it looks blue because it is so infinite; such depth, such infinity, gives it the colour of blue. Blueness represents depth, infinite depth.

And we are as infinite as the sky! Even the sky is not the limit. We are as deep as the Pacific, perhaps the Pacific is not as deep as we are -- it is only five miles deep. That is not much of a depth. But our consciousness has no bottom to it, it is abysmal. Hence when one enters into one's inner space one feels tremendous blueness. It is an existential experience. When one turns in one finds such blueness as one has never seen before: the blueness of the sky fades away, the blueness of deep, dark waters is nothing compared to the inner blueness.

Secondly, man has a few centres from where energy functions. There are many centres but the main centres are seven. The lowest is the sex centre, where almost everybody is hung up because we are born out of sexuality. So the sex centre is our inheritance. Only that centre is functioning. Unless we start working on our energy other centres remain dormant. If one goes on living at the sex centre one lives at the lowest point of the ladder. The highest centre is the seventh which in the East is called 'sahasrar', because it is at the seventh that the one-thousand petalled lotus opens.

The name 'sahasrar' means one-thousand petalled. It remains closed if the energy is somewhere lower.

Three centres are the lower centres, three centres are the higher centres, and one is exactly in the middle.

The middle centre is the heart, the centre of love.

When sex starts becoming love, then your heart opens up. That's a great jump; that is moving from sex to love. It is really a great achievement. To move from the centre of love to the seventh centre one has to pass one more very significant centre -- that is the sixth. That is called the third eye centre; it is exactly between the two eyes. And when your energy reaches the third eye centre it becomes a blue flame, it actually becomes a blue flame. It is very cool although it is a flame; it is fire but cool fire. That is the last that man can achieve, the sixth centre, and the seventh happens on its own. When the whole energy has moved to the sixth and has become a blue flame -- and a flame naturally rises upwards on its own it moves upwards -- that flame moving upwards at a certain point, at a certain intensity opens the seventh centre and one is freed from all misery, all limitation, all bondage.

So Nilima, blueness, has these two meanings. First, infinite depth; second, the blue light that is the ultimate achievement of one's efforts in meditation. It is at the sixth centre that your energy becomes prayer.

And once your energy has moved from sex to love, from love to prayer, you have done whatsoever you could do. Now everything is going to happen of its own accord. You have come to the end of your effort; now something will happen as the grace of the beyond. The flame will hit the closed bud of the lotus and open it up.

And the fragrance released is the ultimate goal of life. There is nothing higher than that.

Is the Grass Really Greener...?

Chapter #20

Chapter title: None

20 December 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

Archive code: 8012195

ShortTitle: GREENR20

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Anand Fiore. Anand means bliss. Fiore means a flower.

The nature of misery is to make you closed -- closed to existence, to people, to all that is. It is intrinsic to misery that it makes you shrink inside yourself; it makes you hide, it disconnects you.

The nature of bliss is just the opposite: it opens you up like a flower. It makes you available to existence

-- to the sun, to the wind, to the rain -- and when you are available to existence, existence is available to you. Whatsoever you do to existence always bounces back upon you. If you are closed, existence is closed; if you are open existence is open. Existence simply reflects you. And when you are closed and existence is closed life becomes hell.

One of the famous plays of Jean Paul Sartre is NO EXIT. Three persons find themselves in a room which has no exit. Everything is available, whatsoever they need is there, but they cannot get out. Naturally they become bored, bored with each other, bored to death, but there is no way out; they have to be there.

And one can conceive how torturous it could become. That's Sartre's idea of hell.

No need to throw people into a fire -- that is a very primitive idea, just put them in a place from where they cannot escape. And there is no need to torture them, give them all the luxury and comfort and convenience, but just destroy their freedom -- that's enough. It is more than throwing them into hellfire. At least there would be some excitement in hell-fire, but in a closed room, with no opening, nowhere to go...

This is the situation of every miserable persons no exit -- no windows, no doors. Windowless, he is living in a cocoon.

Meditation opens windows. Windows are there, it is just that you have forgotten about them. Even if they are locked there are keys which can open them. And it is up to you to open them or not to open them --

it is your freedom, it is your choice.

The moment you start opening up... That's what I call meditation, opening up like a flower. And then suddenly life is paradise; instantly, immediately, you are transported into an other dimension.

The whole art of bliss is the art of opening your petals. Take the risk -- of course there is a risk in opening up, there is danger, but the only way to live is to live dangerously, there is no other way. Nothing can be done about it.

If one does not want to live then there is no danger. Then the best place is the grave, one simply goes inside the grave, all is closed, a beautiful marble stone is put over you and then rest forever in peace.

Nothing will ever happen, no accident, no trouble, no anxiety, no problem, but then you are dead.

Life means challenges, problems. One has to learn how to enjoy those challenges, how to ride over those challenges how to conquer all the dangers that life gives to you. It is a gift. And as you start learning the ways of conquering more and more you become more and more blissful and ecstatic. Then each moment is a joy.

This is your name: Swami Dhyan Peter. Dhyan means meditation. Peter means a rock.

Mind is like shifting sands. Mind is always in a flux, changing. Not even for two consecutive moments is it the same, so you cannot make your house there. And everybody is trying to do that.

To make your house in the mind is to make your house on shifting sands. It is like writing on water: you have not even written and it is gone. Or it is like making a house of playing cards: a little breeze, maybe just your own breath, and the house collapses. One card slips and the whole house is gone.

Meditation is just the opposite of mind. It is rocklike. Mind is time, meditation is eternity -- that is what is represented by the rock. The rock is a symbol, a symbol of eternity. One has to get out of the mind and enter into a state of no-mind, no-thought, no-desire, no-memory; just pure silence, pure being. Then whatsoever you make remains, then whatsoever you create is forever.

It is only there that one can find shelter, that one can find a home.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

The moment Gautam the Buddha became enlightened the first thing that he said was, "I have found my home. This is the place I have been searching for for thousands of lives." And he said to his own mind,

"Now you will not be needed anymore. You have been doing great work, you have been taking all kinds of troubles for me -- thank you for all that -- but now you will not be needed because I have found the real home, so your work is finished. Goodbye!"

Svaraj means the kingdom of the self.

We are all beggars because we have chosen to look outside our own self and we are searching there for the kingdom that somehow we remember. We have a vague remembrance that it was once ours, but we cannot figure out whether it was a dream or a reality. But each child in his mother's womb has experienced the inner kingdom; hence that nostalgia persists. Out of that nostalgia is born the whole art of meditation.

Without that nostalgia there would have been no meditation at all.

We have tasted something but a gap has arisen; we have forgotten the way to it and we are searching for it again and again, in every direction. The more we search, the more frustrated we become, because it is not found anywhere outside; it can be found only within yourself.

Meditation again creates the same space as was in the womb of the mother.

Sigmund Freud had many beautiful insights. One of his insight, was that the search for god is the search for the womb. Of course he was using his insight as a condemnation of religion, but his insight was right --

his condemnation was wrong. There is nothing wrong in searching for the womb. If it was beautiful -- and it was beautiful; if it was peaceful -- and It was peaceful if it was blissful -- and it was blissful, then what is wrong in searching for it again?

Of course now one cannot enter into the womb. Perhaps lovers are trying to enter deeply into each other for the same reason, but that too is futile, it is not possible in the nature of things. The only way one can again create the space is to enter into oneself; one has to enter into one's own womb -- and that's what meditation is. And suddenly you know that the kingdom was always waiting there for you. The goal is not outside, it is within; god is not outside, it is within.

Veet Paribasha. Veet means going beyond. Paribasha means definition.

Truth cannot be defined, love cannot be defined, bliss cannot be defined. All that is significant, all that is meaningful, is intrinsically indefinable. It can be experienced but it cannot be expressed. It is ineffable, it is a mystery; you cannot solve it. You can dissolve into it, you can become it, but there is no way to demystify it -- and that's what a definition does, it demystifies something.

Science lives in definitions. Everything is defined, everything is clear-cut, everything is arithmetically put, calculated, experimented with a thousand and one times so no mistake can happen. Science is a way of defining things. If you ask the scientist 'What is water?', he has the definition, H2o, and in a telegraphic way his definition contains the whole secret of water -- according to science. But this is not the way of religion.

In religion just the opposite process happens: all that is defined starts becoming indefinable. Even things that you used to think you know you start feeling you don't know; your knowledge starts becoming more and more vague, less and less clear-cut. Mathematics becomes more like music, logic becomes more like love, prose starts turning into poetry. And when you enter this mysterious world you are for the first time moving on sacred ground. This is the true pilgrimage.

Science is superficial, just on the circumference; it is about and about. Religion is not about and about, it is the very experience of the centre. But the experience is so vast that there is no way to calculate, no way to measure, no way to weigh, no way to indicate it.

So those who have known have also known that it is something unknowable; they have stumbled upon something unknowable -- not only unknown but unknowable... because the unknown will become known some day, but the unknowable will remain unknowable forever. But that's the beauty, that it cannot be demystified. When the whole existence becomes mysterious again you are again a child.

The child looks at the world with wonder and awe; meditation makes you a child again, again there is an explosion of wonder and awe. Then your heart is beating in a new rhythm, then your eyes see in a new way, your ears hear in a new way. Everything is new and every moment there is a surprise waiting for you.

To live in this wonder and awe is to live in god.

Premraj means kingdom of love.

There are two types of conquerors in the world and one has to choose to be one or the other, one cannot 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

remain without choosing. One kind of conqueror is represented by Alexander, Napoleon, Nadir Shah, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin. The other kind of conqueror is represented by Gautam Buddha, Jesus Christ, Lao Tzu, Zarathustra, Krishna. These are two diametrically opposite dimensions.

The first category tries to conquer others, and to conquer others is to be violent, is to be aggressive, is to be destructive. So all these so-called conquerors of the first category which the whole of history is full of, have been the most destructive people on the earth. They have not only destroyed people, they have destroyed the very possibility of love, bliss, silence, peace, god. They are the murderers of god.

One has to learn another kind of conquest and that has nothing to do with the other; it is an inner journey. If the other is conquering through violence, then one conquers oneself through love. And the most strange thing is that when you are trying to conquer the other you have to destroy the other, but the destroyer is also destroyed in that destruction. He tries to conquer the other -- that never happens, and meanwhile he is losing the time and energy with which to conquer himself. So he tries to make others slaves but he himself becomes a slave to others. And just the opposite happens with the inner journey: one conquers oneself, becomes full of love, creative, poetic, and that gives one immense power, but that power is not of destruction, it is of creation. And because of that power he is also capable of conquering others without conquering them.

People have loved Jesus, Buddha, Zarathustra, they have totally surrendered themselves to them, and that surrender is basically different from the surrender when you are forced to do it by a sword. It is unwilling. Deep down you are against it, it can never be total. It is not surrender done by you, it is forced, and sooner or later you will take revenge with a vengeance. That always happens.

Joseph Stalin was condemned once he was not in power. Even his body was removed -- because his body was lying by the side of Lenin and it had to be removed to a remote place where nobody would ever come to visit. Now the same is happening to Tao Tse Tung in China, every day his posters, his pictures, his statues are being removed. This always happens. The people who try to conquer others simply waste their life.

To be a sannyasin means to become concerned with the inner conquest. It releases infinite energy of love. You are a master of yourself and you can help many others to become masters of themselves.

Whosoever falls in love with a master will become a master sooner or later.

The kingdom of love is the only goal worth achieving. And then you can share it with millions of people, and the beauty is that the more you give, the more you have.

Veetena means transcendence.

One has to transcend three things to find oneself or to find god. The first is the body. We are in the body but we are not the body, so one has to watch and slowly slowly become aware that the body is just a house

-- a beautiful house and we have to love it and keep it fit and keep it beautiful -- but we are not it. We are in it but not it.

And the key is to watch your acts. Walking, eating, talking, listening -- just go on watching and slowly slowly the watcher becomes separate from the watched. Then the second step is to become a watcher of your mind -- that is the second thing to be transcended. Watch the thoughts, memories, fantasies, and the same happens again you become disidentified with the mind. Then the third transcendence is of feeling, emotions, moods.

The physical is gross, the mind is a little subtle, but feeling, the heart, is the subtlest. And the day you have transcended the heart also you enter into the fourth, turiya. And that entry brings you to the ultimate goal. Then there is nowhere to got you have found your truth, which is also the truth of the whole existence.

And truth liberates -- liberates you from all misery, from all darkness, from all death. It gives you the whole kingdom of eternity, the kingdom of god.

Deva Vigyan. Deva means divine. Vigyan means science.

Meditation is a divine science. Just as mathematics is a mundane science, meditation is a sacred science.

Mathematics is concerned with the measurable and meditation is concerned with the immeasurable.

Ordinary science is objective, it is about things, and the divine science is about you, about your very consciousness, your being. Initiation into sannyas means initiation into the divine science, so the whole energy has to be put into growing meditativeness.

And my approach to meditation is such that it does not divert you from your ordinary life, it is not escapist. You can go on meditating in all your activities walking you can meditate, driving you can 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

meditate, working you can meditate, because to me meditation simply means awareness.

If you start chanting a mantra while driving there is danger. If you start changing a mantra while working in the office you will not be able to do your work. But just being aware is not a diversion, not a distraction. On the contrary it helps you to do your work more efficiently, more skilfully; and if you are more alert and aware naturally, your work will have some quality which it can only have if the person doing it is doing it consciously, not mechanically.

So meditation is synonymous with awareness, and meditation is the whole science of entering into god.

And god is not somewhere else, it is your awareness itself. So one need not pray to some god there above, in the clouds. One has just to become aware and one finds god at the very core of one's being. And to have found it is to have found all that is worth finding.

(To a middle-aged woman:)

Anand Rajyo. Anand means bliss. Rajyo means kingdom -- kingdom of bliss.

Man is born to be a king. That is our very destiny, but very few people ever try to fulfil it. They take life for granted, they don't take it as an opportunity. They think that just to be born is enough, that just to be born is to be alive.

It is not so. Birth is only a beginning, the beginning of an opportunity. You can use the opportunity, you may not use the opportunity. And many people live in vain; they live superficially, without ever knowing who they are, without ever understanding the meaning of life, without ever even thinking about why they are here, from where they come, to where they are going.

I have heard about a man who became retired at the age of sixty. On the first day of his retirement his wife said 'Should I prepare your breakfast? -- boiled eggs, etcetera?' He said 'I hate boiled eggs!' But his wife said 'What are you saying? For forty years continuously you have been eating boiled eggs for your breakfast and suddenly you hate them?' And the man said 'I have always hated them!' The wife said 'Well, why didn't you say so before?' He said 'I had no time! I was always in such a rush. I had to catch the train and go to the office. There was no time. Now I have time.'

After forty years... But I think even that is too early. As far as people's lives are concerned, even by the time they are dying they have not asked the only significant questions of 'Why was I here? Who am I? And what was the purpose of it all?' A person has lived his life -- seventy, eighty, ninety years -- and he is dying, he is like a letter which has remained unopened. Nobody has read it, not even he himself has read it. Even the envelope has not been opened. Nobody knows what the message was, why god created the person.

Everybody is living a life without any consciousness, that's why although we are destined to be kings we remain beggars. Our whole life is just a begging bowl we are continuously asking for more and more, and nothing ever satisfies us, nothing ever fills the bowl. The bowl remains empty.

And we are not meant to be beggars...

My whole effort here is to help you to become kings and queens. My sannyasins are not beggars. They have to be emperors; less than that won't do. But to be an emperor an empire is not needed at all. All that is needed is an inner understanding, an inner awareness. Just a small candle of awareness burning inside is enough and all darkness disappears.

And the moment you know yourself life becomes a bliss, a benediction, a gift of god, and one feels immensely thankful. Such gratitude arises towards existence that one cannot express it. One can only bow down to existence; not to a particular god -- Christian, Hindu or Mohammedan -- but to existence as such, to the trees, to the mountain, to the stars. We are part of an immensely beautiful universe, but if we don't know ourselves, how can we know the whole? At least we should become acquainted with who we are.

And the miracle of miracles is that even a small dewdrop contains the whole secret of all the oceans. So if we can know our own small dewdrop of consciousness we have opened the whole secret of existence.

Old age has a beauty of its own. Children are bound to be ignorant. Their innocence is nothing but ignorance. Young people are bound to be foolish because they have to learn and the only way to learn is through trial and error, they have to fool around -- that's the only way to become ripe and mature.

By the time one starts getting old one is neither ignorant nor inexperienced; one has a certain maturity, a certain ripeness -- and that is the right moment to enter the inner. The outer one has experienced and known and seen whatsoever it is. Now there is no more excitement; that game is finished. Now the whole energy can turn in -- and that's my work here, to turn you in. Once you start moving inwards then everything else follows of its own accord, then the kingdom of bliss is not far away.

The first step is the most difficult step and sannyas can help you in taking the first step. Then the second 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

follows easily. And the whole journey is completed in two steps the first is turning in and the second is to settle in, to sit in. That's why in Japan they call meditation zazen; zazen means just sitting, doing nothing.

Sitting within oneself, resting within oneself, and that's enough! It opens the door of all the mysteries.

Is the Grass Really Greener...?

Chapter #21

Chapter title: None

21 December 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8012205

ShortTitle: GREENR21

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Dhyan Rod. Dhyan means meditation. Rod means the esteemed one.

Society gives the feeling to every person that he is worthless. It is a political strategy. Once a person gets the idea that he is worthless, he cannot be rebellious, he cannot be independent, he cannot go outside the fold. He cannot choose a path of his own, he will follow the crowd.

Once the idea sinks deep into your unconscious that you are worthless you cannot trust yourself; you will have to trust the priest, the politician, the teacher, the parents -- all kinds of authorities. And you will seek them, you will cling to them because the ground underneath your feet has been taken away. You are afraid to be left alone on your own because then you know you cannot decide, all that you decide is wrong; you cannot act, whatsoever you do is wrong. Then it is better to follow the mob; let them decide, you just be an imitator.

To create imitators and slaves each child's trust in himself is being destroyed all over the world, in all kinds of societies and cultures, in all countries.

My effort here is to give you again the feeling of worth, a self-trust -- and that is possible only through meditation, because meditation can help you get rid of all conditionings. And it is only a matter of conditioning. Others have told you things again and again, they have hypnotised you. That hypnosis has to be destroyed, you have to be dehypnotised. That's what meditation is: a process of dehypnotisation. Once you are dehypnotised you wake up for the first time, then suddenly you know that you are immensely valuable, as everybody else is. Then one feels tremendous respect for oneself also. And it is not ego, because you feel the same respect for others. You are not higher, you are not holier than others; suddenly you have known that everyone is esteemed by nature itself, by the universe itself.

Prem Martina. Prem means love. Martina means a loyal heart, a loyal spirit, one who is capable of trust.

Love can arise only in the climate of trust. When you are full of doubts love is impossible. Doubt belongs to the mind and trust belongs to the heart. Being full of doubts mean s you are full of mind, and there is no space for the heart to grow. Being full of trust means you have emptied yourself of the mind, its doubts, and questions; then there is enough space for the heart to grow.

And remember one fundamental law of life, that the gross is stronger than the subtle, that the lower is stronger than the higher -- stronger in the sense that it has more destructive power. The higher is stronger in a totally different sense; it has more creative force but it is not destructive.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

Mind is a gross phenomenon. Heart is subtle, delicate, soft, feminine. Mind is male, aggressive, ambitious, destructive; mind has not created anything.

All that has been created -- great poetry, great music, great paintings -- all belongs to the heart. And love is the highest creation of the heart, but for that rose to grow you have to pull out all the weeds. Weeds are very strong people. They grow on their own -- that is the first thing -- you need not sow Roses don't grow on their own; you have to plant them and protect them -- they are delicate people. And if you leave it to nature then the roses will be crushed, destroyed. and the weeds will overpower everything.

The same is true about the inner world.

A priest was passing by and he saw a gardener working in his garden. Such beautiful roses had blossomed that the priest stopped to have a look and talk to the gardener. He said 'God and man together can create so much.' The gardener laughed and said 'You should have come before when god alone was growing this garden -- then there was not a single rose, there were all weeds.' The gardener said 'It is not co-operation with god; in fact I have been fighting against god! He was growing weeds and I am growing roses, and he still insists on growing weeds. It is a continuous struggle.' And he was right!

The higher has to fight against the lower, but the fight has to be very intelligent otherwise the lower will crush it.

Love has to be not only love but meditative love; then love has a tremendous intelligence, then it is not insane, it is the highest form of sanity. And then it knows how to protect itself, how to prevent doubts growing around it, how to prevent the mind from encroaching on the territory of the inner being.

It is only through meditation that love becomes capable of winning the battle -- between the mind and the heart, between doubt and trust, between logic and love. But if one is courageous enough one can drop the doubts. One can uproot all the weeds. That's the work a sannyasin has to do: uprooting the weeds of doubt and merging and molting into trust, surrender, into a deep and total yes. In that climate love blossoms.

That climate functions like the spring and suddenly one's whole life is full of roses.

Bodhi Herma. Bodhi means intelligence. Herma means diligence.

Intelligence alone is impotent; it can think but it cannot act. Diligence alone can act but it is blind, hence whatsoever it does will create more trouble and chaos. And this is one of the calamities in the world, that the diligent people are not intelligent and the intelligent people are not diligent. For example, Adolf Hitler, Napoleon, Alexander, are very diligent but not intelligent. Buddha, Lao Tzu, Kabir, are very intelligent but not diligent.

My sannyasin has to create a synthesis. It is beautiful that a few Buddhas have happened in the world, but if they had been creative also, if they had not been just silent, just blissful, but also active in the world, they would have immensely benefitted humanity. And these diligent people, they are really great workers; for their whole life they go on doing things. Whore even angels are afraid to tread, the fools rush in. They are very intelligent people, fools are very intelligent people. They are active, very active. Their activity is the danger, their diligence is the danger. If the fools are less diligent and the wise are more diligent it would be good. If the wise are a little less intelligent it will do but the fools should be a little more intelligent -- it will bring balance into the world.

That's why I am not telling my sannyasins to renounce the world and to escape to the monasteries. That would be easier: you can be silent, you can be blissful, you c an forget all about the world -- but it is not good to forget all about the world. It is our world; we have to make it beautiful, we have to make a paradise out of it.

So I am telling my sannyasins to remain in the marketplace yet to be there very intelligently so you are not contaminated by the marketplace; on the contrary, you transform the marketplace itself.

How long will you be here?

-- I'd like to stay for good, Osho.

-- That's good. Be here forever!

Paribodh means transcendental intelligence.

The intellect is part of the ordinary mind. It is needed in the world, it is really a biocomputer. It collects information, memory, and keeps all the records which you may need any time, but it is not intelligence; it is only intellect. Intelligence is something transcendental, beyond the intellect.

You have to go through the bridge of meditation, only then will you reach the other shore. This shore is intellect, the other shore is intelLigence. And these two shores have to be bridged. I am not against intellect, 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

but to remain confined to intellect is to remain confined to the outside world. To be just intellectual means to be a materialist, because intellect cannot give you any idea about that which is beyond it. It has a limitation; it can see matter because matter is measurable, weighable; it can be comprehended by the intellect. But it cannot give you any idea of consciousness. Consciousness is something beyond -- the other shore, the further shore.

That is the meaning of Paribodh: the other shore, the further shore, the shore of intelligence. It can be bridged -- meditation is the bridge.

Once you have bridged it, once you have known how to be silent, utterly silent, how to put your intellect, your mind, to rest, to bring it to a full stop, how to put it off, once you have learned the knack of it, suddenly your intelligence starts functioning and for the first time you become aware of the mysteries of life

-- of consciousness, of love, of truth, of god. And than you can use the intellect whenever it is needed.

When you want to remember somebody's phone number you can put it on, but when you don't want the phone number there is no need for the intellect to go on reminding you about phone numbers. And it goes on reminding you. Even if you go on shouting at it 'Shut up!', that does not matter, it laughs at you, it goes on saying the same phone number again and again. If you try to shut it up it will become very very aggressive. You can try it....

I give you the phone number -- 22333 -- and try to put it off... 22333.., (laughter) And the more you try... tonight try it! (more laughter) For the whole night you will have to remain awake, you cannot turn it off. Those figures will become bigger and bigger and bigger and they will cover your whole being and they will enter from this side and that side. You can go on shouting 'Shut up!', and they won't listen at all.

It is not a question of shouting at the mind; one needs a subtle technique to put it off. That technique is meditation. Reduced to its most essential core meditation means watching. When the mind says 22333, you simply watch, don't say anything; just look directly, go on looking. And you will be surprised: as you look those figures start evaporating, they recede. You go on looking without any fight, without shouting, without getting angry and they disappear.

This is how the whole mind is slowly slowly overcome. And one day when you have been able to put the mind to rest... It is good for the mind too to have a little rest; it starts working at the cradle and goes on working up to the grave, and maybe -- who knows? -- maybe even after you are in the grave it may be continuously working.

It is good that Hindus burn the bodies. One thing is certain, that it is finished, they have burned the computer. But inside the grave a Christian or a Mohammedan may be still doing things 22333 (laughter).

And then you cannot stop it at all; you cannot even get up. You cannot start reading the newspaper or turn the radio on! You cannot argue with your wife. There is nowhere to go; they don't even allow tossing and turning in the grave... just lying down and the same mind goes on playing the same games! Certain processes continue in the grave: hair goes on growing, nails go on growing -- so who knows? -- the mind may go on functioning just out of old habit.

But one thing is certain, that if mind continues to work you will never be able to know your innermost core -- and that is the liberating experience, the most ecstatic experience. Once you have tasted of it you are freed from all kinds of nonsense. You are freed from politics, you are freed from the so-called religions, you are freed from all kinds of ideologies. You start living in the moment, immediately related with reality, in tune, a dance arises in you -- a dance of spontaneity.

Of course, whenever you need the mind you can put it on and put it off.

Sambodh means right intelligence.

Intellect is the wrong intelligence. It pretends to be intelligence -- it is not. But we have accepted its pretension, so from the school to the university all that we do is to cultivate intellect. We think we are helping intelligence to grow; in fact we are hindering intelligence, we are putting more and more rocks on top of it. Hence it is not coincidental that the scholars and the professors and the so-called learned people are very efficient as far as their own field of work is concerned. Outside of their own field of work, outside of their own expertise, they prove utter fools, far more stupid than the ordinary human being. Even farmers and gardeners and labourers seem to be more intelligent.

Just take the scholar out of his field... In his field he is perfectly at ease because he is carrying a big load of information, all kinds of ready-made answers. Pull him out of his field, just as a simple question and he will be at a loss; if it does not concern his specialisation, he will be simply at a loss as to what to do with it.

By asking him a question any child can get him into trouble.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

This is bound to happen because intellect is not intelligence. And because of this continuous cultivation of intellect in the educational world we have deprived humanity of intelligence. Humanity needs a new kind of education. This education I call miseducation. Humanity needs a totally different perspective so that intelligence can grow. Of course intellect is needed, but they should be balanced.

But intellect should not become the boss, it should only be the servant. When intellect is the servant of intelligence then you are in the right situation; when the intellect is the master then intelligence disappears; then you are hung up in the head. Then you know much and still you are as ignorant as any ignorant person is. Your knowing does not transform your being. It does not give you bliss, it does not give you a better life.

It may give you a better standard of living -- intellect can do that, it has done it. It can give you a more comfortable life, a better standard of living, better devices, gadgets, more technology, but it cannot give you a better quality of life; it can only increase the quantity. The quality comes from intelligence.

The Buddha or Lao Tzu or Jesus are not very intellectual people, but they are utterly intelligent. And their very life shows it, their spontaneity, their totality, their joy. Their life is a festival of lights.

And that's how it should be for every sannyasin. Life has to be changed into a celebration. That can happen only through intelligence.

Intellect is the cultivation of the mind, intelligence is the discovery of meditation -- and meditation is a state of no-mind. So one has to shift from mind to no-mind. And one has to be flexible so that one can come back to the mind whenever needed and can go back to no-mind whenever mind is not needed, but one's home should be no-mind and mind should be only the porch, not more than that. Once in a while you have to pass the porch so you use it, but you don't live there. And ordinarily people are living in their porches and have completely forgotten about the palaces that are within themselves.

My function here is to remind you of your palace, of your kingdom.

Samvado means communion.

These two words: communication and communion, have to be understood. Communication is from head-to-head, communion is from heart-to-heart.

The relationship between the master and the disciple is of communion, it is not of communication. The relationship between a student and a teacher is of communication.

Becoming a sannyasin means now you will be listening more and more with the heart and less and less with the head. And listening from the heart is a totally different experience. There is no argument, there is no judgement; one listens just as one listens to the song of the birds or to music or to the wind passing through the pine trees. One is not questioning it, there is no why; one is simply enjoying it The master has to be enjoyed!

Remember it: the master has to be, in Jesus' words, eaten. The disciple has to be a cannibal. Don't be worried (laughter) to be a cannibal is perfect with me! To be with a master simply means to digest his being to let him come into you, to allow him to the innermost shrine of your being where you have never allowed anybody, where you yourself have never entered, to open all your doors and windows. That is Samvado that is communion. And then one understands not only the words, one starts understanding the silences too.

And when the disciple can understand the silence of the master then something miraculous transpires; then something from the master simply enters into the being of the disciple and the unlit candle of the disciple is suddenly lit and becomes aflame. Where there was darkness now there is only light and nothing else.

This is a commune. Becoming a sannyasin means becoming part of this commune. And commune means a space where people are living in communion, where people are no more interested in theories and words and reasons and logic and arguments; where people are only interested in living totally, in loving totally, in being totally.

Anurodh means invitation.

Truth has to be invited. One cannot conquer it, one cannot be aggressive about it If one is aggressive one will never get to know truth. In that very aggressiveness one becomes farther away from truth than ever.

Truth is a love affair; it is not a fight, not a struggle. One has to persuade it. Anurodh also means persuasion.

One has to slowly bring the truth into one's being.

So two things are needed: a deep receptivity, a welcoming and spaciousness within. And when you invite a guest you have to prepare your house, you have to make it ready. Truth is the ultimate guest, and when you are inviting truth you are becoming the ultimate host.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

That's what sannyas is all about: becoming the ultimate host, learning the art of being a host, so that truth can come, and not only come but can be persuaded to abide in you. It can be persuaded, that's the only way it has ever happened.

Open up to truth like a lotus opens to the sun.

The sun is showering but if the lotus is closed then the rays don't reach its inner core. If the lotus is open then the sun starts dancing on the petals and the lotus becomes really alive when the sun starts showering. In that very shower its fragrance is released.

Asking truth to enter you, inviting truth to be a guest in your heart, is asking light to penetrate you -- and without your becoming afraid, allowing it to reach the very core, the very centre. It goes like an arrow and penetrates your very being. The moment the arrow of truth penetrates your being two things happen: death and resurrection. You die as you have always been before and something new is born, something totally new, which has never been there before. It is a rebirth, a resurrection.

Sannyas is only the beginning of learning the art; it is just ABC. But if you can take the first step then other steps are bound to follow.

So become an invitation to god, to truth, to love, to bliss, to all that is, and thousands of gifts are ready to shower on you. But we are closed -- we have to be open, vulnerable.

Risk everything and be open. It is better to die as a flower than to live as a seed.

Is the Grass Really Greener...?

Chapter #22

Chapter title: None

22 December 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8012215

ShortTitle: GREENR22

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Anand Gerard. Anand means bliss. Gerard means courageous, brave; it also means symbolically, loyal heart.

The phenomenon of bliss has a few basic requirements, and these two are very important: courage and loyalty. And both belong to the heart. The mind is always a coward and the mind is always full of doubts.

Cowardliness and doubting are two sides of the same coin, and in the same way courage and trust are two sides of the same coin.

Sannyas means changing the gestalt, the pattern of your energy, shifting yourself from the head to the heart. The moment you start living through the heart, life is blissful -- that is a by-product. If you live through the head life is a misery -- that too is a by-product. The head is impotent in creating bliss -- and we are all trying to do that, hence the tremendous failure of humanity.

It is not only a question of a few individuals; the whole of humanity is at a loss now. We have tried for centuries to live through the head and we have created deeper and deeper misery. We have made the earth a hell, now it is the time that, rather than going on the same track, in the same vicious circle, we change the whole energy pattern. Man needs a rebirth, a radical change. The future belongs to the heart; and my effort here is to help you to bring your energy from the head to the heart. Once it is there, life is a song, a 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

celebration.

Dhyan Vivien. Dhyan means meditation. Vivien means lively, alive, full of life.

People are alive only at the minimum. The difference between death and life is not much. People are existing only on the boundary line -- just a little accident and they are no more. Why people have decided to live at the minimum is one of the most significant questions worth pondering over.

There is a Sufi story: a king made a palace only with one door, there was not even a window, so that he could be absolutely safe. That one door was guarded by a big military force and over that military force there was another force to supervise, and then another force to supervise them; so three circles of military forces were guarding only one door.

One of the king's friends -- who was also a king -- visited him. He had heard much about this palace and when he saw it he said 'It is really safe. There is no possibility of any danger.'

When he was departing the owner of the palace came out to give him a send-off and again the guest praised the palace and he said 'I will also make a palace like this.' A beggar sitting on the street started laughing. They both asked him 'Why are you laughing?' The king who owned the palace said 'What is so funny about his praising my palace?' The man said 'I am laughing because there is only one loophole -- that one door. If you really want to be safe you be inside and let people make a wall instead of a door -- then you will be absolutely safe. Right now you are only ninety -- nine point nine per cent safe and that point one per cent of danger is enough to kill a person. That's why I am laughing.'

The story is significant; it says people have started living at the minimum to be safe, to be secure. To live fully means to live dangerously, to live fully means to live in insecurity, to live fully means to live at the maximum. Then life is an adventure, then one never knows what is going to happen; one cannot be predictable. But life is life only when you live at the maximum, at the highest peak. Of course the danger is there that if you fall from the peak you are gone forever, but that danger is worthwhile, that risk is worthwhile. If one chooses not to take that risk then one lives in vain; one only vegetates and calls it life.

Meditation is nothing but the process of helping you to go to the ultimate peak of your energy, to transfer your energy from the minimum to the maximum, from the valley to the peak. Hence meditation teaches you to live dangerously, to live adventurously, to live like a gambler, not like a businessman.

Sannyas is a gamble. It is risky, it is going into the unknown, into the uncharted -- but that's its beauty too. The very danger brings life.

Just the other day I was reading that a man, a very great criminal in America, has died. His whole expertise was robbing banks; for his whole life he was robbing banks. For almost forty years of the sixty-five years of his life he was in goal, but he robbed all the big banks, he was the most famous robber.

He has written a small autobiography and he says 'The most alive moments in my life were when I was robbing a bank. I lived for those few moments; all else was just a preparation to live. Those few moments when I was robbing a bank, actually robbing -- the risk, the danger, the wondering what was going to happen, whether I was going to succeed or was going to be caught or killed... Those were the few moments I lived!'

Now if this man had met me, then I would have told him to rob god. Why are you just robbing the bank of America? The real risk is robbing god, his kingdom -- and that's the whole art of meditation. It makes you a master thief. So get ready!

Prem Oscar. Prem moans love. Oscar means god's spear. Love is certainly god's spear: it kills you -- but it resurrects you also. It goes directly to the heart.

All that is needed is to be available to god, and by saying that I simply mean to be available to existence

-- to me god and existence are synonymous -- to be available to the sun, to the wind, to the rain, to be available to all that is, to be open and vulnerable. Then one day the spear comes and shatters you, just kills you. But that death is the most precious thing in life. To be killed by god is the greatest blessing because out of that death arises a totally now kind of life.

In fact then you know that whatsoever you have been calling life was not life. Compared to that your old life looks like death, your old light looks like darkness, your old riches look like poverty. But we have been brought up not to be vulnerable, not to be open, to remain closed-fisted. We are brought up in fear, and fear is the only thing that prevents love; fear is the direct opposite of love. To live in fear is to live a loveless life, and a loveless life cannot taste god.

So drop all fears. There is nothing to fear because nothing can be taken away from you. Remember one 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

fundamental law: that which you have really got cannot be taken away, so only the non-essential can be taken away; the essential cannot be taken away. It is part of your innermost existence, it is inseparably one with you. There is no possibility of creating a division between the essential and you. The essential means you -- the essence. That is your real richness, and nobody can rob you of it, not even god; it is impossible to lose it. And that to which you are clinging is bound to be taken away -- if not today then tomorrow, is not tomorrow then the day after tomorrow. And sooner it is taken, the better, because if it is not taken soon then you will be worrying about it; once it is taken the worry is finished. Then there is no more worry because all is gone, so why bother? One can have a good sleep, can rest and relax.

God always comes as a death to the ego.

In the ancient Indian scriptures the master is called death, and it is very significant because the master means one who is going to become the door to god: god will enter through the master. The moment you are in tune with the master you are available to god. The master is only a device to bring you into a certain tuning so that the spear of god can go directly to your heart.

And the most precious moment is when the ego dies and you are left egoless. Egolessness is love. Then love flows for no reason at all. And not to anybody in particular, it simply flows just as fragrance is released from a flowers unaddressed, to whomsoever it may concern.

Suryodaya means sunrise.

I have chosen the colour red with all its shades for my sannyasins. It symbolises sunrise, the reddening of the eastern horizon just before the sun arrives. The East becomes full of colours, but they are all shades of red. It is getting ready to welcome the sun. The night is over, the birds have started singing, the flowers have started opening, the people and the animals and the trees are waking up. Life is going through a new birth.

The night has been a small death; the sun heralds the beginning of a new day. Again life will celebrate and dance and sing, again there will be love and joy and all that is beautiful and alive.

Sannyas is sunrise in the inner world, the early morning, the dawn, the declaration that the night is over and that the day is just close by, at hand -- get ready to welcome it!

Purvodaya means the rise of the East.

The East is a symbol for the inner, just as the West is the symbol for the outer. The East represents religion, the West represents science. Both are significant and a great meeting of the two is needed. And it will be the greatest blessing for humanity when Rudyard Kipling is proved wrong. He says, "East is East and West is West and n'er the twain shall meet."

Ordinarily he looks right because how can the inner and the outer meet, and how can science and religion meet? -- they look poles apart. But those who dive deeper find a strange phenomenon, that all polarities are joined together, already joined together, that all polar opposites are really complementaries. It is just as the negative and the positive poles of electricity cannot exist in separation -- they have to be together. It is just as man and woman cannot exist separately, just as night and day and summer and winter and life and death, are joined together.

So it is not really a question of creating a synthesis between East and West; it is only a question of discovering it -- it is already there. But whether the meeting is discovered or not, one thing has to be remembered -- that the West has fulfilled its work, and now the time has come for the East to contribute, otherwise humanity will remain lopsided.

The West has given science, technology, all that is needed to make life comfortable on the outside; the East has to give its part, so that life can be blissful inside. So a great rise of the East is immensely needed and immediately needed.

And only when both have contributed in a balanced way can we discover that they are complementary.

My effort here is to give you the keys of eastern mysticism.

It is not a coincidence that so many western intellectuals, artists, painters, musicians, poets, scientists have gathered around me. It is significant because only they can understand that which is missing. The East is living in such poverty, in such an ugly state of affairs that it has no time to think of higher things. It pays lip-service to the Buddha, to Krishna, to Mahavira, to Lao Tzu, but it is only lip-service. It has lost track of its own inheritance, so it doesn't feel that it is missing something on the inner.

You can only feel that something is missed on the inner when the outer is there; then in contrast you can see that the inner is missing. If the outer is missing then you will never be able to see that the inner is missing. When you are rich on the outside you can immediately feel that inside you are poor.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

The East is poor on the outside, hence it cannot feel that the inner is also poor -- they look alike, there is no contrast. So very few people from the East will be benefitted by me. They will be benefitted in a very round-about way: first the West has to be given the keys and once the West starts becoming spiritually rich then these eastern people will start learning from the West the same keys that they always had with them but which they had completely forgotten about.

To me, East does not mean just the East of today; to me it symbolizes all the great spiritual experiences that happened in the East. And tremendous is the contribution of Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu, Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna, Kabir -- tremendous is the contribution. But the East is not in a state to understand it.

The West is in a state now to understand it. For the first time in the West it is possible to understand Lao Tzu, Zen, Yoga, Tantra.

The East has to rise in the West. It looks very contradictory but that's how it is: the sun has to rise in the West. And that's what is slowly happening here. And in the new commune it is going to happen on a vaster scale.

You all have to be aware that you are participating in something tremendously important. Its significance will become clear only very much later on; only history will be able to look back and see its importance, because only later on can you see, with a bigger perspective, what has happened. When it is actually happening nobody is capable of understanding unless one is awakened.

I have heard that when Jesus was born Joseph came in and was very much puzzled because Mary was crying and weeping. He said "What are you doing? You have given birth to such a beautiful child and you are crying..." She said "Yes, because I always wanted a girl!"

It is difficult, when Jesus is there it is difficult. Even his mother is crying!

So this country is not going to understand me, the East is not going to understand me; on the contrary they will condemn me. I have to depend on the West. But my work consists in giving birth, a rebirth, to the East.

Prem Arti. Prem means love. Arti means worship, prayer.

Love is the only true worship. One need not go to any church or synagogue or temple, one has just to become loving. Love needs no belief, no theology, no priest. We are born with the energy, we just have to be courageous enough to share it.

And one has to share it not only with the person one has fallen in love with -- because when you make your love very narrow and limited your soul also becomes very narrow and limited. When love becomes exclusive then it starts dying. It has to be inclusive, it has to include all, only then does it reach to its full flowering, then it rises to the highest peak, it becomes an Everest.

So love the people you are in love with, but love strangers too. And not only people -- love animals, trees, rocks, stars. In short, simply love -- don't be bothered about to whom it is addressed. Any excuse is enough and one should be loving. And if there is no excuse, invent excuses, but be loving!

The whole emphasis is on being loving. And these are the three stages: first, love is one-pointed, exclusive; second, one becomes loving, inclusive, and third, one simply becomes love. That is the moment when it becomes worship and that is the moment when one becomes aware of god.

Satish means, your very being is God. Sat means being, ish means God.

God is not something outside you, God is your very being. And one has to discover God inside oneself.

Going anywhere is pointless unless you go in. Every journey to some other place is an escape from yourself; you are going farther away from God. When you are not going anywhere, not even in thoughts and dreams and desires, when all journeying, physical and psychological, has come to a full stop -- when all journeying as such has stopped -- suddenly you discover that which has always been there, but you were never there so the meeting was not happening. It is at the very center of your existence that God is luminous.

Once he has been found there then you can find him everywhere else, but first he has to be found within.

Then he is in every person, every animal, every tree, every rock; then he is all over the place. And to know that your being and the being of the whole universe are one, brings tremendous rejoicing. All fear disappears, all worry disappears, all anxiety disappears because now there is no death: you have become part of the eternal. You are no more a part, you have become the whole.

Kavya Gunjano. Kavya means poetry. Gunjano means humming.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

Man is made of music. There is a deep humming inside. We are made of that song -- it is wordless it is pure sound, hence I call it humming. It has no meaning but tremendous significance. You cannot interpret it, you cannot describe it, you cannot define it, but once you have experienced it your life becomes luminous you are glowing with it, it is a glory. It brings a new shine to your being, a new flavour and fragrance.

This is one of the secret discoveries of all the mystics, that basically life is poetry, not prose, music, not mathematics, mystery, not science. And when the whole mind has ceased and there is no functioning of the mind, then you can hear that humming sound rising upwards from the depths of your being. One becomes overwhelmed by it. One feels renewed, reborn -- it is so refreshing, it is such a rejuvenation. One is bathed with the divine.

In the East we have called that humming 'omkar': the sound of om. The sound of om comes closest to it

-- it is not exactly it, but approximately it. If you hum 'om, om...', then it gives you some feel of it, but just approximately, not exactly.

So get more and more in tune with poetry and music and get out of the mind. Dance and sing and celebrate with great abandon. That is going to be your meditation, that is going to be your entry into sannyas: be drunk.

I am inviting all kinds of dangerous people -- gamblers, drunkards, crazy cuckoos all kinds of people (much laughter). but they are the most beautiful people in the world. The so-called sane are just ugly; they are too sane to be alive, to calculative, too Jewish -- they cannot be human!

Satyam means the truth.

Truth is not something which can be found by philosophizing, it is not a conclusion of thought; on the contrary it is a realization of no-thought. Philosophy is a distraction: one has to stop philosophizing.

Just today I was reading one of Rudolf Steiner's statements that "If a German comes to a crossroad and one sign says 'heaven' and the other says 'lecture about heaven', the German always goes to the lecture about heaven." Philosophy is that kind of thing; a lecture about the truth.

Be less a thinker and more an experiencer. That's my fundamental message, be existential. Intellect can go on round and round but it never reaches the real thing. It cannot, it's not possible for it. Truth has to be found in a state of no-mind, so the whole work here consists in putting the mind aside, in living beyond mind, in just living and rejoicing in living without thinking about it.

And it is not only true about Germans, it is true about almost everybody in the world; particularly about the educated people. And unfortunately now almost everybody, more or less, is educated. For one hundred years universal education has been the slogan of the social reformers and the missionaries and the servants of the people and they have almost educated everybody. Now everybody is thinking and nobody is living.

D.H. Lawrence has a good suggestion that if we could close all the schools and all the universities for one hundred years then there would be hope for humanity. I agree perfectly with him; it would be a tremendously beautiful experiment. For a hundred years all Oxfords and Cambridges and all schools and colleges from Kindergarten to the university, would be closed -- a one-hundred-year holiday! And in those one hundred years man would regain his primitiveness, his authenticity, his existential status. And I don't think that man will open those schools and colleges again -- ever!

Truth is within you, just be silent and know it. It is a question of being silent and knowing. Thinking keeps you occupied, so much so that you cannot know that truth is already inside you, it is already the case.

Satyodaya means the rise of truth.

Man has lived in beliefs for centuries, and beliefs have deprived man of truth. To believe simply means to be untruthful. One believes only because one does not know, if one knows, there is no need to believe.

For example, I don't believe in god, because I know -- there is no need to believe. The man with eyes does not believe in light, he knows it; but the blind man believes. He believes there is light, there are colours and there are people with eyes -- that is his belief.

Belief is a deception, it keeps you deluded. Truth can rise in you if you are ready to drop all the beliefs

-- Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, Buddhist. One should not choose. Without any choice put all the beliefs in one bag and throw them into the ocean. And do it in a single blow, don't go gradually, slowly slowly throwing one belief and then another, then another -- because then it will take many lives to get rid of them.

There are millions of beliefs, beliefs within beliefs. They are like Chinese boxes, boxes within boxes: you open one and throw it, another box comes up; you open it, then another and it goes on and on. And the smaller the box, the more difficult it is to throw it, because it becomes subtler and subtler. So it is better to 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

throw the whole box, the big one, because it contains all the smaller ones.

That's why people think I am destroying their religions. In a way they are right, because I am telling people to throw the whole box. It contains all their ideals, their churches, their temples, their Gitas, their Bibles, their Korans and I am telling them to throw it wholesale -- don't go retail! Go all the way in a single step and be finished with it and you will be surprised: the moment all beliefs are dropped suddenly there is a totally new light arising in you which you have never been aware of -- and that is truth. That truth liberates and that truth brings blessings and benediction.

Is the Grass Really Greener...?

Chapter #23

Chapter title: None

23 December 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8012225

ShortTitle: GREENR23

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Prem Lorenzo. Prem means love. Lorenzo literally means laurel; the laurel symbolises victory and immortality.

It is only through love that one becomes aware that the real treasure is not in ego possessions, in ego trips, in ego numbers; the real treasure is in surrendering the ego.

It simply means you are relating to somebody without the ego being present. When the contact with somebody is without the ego, it is love. And then it can go on spreading. One can relate to the whole existence -- the secret is the same. Whether you relate with one person or with the whole universe, it is the same key -- that the ego has not to be there. And it is a simple arithmetic; when you have known bliss by relating to one person egolessly, you know how much ecstasy is possible if you relate in the same way with the whole universe -- it will be immeasurable, it will be infinite.

Love gives you the first glimpse of your real treasure. That is the victory. And those moments of love when the ego does not exist, does not function, are also timeless moments. They are not moments of time but moments of timelessness; they are part of eternity. In those moments one also becomes aware that there is no death, that there has been no birth in the first place, that one has always been here and now. Birth and death are just episodes in the eternal celebration of life. One does not begin with birth, one does not end with death.

That clarity also arises out of egolessness, out of love. And these two can define the whole of religion: to know that 'I am immortal,' and to be victorious. One has come home. Now there is nowhere to go, no need to go anywhere. The begging bowl simply disappears. One becomes an emperor... but this is a kingdom not of this world.

Jesus was very much misunderstood by people because he continuously talked about the kingdom of god and the politicians thought that he was talking about the kingdom of this world; the political mind cannot think beyond this world. As his influence started growing the politicians became afraid that this man was going to conquer power because he was talking in terms of conquering the inner world, of being victorious. They misunderstood him completely, totally.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

The religious establishment became afraid, the political establishment became afraid and both conspired to kill this simple, innocent man. His only crime was that he was using words which could have both meanings. But that problem has always been there because the words basically are meant to be for this world, so whatsoever words you use, you will have to choose from these words, these languages. You may try to give them a new meaning and a new colour but people will go on understanding them according to their conditioning.

But these are the basic elements of a true religion: victory over darkness -- and ego is nothing but darkness -- and the experience of immortality. You can call it god, you can call it nirvana, but the basic thing is that you have experienced something which is beyond time. Whatsoever name one wants to use one can use.

Lao Tzu says 'It has no name, hence I will call it tao.' A very beautiful statement, because it has no name some name has to be given -- xyz. Tao means xyz -- it does not mean anything at all. He says 'So any name will do. I prefer to call it tao. If your preference is different, that's perfectly okay!'

Gyanveeto. Gyan means knowledge. Veeto means going beyond.

One of the most significant statements in the Upanishads is that ignorance is not as dangerous as knowledge. The ignorant person falls into darkness but the knowledgeable person falls into deeper darkness.

The ignorant can find the home more easily, but the knowledgeable person is lost in the jungle of words, theories, hypotheses, ideologies, philosophies -- there is no end to it.

The first step in sannyas is to get rid of knowledge and the second step is to get rid of ignorance and the journey is complete. But first one has to get rid of knowledge because it is knowledge that covers your ignorance, protects your ignorance. It gives you a false notion that you know, when in reality you know nothing.

But people are even afraid to ask the question 'Do I know? Do I know god? Do I know truth? Do I know love? Do I know what this universe is? Who am I?' People are afraid of asking these questions, afraid because they will bring you to your ignorance, you will have to encounter your ignorance, and ignorance is very shattering to the ego.

Knowledge is a nourishment to the ego, so everybody wants to remain knowledgeable. People go on accumulating knowledge, degrees, only in order to hide the fact that they are ignorant of the fundamental things of life and all their knowledge is based on that ignorance. The whole edifice of their knowledge is fundamentally wrong. It will collapse any moment, anybody can destroy it. That's why people don't want to argue, don't want to listen to anything new. Afraid, their house starts trembling, shaking; they start feeling that any moment their whole structure can collapse -- it is better to be deaf, it is better to be blind. So they see only that which helps to keep their ego intact and they hear only that which nourishes their ego, they see only that which fits with their knowledge and they hear only that which becomes more and more of a support of their knowledge.

By becoming a sannyasin one has to change the whole process. All supports have to be withdrawn, all props have to be removed, so that your knowledge collapses. Its collapse is a great achievement, because when you suddenly discover your ignorance you have discovered your childhood too.

When you discover your ignorance you have discovered your innocence too. And it is very easy to so beyond ignorance because ignorance is a natural phenomenon. It is not arbitrary, it is not ego-fulfilling.

The difference between ignorance and knowledge is like... if you are chained with golden chains, studded with diamonds, that is knowledge. You would cling to your chains, to your slavery because it seems it is so precious. You would not like anybody to tell you that these are chains and you are imprisoned. You would like people to think that these are ornaments, not chains. golden chains become ornaments. Ignorance is like just ordinary steel chains, nothing precious in them except their ugliness; there is nothing to protect, there is nothing to brag about, one wants to get rid of them.

The real problem is to get rid of knowledge because we have put so much effort into accumulating it.

Our schools, colleges, universities exist and almost one-third -- and the most important one-third -- of our life is wasted in accumulating information. By the time one is an M.A. or a Ph.D., one has lost one-third of one's life, twenty-five years -- and the most precious time, the most alive time. One will never be so alive again, one will never be so daring again, and all these beautiful years are wasted in accumulating stupid facts geography and history, which are utterly meaningless.

But if one is ready one can get rid of knowledge in a single blow, and suddenly your beautiful ignorance arises. It is beautiful because it is natural; you have not gone to any school, to any college, to any university, 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

to learn its you are born with it. It is a gift of god.

Hidden inside it is wisdom, it is a seed, the shell of the seed. If you put it into the soil and the seed disappears into the soil a plant will arise and soon there will be flowers and fragrance.

Ignorance is like a seed and when you put your ignorance into the soil of meditation your life becomes full of roses.

So these two steps are the whole journey of sannyas, first get rid of knowledge and then second, in the soil of meditation let your ignorance disappear. Then whatsoever potential you have got will start growing of its own accord. You are really born the day your potential starts becoming actual.

Deva Dhirjo. Deva means divine. Dhirjo means patience.

There are things which can be achieved by our effort and there are things which are achieved only by effortless waiting. Things that can be achieved by effort -- money, power, prestige -- are mundane. They are worldly things, not really valuable, because according to those who have known the definition of the valuable is that which will go with you when you die. When you leave your body, that moment will be decisive about whether you have anything valuable with you or not. Your money will be left, your power, your prestige -- everything will be left behind, you will go empty-handed. As far as these things of the world are concerned you cannot carry any with you so they are valueless.

But there are a few things which will go with you, which are intrinsic love, meditation, awareness, freedom. They are not on the outside, they are on the inside; they are part of your being, they are flowers of your being. These are the really valuable things but they cannot be achieved by effort, will; they can only be achieved by opening up to existence, by just being vulnerable, waiting, not being in a hurry. If one has to wait forever one is ready to wait forever -- such trust is patience. And the miracle is that if one is ready to wait forever it can happen right now.

The more you are in a hurry, the less is the possibility of its happening, because when you are in a hurry you are closed. You are not available to the present; your mind is somewhere in the future -- expecting, desiring, rushing to get it. You are not here, you are not now. But when there is no hurry and when you know that it is not going to happen through your effort, it is going to be a gift from the whole to the part, from the universe, just a gift... If life is a gift... You have not earned it. You suddenly found one day that you are alive, breathing, suddenly one day you find that love is arising in you, suddenly one day you discover that there is a deep longing to know the truth of it all. These are all gifts!

So one has to wait for the gifts. One has not even to ask, not even to pray. Without any expectation one simply waits. A great silence descends when one learns how to wait, a tremendous silence, abysmal, a bottomless silence. In that silence one can hear one's own heartbeats.

In America in scientific labs they have made an absolutely soundproof room. There are soundproof rooms all over the world but this one is absolutely soundproof. It is a space research centre -- because when the astronauts go into space they will have to encounter one of the most difficult things: profound silence.

We are accustomed to noise. we may even sometimes complain about the noisy world and the traffic and the trains and the aeroplanes, but you don't know, if all this noise suddenly disappears and you are left in silence you may have a heart attack! You may simply sink! It will be too much -- you will not be able to take it in.

So before the astronaut goes into space... because the space is absolutely silent. No music, no radios, no televisions, no loudspeakers -- there is nothing. In all the directions as far as you can imagine it is all silence, because there is no air so sound cannot travel. The air surrounds the earth only for two hundred miles; beyond two hundred miles sound cannot travel. The moment the spaceship passes that barrier at two hundred miles, it is in absolute silence. So the astronaut has to be prepared, otherwise he will not be able to encounter it; he may die, the shock may be too much. For that this room has been created.

Slowly slowly, first for a few seconds, then for a few minutes, then for half an hour, then for an hour, then for a day, then for two days, then for a week... slowly slowly the person who is getting ready to go into space prepares himself.

A musician went to visit this absolutely sound-proof room. When he entered it he could not believe what was happening. They had told him it was absolutely silent, but he heard two sounds very clearly, absolutely clearly, and they were not whisperlike -- they were so much that he enquired of the director of the lab 'What is the matter? From where are these two sounds coming?'

And the director laughed; he said 'They are not coming from anywhere. One is your heart beating, the other is the sound of your blood circulating. They are not coming from anywhere, you are hearing your own 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

sounds; they are inside you and you are inside the room. Nothing can be done about it unless your heart stops, your blood circulates no more...' Out he could not believe it at first that the blood circulation also makes sound; and the heart was beating like a drum -- the noise was so loud! The absolute silence became a contrast.

The meditator also has to be ready. He is also a kind of astronaut, astronaut of the inner world, of the inner space, which is far bigger than the outer space and far more profoundly silent. And the best way to taste it is just to be herenow, available, with no desire, no expectation; just being -- that is patience. And I call patience divine because god comes through it God is experienced only by those who are ready to wait forever!

Nishabdo means wordlessness. That's what meditation is all about. We are full of words, a constant stream of words goes on flowing inside. You may be occupied with any kind of work on the outside but inside a subtle undercurrent of words continues.

The Old Testament says in the beginning was the word and god was with the word and god was the word. This cannot be the true beginning, because if the word was already present that presupposes mind, so god already had a mind. And when you have a mind then you cannot just live with one word. Words don't believe in birth control one word creates a thousand words. They are very reproductive.

Just take any word and think about it, ponder over it and you will be surprised, it brings up other words immediately. You may not even be able to find out what the association is. For example, the word 'dog': just ponder over the word 'dog' and you will be puzzled that it brings up so many things, strange things that you would have never thought the word 'dog' could trigger within you. You may remember your girlfriend who had a dog and your girlfriend may have been a communist (laughter) and you may remember Karl Marx --

who has nothing to do with the dog. And then DAS KAPITAL and the Communist Manifesto and Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse Tung... It starts and then it never stops! Any word can trigger a process in you and it will go on and on.

So to say that in the beginning there was the word, is not right. If in the beginning the word was there then it could not be alone. Whatsoever the word was it would bring other words in, it would create the whole world of the mind, the whole atmosphere of the mind. It would create the climate, all kinds of associations; multi-dimensionally it will bring things. God would already be going insane -- and the world is a proof. He must have got very insane, only then could he have created such a world -- so crazy, so miserable.

If I were to write the Old Testament then I would start: in the beginning was silence -- it cannot be the word -- and at the end again there will be silence, because the beginning is always the end too. If in the beginning was the word then at the end also there will be the word. So there will be no end; you will continue, you will go on thinking, you will go on philosophising.

Meditation means reaching to the very beginning or to the very end -- which is the same: it is silence.

There is no word, no thought, no ripple in the lake of consciousness. And the lake functions like a mirror; it reflects all the stars as they are without interpreting, because there is nobody to interpret. There is only clarity, sensitivity, awareness.

So beware of words. They will not go easily because we have been tending them for so long, for thousands of lives. They will not so easily. When you are becoming silent suddenly a word will comes

'Look, Nishabdo, this is the thing!' But these are words and they have disturbed the whole thing, even if you say 'Right, this is silence' -- finished (laughter), then the word has come in and with the word comes the whole world. Immediately you will say 'I have disturbed it,' and the train has started moving, shunting.

One has to be so silent that there is not even any idea of silence -- just silence, no labelling, not even

'aha!' otherwise it is finished! So one has to be very alert, very watchful of words. They will come in from any possible way; from the backdoor, from the windows they will jump in, from the ceiling suddenly they will come in. They are tricky fellows! (laughter) You may be silent and you may not have said anything and then suddenly you will say 'So they have not come' -- finished! They are there. They were just watching from around the corner.

But if one is aware, slowly slowly one learns all their tricks, strategies, diplomacies. And the more one knows how the mind functions, the more out of it one is. A day certainly comes when silence prevails without any interference, any interpretation. In that very moment one becomes enlightened. To be wordless is to go beyond the word.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

Anand Rupen. Anand means bliss. Rupen means beauty.

The only beautiful experience in life is that of bliss. And whenever, wherever, you experience beauty there must be something of bliss present. Looking at a sunset you see great beauty -- that simply means the sunset has been so stunning that your mind stopped, that its constant whirling suddenly disappeared.

Suddenly you were silent and in that silence you tasted bliss. That is happening within you. Because you are focussed on the sunset or the starry night and you are lost in the grandeur of the stars, you have forgotten your ordinary mind and ordinary worries and anxieties. You are taken farther away from your ordinary existence; for a moment you are no more the same person as you ordinarily are. The starry night was too much, the stars pulled you like magnets.

In those moments the juices of bliss start flowing inside you. Of course because you are not aware you think it is the starry night that has given you bliss or the sunset or the flower or the beautiful woman o the beautiful music; you find some rationalisation because you felt so good, such a well-being. But you are really putting the horses behind the cart. It is not beauty that creates bliss; it is blissfulness that gives you the sense of beauty.

Once you have known this you can put the horses in front of the cart and then the journey starts --

because with the horses behind the cart the journey is impossible; the cart will block the horses. You may go on sitting in the cart forever, complaining about every kind of thing, that the road is not good and that the horses are mad, and what to do and what not to do and you are not going anywhere and what is this all, what is this life all about? The whole thing is that you are sitting in the cart and the horses are at the back; they need to be put in the front.

Bliss is the first experience in our being, then we feel beauty outside. Beauty is just the reflection of a blissful heart. So the person who is blissful finds beauty everywhere. When bliss starts flowing in you twenty-four hours a day you are surrounded by beauty twenty-four hours a day. Then everything is beautiful, then suddenly the whole universe is immensely beautiful. Each moment brings great surprises, great gifts. And bliss not only beautifies the universe, it beautifies you too. It is very alchemical; it changes your very chemistry.

It gives you grace, it gives you love, it gives you courage, it gives you both a kind of drunkenness and a kind of awareness together. And that is the most beautiful experience in life: to be alert and drunk simultaneously. And that's what my sannyasins have to be, drunk and alert and awake simultaneously.

Is the Grass Really Greener...?

Chapter #24

Chapter title: None

24 December 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8012235

ShortTitle: GREENR24

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

This is your name: Swami Anand Ole. Anand means bliss. Ole means peaceful heart.

Peace alone is not enough -- alone it is dead; it is alive only when it is blissful. Bliss is the breath for peace; without bliss there is no heartbeat in peace, then it is just a corpse. It is easier to attain peace if one is 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

ready to renounce bliss -- and that's what monks and nuns have been doing down the ages all over the world: renouncing bliss in order to gain peace. But because it is easy and cheap it has no significance at all.

One can move into a mountain cave and live peacefully but there will be no song, there will be no joy, there will be no disturbance certainly and there will be no direction, but everything will be just okay. It will not be a dance, it will not be something overflowing.

My sannyasins have to understand very clearly that I would like you to be peaceful but not without bliss.

And to attain bliss and peace together needs great skill and intelligence; it needs meditativeness. It is an art to bring these two poles together and create a higher synthesis out of them. Then bliss is peaceful and peace is blissful. Both together are more than just the combination of the two; something plus descends from the beyond. That's what has been called god.

You can call it life, truth, nirvana, but it only comes when both have been balanced and both are together like two wings of a bird.

Anand Mitzi. Anand means bliss. Mitzi means fragrance.

Pleasure is a seed. It contains all possibilities of happiness and of bliss, but they are all hidden and dormant. And millions of people die only knowing the seed, but the seed is worthless in itself unless it finds the right soil and disappears in the soil and dies, only then is the plant born.

Happiness is the plant with many branches and foliage. And when the tree starts flowering -- flowers are like joy -- the tree is rejoicing! Flowers symbolise the tree being ready to share. It has too much; it is in a dance, it wants to share its being, its joy. It is overflowing energy that becomes flowers. An undernourished tree wi ll not give flowers. It will be starving; even its leaves will be dull, sad, dying, on their deathbed. Its branches will not be alive and swaying in the wind and enjoying the sun. Unless it blooms it is not fulfilled.

So flowers are joyous, but bliss is like fragrance, even beyond the flowers. When flowers release the fragrance that is the culmination, the realisation of the potential in its totality.

The seed was very visible, very material, the fragrance is invisible, very immaterial. The seed was like a body and the fragrance is like a soul. Bliss is spiritual, pleasure is physical. Happiness belongs to the mind, joy belongs to the heart. And these are the four things to be understood, from the seed you have to move to the plant, from the plant to the flowers, from the flowers to the fragrance. Then life has arrived, then your destiny is fulfilled.

In the East we have called that moment Buddhahood; in the West it has been called Christ-consciousness, but it is the same moment. One has become just fragrance, and the fragrance merges with the whole, it disappears. That's exactly the meaning of the word 'nirvana'. It is one of the most beautiful words.

When you blow out a candle it is said in Sanskrit that the candle has achieved nirvana -- 'nirvana' means blowing out a candle. The flame was there just a moment before, now either it is nowhere or it is everywhere. Both mean the same; nowhere and everywhere are synonymous. It has merged with the whole so it has no separate entity. Fragrance is nirvana. All that is gross and material has disappeared, only the subtlest has remained -- and that too is merged with the whole. There is no more any ego. Then only does one know what it is -- the bliss, the ecstasy -- for which we have been longing for thousands of lives.

It is possible! It needs just a little effort, just a little conscious, deliberate search -- because it is our potential so it can become actual.

Anand Vincent. Anand means bliss, Vincent means a conqueror.

A man without bliss is a beggar, a man with bliss is a conqueror, an emperor.

While coming to India Alexander the Great went to see Diogenes -- a rare individual. He was lying naked on the bank of a river in the sun, taking a sunbath. He didn't even get up to welcome Alexander.

Alexander asked him, "Can I do something for you? I have heard stories about you, and I have always longed to see you and I am really happy to see such a blissful man. Can I do something for you?"

Diogenes thought for a while and he said, "Yes, just stand a little further away because you are blocking the sun. Nothing else is needed because I am utterly fulfilled. This is the only difficulty that you are creating and it is you who is creating it; otherwise there is no difficulty at all!"

Alexander was shocked and embarrassed; he could not believe his ears, could not believe what Diogenes was saying. He could give Diogenes anything because he was the richest man in the world at that time, a world conqueror, but this man had not asked for anything. He really felt a beggar before Diogenes. He said,

"I am tremendously happy to meet you, and if God is going to give me another birth I will tell him, 'Don't 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

make me Alexander; make me Diogenes.'"

There is a story that they died on the same day. And while moving from the earthly plane to the unearthly world one has to cross a river -- Diogenes had died a few minutes before Alexander so he was ahead, and Alexander was following. Diogenes heard a noise and looked back. Alexander said, "Strange that we are meeting again! Perhaps on this river there has never been a meeting of an emperor and a beggar"

-- because Diogenes was a beggar.

Diogenes laughed and said, "You are right. Just one correction you will have to make. You misunderstand who is the emperor and who is the beggar. I am the emperor and you are the beggar! Yes, certainly it is a rare incident on this river, it may not have happened before, it may not happen again, but I am the conqueror and you are just a beggar." And Alexander could not say a single word against it because that was the truth. He had come without ever knowing what bliss was, his whole life went down the drain, and this man had lived each moment of it so blissfully that certainly he was the emperor.

Bliss makes one victorious; bliss and only bliss is worth achieving. Nothing should be made more important in life than blissfulness. If you make anything else more important you will live in misery, you will never be a conqueror. And my sannyasins have to be emperors.

How long will you be here?

-Two more days.

Then come back again for at least three days! Because one has to achieve the fourth! (much laughter) You have to give at least three days for three stages and then the fourth happens! Next time come for three days -- right? (much laughter)

Jivan Teng. Jivan means life. Teng means to ascend.

Life is a ladder and we live at the lowest rung. That's where we find ourselves at the time of birth, but we go on living there for the whole of our life. Many people think that just to be born is enough. Birth is only the beginning of a long pilgrimage, but the majority of people die on exactly the same spot where they were born. They have not moved even a single inch. Their life energy has remained on the same plane; it has not ascended, it has not gone upwards. They are still crawling on the earth; they have not found their wings yet, they have not even looked at the sky and the stars. They are too occupied with their own small things, they have no time to look upwards; and life really begins only when you start moving on the higher rungs of the ladder.

Meditation is the only way to help you to move from one rung to another. Meditation means awareness.

As you become aware of the body you move beyond the body. Awareness means transcendence. When you become aware of your mind you move up another rung of the ladder. You are no more mind, you have gone beyond mind. The moment you become aware of your heart, you have moved beyond the heart.

These three are the most fundamental planes to be transcended. When you have moved beyond these three you come to your real self, the fourth, turiya. And only then does one know what life is all about. One comes to know the truth of life, the meaning of life and the immense splendour of life.

Dhyan Sadhana. Dhyan means meditation. Sadhana means the practice, the discipline.

My whole emphasis is on meditation because it is the master key; it opens all the locks, it opens all the doors and all the mysteries. Nothing else is needed. So one should concentrate one's whole energy on being meditative. And by meditation I means the art of watchfulness, awareness, alertness.

The first step is becoming aware of your bodily activities and actions: walking, sitting, standing -- just a silent awareness of what is going on on the physical plane. People are not aware of that, hence you can see many contradictions.

For example, a man may be smiling and yet his eyes may show anger. He himself is not aware of it. A man may not show something but if you know how to read his face you will be able to decipher it immediately, because he is so unaware that what he is hiding is bound to be expressed in some way or other.

A psychologist was experimenting and he talked to many people belonging to different occupations -- a few monks, a few priests, a few rabbis, a few ordinary people, businessmen, bankers, all kinds of people. He gave them a pack of cards and each card had a picture of a sunset, a sunrise, mountains, this and that, and also a picture of a naked woman.

A man was looking at the cards, and the psychologist was not looking at the cards, he was sitting in front of the man. But when the man came to the naked woman the psychologist would immediately say 'So now, you have come to the naked woman?' And the man was puzzled as to how he came to know. And 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

people who have been practising celibacy and saying that sex is sin -- priests and the monks -- even they would be immediately caught.

The simple trick was that the psychologist was watching their eyes. Their pupils became big the moment they saw the naked woman. Now, they didn't know what was happening to their eyes. And in fact one has no control over them. Even if those people had known they could not control them; they are beyond control.

Immediately their pupils would become big. Your pupils become big only when you want to take something totally in, when you don't want to miss anything -- that makes your pupils bigger.

If you watch people's activities you will be surprised, they say one thing, they do something else and their faces express something else again. It is as if they are many people.

A psychoanalyst said to a patient 'Through three months analysis with you I have discovered that you are a schizophrenic, a split personality.' The man said 'No, I am not,' then stood up and said 'Yes, I am,' then lay down again and said 'No, I am not!' Now he was not aware what he was doing; by saying 'I am, I am not, I am...' he was simply proving that the psychoanalyst was right!

One has to watch one's body very carefully. That gives you a deep understanding and makes you capable of watching your mind, which is more subtle.

The second step is that the mind has to be watched... what thoughts pass in the mind, what desires cross the mind? There is no need to analyse, there is no need to evaluate, no need to judge. Just watching, simply taking note that these are the thoughts that pass, these are the dreams that pass, these are the fantasies that pass, without any evaluation of good, bad, moral, immoral -- just watching -- will again give you a deeper capacity to watch. And then one can watch one's feelings of the heart, moods -- which are the subtlest.

Suddenly you are in the grip of a mood -- it just comes like a breeze and you are sad or you are blissful for no reason at all.

One has to learn to watch these three things, body, mind, heart, action, thought, feeling. And these three take you to the fourth, which is the highest rung of the ladder: being.

Action is the most outside thing and being, the most inside; action the outermost, being the innermost.

So start with action, with doing. Watch your doings, so slowly slowly thinking, then feeling and then being.

The moment you reach being you ascend to real life. For the first time you taste immortality, eternity.

How long will you be here?

-- Three months.

-- That's good. Exactly the right time!

Nikhilananda means total bliss.

One should not be satisfied with less than that. One should remain divinely discontented with anything less than that. Sannyas is divine discontentment. It is the search for total bliss.

But all religions have been teaching contentment and because of their preachings people have become contented with whatsoever they have got, wherever they are. So you rarely come across a person who has attained bliss, intelligence, freedom, love, truth. It has become very rare and it is becoming rarer and rarer every day, for the simple reason that religions don't teach you a divine discontent, they don't give you fire.

My sannyasins have to be afire with a tremendous longing for total bliss. And I say don't settle with less than that because it is your birthright. You are meant to achieve it. You have been given all that is needed to achieve it. You are absolutely ready to take the jump. So gather courage and start the journey for absolute blissfulness. Nothing else can really give you contentment.

You can console yourself, you can try to satisfy yourself in some way; you can rationalize and you can remain wherever you are, thinking that this is all there is. This is not all there is, there is far more.

The Upanishads say 'Charaiveti, Charaiveti' -- go on, go on, there is no end to this journey. Go on until you become a god yourself.

Sampurna means the whole.

We are brought up with the false idea that we are separate from existence. We are brought up as egos, and that is the whole problem, the root cause of all other problems, because whatsoever we think, our thinking makes no difference to reality; reality remains the same. We are not separate from reality, we are one with it, but because of the idea that we are separate we get into unnecessary anxieties and worries. Our whole life becomes just a long anguish, a nightmare.

Just by dropping the idea that you are separate, a miracle happens: all worries suddenly disappear. They used to look so big and so important and suddenly they are not there. Even death is no more there, because 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

if we are part of the whole we cannot die; we have always been and we will always be.

Surrender the ego -- it is only a false notion. I ask my sannyasins to give to me that which you don't have, so that I can give you that which you already have. Give your ego to me so that you can have the whole. 'Why remain tethered to a small thing?

This whole universe is an organic unity. That is the meaning of Sampurna and that has to be dis-covered. Unless you discover it life is meaningless and a meaningless misery -- on one hand meaningless, on the other hand miserable. It is just an exercise in utter futility. But it all depends on you --

you can drop the ego in a single moment of understanding, just as one drops one's clothes -- because it is a false idea. Clothes are far more real.

You will have to unbutton and unbelt and do a few things before you can drop them, but the ego can be dropped instantly. You don't have to unbutton it, because it is not there in the first place, it is just an idea.

But the idea is creating so much hell for so many people.

Sannyas means getting rid of the ego and entering into the world, into the universe. Just like a dewdrop slipping into the ocean and becoming one with it.

Prem Sagar. Prem means love. Sagar means ocean.

One should not be miserly about love, because the law of love is that the more you give, the more you have, the less you give, the less you have, and if you don't give at all it simply disappears from your heart.

And if you go on pouring infinitely, it goes on growing in you infinitely. It is always in the same proportion as you give.

Once the arithmetic of love is understood life goes through a radical change. When you start giving love for no reason other than just for the sheer joy of it, the whole universe expands. Thousands of songs start falling on you; from each direction, from each nook and corner love starts flowing towards you.

Life can become a festival of lights through love. It can become a spring; thousands of roses can bloom in your being. All that is needed is to share your love without any conditions, without asking for anything in return.

So let that be your work upon yourself: become loving and finally become love itself. That's the moment one discovers god within one's own being. God is another name of absolute love.

How long will you be here?

A very long time.

That's good. Be here a very long time. Forever will do -- or a little longer!

Akal means timelessness.

Mind is time. Time has two tenses, not three -- the past and the future; the present is not part of time.

The present is part of timelessness, it belongs to timelessness. To be in the now and in the here is to enter into eternity. And god is timeless and truth is timeless and we are timeless. All that truly exists is timeless.

That which does not exist is part of time. The past does not exist, it is no more; the future does not exist, it is not yet. Only the present, between the past and the future, just a small interval between the two, exists; and that small interval between the two is the only reality there is. But that small interval is infinite.

And meditation means entering into the present.

A sannyasin's lifestyle has to be completely free from the past and free from the future. The moment you are free from the past and the future you are in tune with the present. And that harmony with the present brings all joys, all benedictions, all blessings. It brings enlightenment. It brings flowers of love and those flowers start showering on you; day in, day out, they go on showering. Each moment becomes such an ecstasy, so exquisite, that there is no way to imagine it, there is no way to comprehend it through the mind; because the mind is time and time cannot comprehend that which is beyond time.

To know it, one has to enter into the present.

That's my whole teaching here: to live in the now.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

Is the Grass Really Greener...?

Chapter #25

Chapter title: None

25 December 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8012245

ShortTitle: GREENR25

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Shunyam Renate. Shunyam means zero. Renate means born anew.

One can have a new being, a new life, but one has to be ready to get rid of all that is old, to be utterly empty of the old, to be just a zero, nobody, a nothingness. Only out of that nothingness does the new begin.

The new is not the modified old, it is discontinuous with the old. So it is not a renovation of the old; the old simply dies without leaving any trace behind. And then the miracle happens the new sprouts up. The grave of the old is the womb for the new.

And sannyas is nothing but a process of emptying you of all that you have been up to now so that you can have a new beginning, a fresh beginning; only then can misery disappear, only then is bliss possible.

The story of Jesus being crucified and then after three days resurrecting is beautiful. Christians have not been able to make much use of its symbolisms crucifixion means death and resurrection means birth. But for three days he was neither alive nor dead, for three days he was in a state of being a zero. And those three represent the three stages of the mystics getting rid of the body, getting rid of the mind, getting rid of the heart; and then is the rebirth -- the being is discovered.

It is through death that one comes to know that which is deathless, the divine. But Christians miss the point for the simple reason that they started emphasising it as a fact. It is not a fact, it is a parable, and parables are far more significant than history. Reducing a parable is very pregnant, a fact is just a flat thing.

There is nothing in it, just an event. And we have to understand life itself as a parable, as a prelude to a new life, the divine life.

So let sannyas become both a crucifixion and a resurrection.

Swami Anand Charlie. Anand means bliss. Charlie means of noble spirit.

Misery is always mean; it cannot be noble. It is the root cause of all that is ugly. One has to drop misery if one wants to be noble -- and it can be dropped because it is our choice. We have chosen it, we are choosing it every day, every moment. Each moment both alternatives, to be miserable or to be blissful, are available for you. But our conditioning is such that we lean towards the miserable. Our conditioning is such that we choose the negative, the darker side. We don't look at the lightning, we look at the dark cloud. We make so much fuss about the dark that we forget all about the beauty of the stars. We become so obsessed with the thorns that the roses are completely forgotten.

One has to change this gestalt. Choose the flowers and slowly slowly you will be surprised that the thorns start disappearing. Choose the stars and one day you will find that all darkness is finished. It is a question of choice. And the moment you start choosing the positive, the affirmative, the beautiful, you start leaning towards the blissful, you start becoming noble. A blissful person cannot do anything that is ignoble.

Out of bliss is all beauty, all grandeur.

So I teach my sannyasins to be of cheerful heart, to be blissful. And it is only a question of choosing.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

Try it from this very moment and you will be surprised, it works!

Gautam the Buddha has defined truth as that which works. That's a tremendously beautiful definition. It does not matter whether it is really true or not; the question is whether it works or not -- a very pragmatic definition, a very American definition! (laughter)

So try it from this very moment and you will be surprised -- it works. And if it works it is true.

And when I say this I say it from my experience and the experience of thousands of my sannyasins. But I am not telling you to believe it, I am telling you to experiment, to enquire, to go into it. There is no need to believe, because it really works... when you have experienced it then there is no need to believe -- you know it is so.

Prem David. Prem means love. David means beloved.

One who loves naturally becomes a beloved. Gut people try the other way round, they want love tn come first and then they will give. But that is not going to happen because the other person also knows the same arithmetic, both have learned the wrong arithmetic. Both are taught by the same kind of people, the same kind of parents, the same kind of preachers. Their names may be different -- Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan -- but the real thing is not very different. They are just different labels but the disease is the same; they are different languages but what they are doing is the same.

We have been conditioned in such a way that first we want to yet and then we will give. But that is not the way of nature.

Give and you will get, and you will get a thousand-fold. Love, love for love's sake. Don't ask for anything in return because it comes inevitably. It is the fundamental law of life that whatsoever you give is bound to bounce back upon you.

There are a few things which don't bounce. If you throw a tomato at the wall (much laughter) it won't bounce. But love is not a tomato! Love is a real ball -- it bounces! I have tried tomatoes... (The rest of the sentence Osho completes by glancing at the wall on his right and making a throwing gesture.) Only with tomatoes does the law of nature fail.

Love, and love starts showering on you, raining on you. That's the meaning of David. The ancient meaning is Jehovah's beloved, god's beloved. Mm, god simply means the whole, the whole universe. Love and the whole universe loves you -- and that is the fulfilment.

Veet Rainer. Veet means surpass, transcend. Rainer means a prudent warrior.

A sannyasin has to learn to surpass the whole idea of war and the whole idea of being prudent. A sannyasin has to learn love and to be innocent, not prudent. He has to be an innocent lover, not a prudent warrior. Enough of the warriors! The whole of human history has lived according to the idea rooted, oriented, in violence, in war, in fight, and the warrior has been worshipped. But it is time we change the whole idea because warriors are no more needed. Now the world needs lovers; the world no longer needs weapons, it needs flowers. It does not need any prudence, any cunning, any cleverness; it needs innocent people, simple people who can trust even when conditions are not in favour of trusting, who are ready to be cheated but who are not ready to drop their trust.

Then we can create a new humanity, then we can create a new earth. We can make paradise now and here. Because the whole of human history failed to produce a paradise on earth, they invented, they projected, paradise being somewhere above the clouds. It was simply a failure; but man needs some hope to live by so they projected the idea of paradise somewhere else. It is simply nothing but something to cover up failure.

Man can create paradise here. And there is no need to wait until after death; if you cannot live in paradise while alive, what is the point of hoping for it after death? When you failed in life you are not going to succeed in death. If you succeed in life, certainly you will succeed in death too, because life and death are continuous. Only the body dies, you remain the same, your consciousness never dies.

So there is no need to wait for the future; we should start creating paradise now and here. And if the idea of war disappears, with that will disappear the whole politics of nations, religions, races, colour and all kinds of stupidities. The earth can be one -- it needs to be one.

In fact it is one; we have made it divided and we have divided it to create war. We are dividing humanity to fight. We cannot live without fight because fight has become our programme in the mind. For thousands of years we have been programmed for war. It is time for a deprogramming. And that's what sannyas is all about: a deprogramming process. And it leaves you without any programme, free to live 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

according to your own light.

Antar Svargo. Antar means inner. Svargo means paradise.

Jesus says again and again that the kingdom of god is within you -- that's exactly the meaning of your name. There is no need to search for it anywhere else; one just has to dive deep within one's own depth. It is there that the treasure is hidden. And once you have found it your whole life goes through a radical revolution. Once you have known that insight there is inestimable treasure, immeasurable treasure. When you have found the paradise within, of course, your whole character on the outside changes your relationships change, your behaviour changes -- and without any effort. Because your consciousness is not blissful, your actions become blissful. Because now you have all that you always wanted there is such contentment that each breath is such a joy, such a benediction, that you would not harm anybody. You will become a blessing to others too. In fact that's the criterion of a blissful person: if he is really blissful he becomes a blessing to others too.

But the whole journey is inward. Going to the moon is not going to help. Going into yourself is the only way to be redeemed from misery, to be liberated from all that we are burdened with. The weight is too much, it is almost a Himalaya, and we are crushed underneath it, we cannot move. Once you have found the source of joy within you, you are free from all weight, you become weightless. And in that weightlessness life is freedom, life is joy, life is a celebration.

Anand Bhagvato. Anand means bliss. Bhagvato means divine.

The only experience worth calling divine is the experience of bliss. All else that can be called divine --

for exaMple, love, truth, freedom -- are divine only because they all enhance blissfulness, they all have blissfulness as a basic ingredient, in fact their very centre is blissfulness. So anything that has bliss in it is divine.

And pure bliss is pure godliness. There is no god but there is godliness. There is no deity so all worship is foolish, but there is diviness; hence meditation is meaningful. And that is the difference between prayer and meditation....

Prayer starts with the belief that god is a person, and meditation starts with the totally different assumption that god is nothing but a name for the ultimate peak of bliss. So there is no need to pray, there is nobody to pray to, there is nobody to listen to your prayer. It is childish. Meditation is maturity.

So now put your whole energy into meditation. Become more silent, more aware. As you become silent, as you become aware, simultaneously you go on becoming more blissful. When awareness is total bliss is also total. Bliss is the by-product of awareness. So grow more in awareness, in watchfulness, in alertness.

If one is not watchful one goes around in circles; one goes on repeating the same things as one has been doing one's whole life or maybe for many lives. The moment you become watchful something new enters in your lifes you cannot repeat the same mistakes twice. It is good to make new mistakes because one learns, but it is very stupid to make the same mistake twice; that means one is behaving unconsciously, unmeditatively. And misery is nothing but behaviour rooted in unconsciousness. Bliss is behaviour coming out of consciousness.

From this moment remember blissfulness as the only divine quality so the very idea of prayer disappears; prayer has been an absolute exercise in futility. But millions of people for millions of years have been praying for no purpose at all. If all these people had been meditating we would have created so much consciousness on the earth that the whole earth would have been aglow, aflame. We would have filled it with flowers and songs and dances.

But it can still happen!

Prem Arpano. Prem means love. Arpano means surrender.

Sannyas is a loving surrender to existence. It is dropping the habit of saying no -- which is very deeply engrained. It is replacing no with a big yes, so big that it is bigger than you, so overwhelmingly big that you disappear into it, that it permeates your whole being, every fibre, every cell; it arises from the very roots.

When this yes to existence arises life becomes an ecstasy -- and to me that's the whole of religion. All churches, all temples, all mosques, are just for stupid people; for intelligent people this much is enough of a religion, this single word 'yes'. But it should become your whole life.

Try with small yeses so that you can have a little bit of experience, a little taste of the joy of saying it.

Then be courageous and say a little bigger yes. And the ultimate is a single yes into which you disappear 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

and never come out of. That is the merger, the union, the yoga, with the whole.

Dhyan Dipo. Dhyan means meditation. Dipo means a small lamp.

Meditation is a small lamp in the dark light of life. But it is enough, more than enough. It sheds enough light for you to walk a few steps, and by the time you have walked those few steps the light goes ahead of you.

In the darkest night with just a small lamp one can travel thousands of miles. Meditation is a small lamp, just a small flame of light inside you, but it is more than enough, more than is needed, and one can pass through all darkness and reach to the dawn.

I call it a small flame because awareness is exactly a flame. The people who are living without awareness are just dark, black holes. As you start meditating in the beginning you will feel only darkness inside and nothing else. So don't be disturbed by it -- it is natural, because we have never tried to create any light inside. In the beginning it will be dark, but go on watching the darkness. That watching of the darkness is the beginning of the light. That watching is the light. As you watch darkness you become aware you are not it and the first ray of light has entered. Knowing that you are not it, is the first small beginning, but it is tremendously pregnant with possibilities.

Seeing that there is darkness inside don't turn away. Many people try -- listening to the Buddha, to Jesus, to Socrates, they try to look in but the moment they close their eyes it is all dark. Afraid of darkness they open their eyes; at least on the outside there is some light, some warmth, people are there. Inside you are alone, no warmth, nobody to relate to, and there is immense darkness; it is scary! So many people once in a while try but then they drop the idea; it seems too risky.

In the beginning one has to insist, one has to go on entering, undeterred by the darkness. So accept the inner darkness as a challenge and go; go deeper every day. Just remember one key be watchful, then one day suddenly you will see the light has arrived. And it does not come from anywhere else, it arises inside your own being. Watchfulness functions as a catalytic agent.

And when the light grows inside you and fills your whole being, that's what we call Buddhahood, enlightenment -- one has become light itself! And that is the goal of life. without it, without achieving it, one has not really lived, one has only dreamt that one was alive.

Dhyan Pakhi. Dhyan means meditation. Pakhi means a bird.

Meditation gives you wings. Once you have learned the art of meditation you need not crawl on the earth; you can start ascending into the sky. Then the whole sky is yours. And the higher you rise, the clearer a perspective you have.

The meditator has a bird's eye view, he can see things in their total context. He does not see things separately; he sees things interconnected. In his vision all is joined together; it is an organic vision, nothing is separate. And only out of such a vision can life be benefitted.

Thinkers can't help. They are crawling on the earth; they are still tethered to the mind and mind is very earthly. Mind functions according to the law of gravitation, it is being pulled downward. And meditation is a state of no-mind; it functions in a totally different way. It functions according to the law of levitation, it rises upwards because it is weightless, there is no weight in meditation. Mind is a weighty thing, the more mind you have, the more weight you have.

Having no-mind suddenly all wei;ht disappears You have escaped from the prison of gravitation; now you can rise on the wing, as high as you desire. No height is a limitation for you any more, there is no limit any more.

This freedom I call sannyas, this total vision I call sannyas. To me sannyas is just a symbol to represent all that is beautiful, all that is true, all that is eternal.

Is the Grass Really Greener...?

Chapter #26

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

Chapter title: None

26 December 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8012255

ShortTitle: GREENR26

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Shunyo Angelika. Shunyo means emptiness, nothingness, spaciousness, just a deep zero.

The ordinary connotation of emptiness is of negativity. People know only the negative kind of emptiness, but shunyo is a positive kind of negativeness. It is not that there is nothing; on the contrary,

'nothing' has to be split into two words, then it is right. There is no thing, but there is space because there is no thing, no content. But the space is not negative, it is very pregnant. It is like a womb: warm, ready to give birth, available, spacious.

And Angelika means a bringer of truth. Nothingness, in its positive sense, is the bringer of truth. In its negative sense it brings sadness, loneliness, fear, darkness, an urge to commit suicide. In its positive sense it brings light, truth, love, freedom and an immense ecstasy, an overwhelming ecstasy. Then it is not loneliness, it is pure aloneness. Then it is not solitariness, it is solitude. Then you are not in a sad state, depressed, you are overflowing with silence and joy. You are for the first time an individual -- and the birth of the individual is the beginning of truth. When the individual has grown up, is settled, truth has blossomed. And the blossoming of truth is the goal of life.

My sannyas is synonymous with life, it is not life-negative, it is life-affirmative.

Satyam Gert. Satyam means the ultimate truth.

The ultimate truth is one, but there are relative truths and relative truths are many. A relative truth simply means a mixture of a lie and a truth.

Even the most approximate truth contains something of a lie in it. Then truths can be many. You can mix your own lie into it and you can concoct your own truth. That's why there are so many religions in the world: these are all concoctions, fabrications. They all contain lies; something of truth certainly is there, but something of a lie is also there. And time passes by, as the religion becomes more and more established, as it goes farther and farther away from the original master, it contains less and less truth and more and more lies. Beyond a certain time limit it is one hundred percent lies, and truth simply disappears.

Gautam the Buddha said to his disciples that his truth would live only five hundred years. And he proved absolutely right, his prediction came true. Only up to five hundred years did a chain of enlightened people continue. The Buddha left many disciples enlightened, then those disciples left a few disciples enlightened. Of course, fewer and fewer people were enlightened, but even if there is a single individual enlightened it is enough to keep the truth alive. But the last enlightened person in the chain died after five hundred years; then the religion was in the hands of the priests. They are the sellers of lies and they are very skillful people, the most cunning in the world. Basically theirs is the most ancient profession in the world.

People think that prostitution is the most ancient profession -- it is not, because without the priests, how can you create prostitutes? First the priest is needed to condemn sex, to force morality on people. When the morality is forced on them from outside they start finding ways in from the backdoor -- that's how prostitution comes in. Prostitution is preceded by the priests. Theirs is the ancient most profession, hence they are very skillful.

Once the enlightened master is no more there or the chain has disappeared, then the priest, who knows nothing of the truth, but who is capable of fabricating beautiful lies, is there.

There are three hundred religions on the earth and there is only one truth. These three hundred religions are different combinations of truths and lies. And all the religions are very old. Hinduism has existed for at least ten thousand years, Buddhism for twenty-five centuries, Christianity for twenty centuries, Judaism for 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

thirty centuries, Jainism for fifty centuries -- so there are almost only lies left.

Satyam means the ultimate truth, which you cannot find in the scriptures, you cannot find in the holy places, you cannot find through scholarship, knowledge; it can only be discovered within yourself.

The discovery needs two qualities in the seeker -- and these are the meanings of Gert. The first meaning is courage, the second meaning is a loyal heart.

To discover the truth one has to be courageous enough to drop all the lies that have been handed over to you by others. That needs courage because those lies give us comfort, consolation, they create a coziness around us; otherwise the world is vast and the space seems to be cold. Those lies are like blankets, warm blankets, and one feels good. Those lies are our wish-fulfillments. We desire how the world should be. They are our dreams. Those blankets are woven out of our dreams and wishes and desires and fantasies. So they feel cosy, they feel comfortable; they give consolation in difficult times, they give you rationalizations.

Otherwise life becomes just a big question mark without any answers.

Courage is needed to accept life as a question mark and to drop all the answers that have been given by others to you -- because they are not your answers. The question is yours, the answer has also to be yours. If the question is yours and the answers are of others, there is going to be no enlightenment in your life, because those questions and answers will never fit. Howsoever beautiful they are, they are not your discoveries. And truth has to be discovered through one's own efforts. It is already there inside you but courage is needed, courage to come out of the cosy lies.

Secondly, you can come out, you can have this courage, only if you trust life, if you have a loyal heart.

Lies are in the mind and trust is of the heart. If you get out of the mind, then you get into the heart. Then for the first time your heart opens up and starts functioning. It has not functioned for centuries.

People who have lived according to beliefs given by others, their hearts are non-functioning. They are full of beliefs but there is no trust in them. Trust is not a quality of the mind at all; it belongs to a different center in your being, it belongs to the heart. Trust is nothing but purified love. When one trusts life, existence, only then can one have enough courage to go into the dark, to seek the light, to go into the unknown, to seek the further shore.

So these two qualities -- a certain courage and a certain trust -- are the whole of religion. And then truth can be found, because it is not far away, it is just around the corner.

Prem Zena. Prem means love. Zena means meditation.

Love and meditation are like two wings. A bird cannot fly with one wing -- and for thousands of years man has tried to do exactly that. Either they have chosen love and ignored meditation or they have chosen meditation and rejected love.

I can understand why it happened so, because the two wings of the bird are opposed to each other. One is on the right, the other is on the lefts one is a rightist, the other is a leftist -- they spread in diametrically opposite directions. The logical mind tries to be consistent, and this seems to be inconsistent. For the logical mind love and meditation seem to be opposites, contradictory. So the logical mind tries to choose one against the other. To choose both together is illogical -- and sannyas is illogical, because existence is paradoxical and unless you have the guts to be illogical you cannot experience existence.

Existence consists of polar opposites -- day and night, summer and winter, life and death. Existence consists of polar opposites. They appear opposites to the logical mind; as far as existence is concerned they are complementaries, not opposites. Without day there would be no night and without life there would be no death and without death there would be no life. They are together.

To see it is the beginning of sannyas. Then you start having polar opposites without any trouble. One need not be consistent; if one tries to be consistent one will have only one wing and then there is no possibility of flying towards the ultimate peak -- it is impossible.

So I teach my people both together: be loving and be meditative. Of course in the beginning it is troublesome because love disturbs meditation and meditation requires that you forget all about others, that you forget all about love. So one has to become a little liquid, not so solid as people are; they are just solid blocks of concrete. One has to be more like water, easily flowing from one polarity to the other, finding no difficulty.

So when you are feeling to be alone, that is the moment to meditate. And everybody feels those moments when one wants to be alone -- those are the natural moments which are to be devoted to meditation. And then one feels to be together, to love, to share -- those are the moments to be devoted to love. There is no need to create any conflict.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

Once this harmony settles your life has tremendous beauty while loving you are totally loving, while being silent, you are totally silent. And both enhance each other, both help each other. They are not enemies, they are friends, because when you love you are becoming hungry for aloneness, because love is an excitement, an ecstasy -- it tires. One may not accept it but it is tiring, and moreso because we don't know how to relax, we don't know how to meditate.

Lovers start quarrelling for the simple reason that they are tired, irritated, exhausted, and they don't know what to do with this whole situation. And they certainly love each other, but there is nobody else so they start throwing anger, irritation, at each other; they start trying to make the other responsible.

If you meditate just the opposite happens after a time you are so full of energy, so refreshed, so overflowing, that there is a tremendous need to share. You are just like a cloud so full of rainwater that it wants to shower somewhere, it wants to unburden itself. Or like a flower which is ready for any breeze to come and take its fragrance away -- it is too full of it, it wants to share.

Meditation creates energy and out of that energy sharing arises. One feels a tremendous need to share --

and love is the only way to share. But when you are sharing soon you exhaust your sources, the energy starts becoming lower and lower and soon it touches the minimum point. After that point if you don't move into meditation you will move into fight.

But lovers don't give space to each other. Even to say to your lover that you want to be alone seems as if you are hurting him. He feels insulted, rejected. There seems to be no understanding at all in people. It is nothing to do with him, it is something inner to you, to your own inner process.

So people encroach on each other's space, they don't allow each other to be alone, they don't give time for each other to get refreshed. They are continuously at each other's neck -- and they think it is love! It is only up to a point, then it is really dangerous, poisonous.

And to meditate beyond a point when you are overflowing becomes repressive; if you don't share you will have to repress your energy. So all your monks and nuns are repressive and all your worldly people are exhausted.

Just now I was talking to Vivek about Champa, one of my mediums. Since she has been in love she has looked to me very tired, exhausted. She was never like that. She must really be in love! That's a clear-cut sign.

Love exhausts and unless you balance the energy with meditation it is suicidal. And the same is true about meditation it fills you too much; if you don't share you will burst.

So they both have to be continuously balanced. Find energy in meditation and share it in love. Love will give you an appetite for meditation and meditation will give you a deep longing for love. And if one can move between these two easily one has learned the art of life.

Satyo Sundram. Satyo means the truth. Sundram means the beautiful.

Truth and beauty are two aspects of the same coin. Truth cannot be ugly, it is impossible; and the beautiful cannot be untrue -- that too is impossible. Hence one can find reality in two ways; either one seeks the truth or one seeks the beautiful.

The poet seeks the beautiful, the artist seeks the beautiful, the musician, the dancer -- they all seek the beautiful. They are really seeking truth but their vision of truth is that of beauty. The philosopher seeks the truth, the mystic seeks the truth, the scientist seeks the truth. They are also seeking the beautiful but their vision of beauty is that of truth.

But my effort here is to help you to become multi-dimensional, because the person who seeks the truth and finds it will remain a little dry because he will be following the path which goes through a desert. He will become dry, he will not be green, he will not blossom, he will be old and full of dust. He will arrive but something will be missed. And the person who has been following the path of beauty will be passing through beautiful gardens, he will be carrying some fragrance of the flowers with him, he himself will become a flower; he will be a dancer, a singer, a poet. But he will not be able to figure out what it is all about; he will remain vague, in a kind of mist. His vision will not be clear because he has not learned the art which the man who seeks truth knows.

My sannyasins have to be seekers of truth and at the same time seekers of beauty. They have to be scientific and poetic both; they have to be absolutely clear-cut and yet available to the mysterious. And I have found there is a way which goes just between the desert and the garden. So on one side you go on enjoying the garden, on the other side you go on enjoying the desert -- because the desert has its own beauty, its own silence, spaciousness, vastness. It has not to be missed. We have to find a way which passes 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

just on the boundary, line of the desert and the garden. Where the desert and the garden meet, that is the place for my sannyasins to go to truth, to the ultimate.

Hence I am teaching meditation so that you can keep contact with the desert, and I am teaching love so that you can keep contact with the garden. And both together bring out your whole being to its total flowering. And when we can have both, why have one?

I am always for richness. Jesus says blessed are the poor in spirit. I say blessed are the rich in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of god -- and this is the only way to be rich.

Shantibhadra means peace and nobleness. Shanti means peace, bhadra means nobleness.

A peaceful person has a nobility which has nothing to do with birth. It is not the aristocracy of the outside, it is the aristocracy of the inner. And those who have found the source of grace and nobility within their own being are the real aristocrats. Once you have found it it starts surfacing in your acts, in your thoughts, in your feelings. It is natural; it remains hidden because we have ignored it. Ignoring your own inner treasures is what ignorance is.

The word 'ignorance' is beautiful; it simply means you are ignoring something, something which is very precious is being ignored; and the most precious thing that we can ignore is our own life juices.

Life is just like a tree, it continuously needs juices to flow from the earth to the farthest branch, to all the leaves, to the flowers, to its whole being. The roots are deep in the earth and the branches are high in the heaven, but there is a connection, a bridge, between the two. The tree is really living in two dimensions, it is part of heaven and part of earth.

We are also trees in a sense. Our roots are invisible, that is true, but they are there. And meditation is nothing but the search for the roots. From where are we getting our life juices, our life energies, from where are we breathing, from where is our consciousness coming? There must be a centre in our being. And there is a centre. Once you have found that centre life becomes absolutely peaceful, a profound silence surrounds you. A peaceful golden aura is always present around you; not even for a single moment is the golden aura absent. And that is nobility, that is aristocracy of the inner.

I teach my sannyasins to be emperors, less than that won't do. But to be an emperor no outside empire is needed; all that you need is a discovery of the kingdom of god that is already there within you. You have carried it all along but you have been ignoring it; you have been looking outside and it is inside you. You are keeping it at your back.

Just a turn, just a one-hundred-and-eighty degree turn and immediately life is transformed. Instantly you are transported into a new world, a new experience, of eternity, of infinity, of bliss, of benediction.

Prem Arya. Prem means love. Arya means the noblest, the best, the highest.

Love brings whatsoever is precious in you into manifestation, otherwise it remains dormant. Love makes it active, dynamic, otherwise it remains asleep. Love is a kind of awakening, and even in ordinary love affairs you can see it happening, when a woman falls in love suddenly she becomes more beautiful for no reason at all, for no visible reason at all. When a man falls in love his gestures start having a grace, his words start having a beauty, he walks in a different way. His lifestyle starts changing; he looks cleaner, fresher. Suddenly his life has become meaningful. That meaning gives him all these qualities -- and this is very ordinary love: unconscious, biological, mechanical.

The love I am talking about is the purest, without any lust, without any desire, not asking for anything. It is not addressed to the individual; it is unaddressed or addressed to the whole -- which means the same thing. It is addressed to the stars and to the trees and to the clouds and to people and to animals and to rocks

-- it is addressed to the whole universe. It is simply an overflowing of joy which you would like to share with all, because it is so much it can be shared only with all; one person cannot contain it. It is a flood; it can drown the whole universe.

Each person has so much possibility of love that he can drown the whole universe in it. And when that flood starts arising all your imprisoned splendour is released. It makes you an Arya -- the noblest, the best.

Adolf Hitler chose the word 'aryan' -- it is a Sanskrit word -- for the Nordic German race, because he believed that it was the best, the highest race, which god had made specially to dominate the world.

All others were slaves, only the aryans -- and by aryans he meant the Nordic Germans -- were the people to rule. Hindus have called themselves aryans for centuries; he borrowed it from the Hindus -- they have called themselves the best.

In fact that is the disease of all the people of the world. Jews think they are the chosen people -- they 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

also mean the same thing -- but no race is aryan. Yes, once in a while an individual has been an arya, but no race is aryan. It has nothing to do with race; it is an individual growth. It can happen anywhere. Anybody who comes to release his love totally, unconditionally, becomes an aryan becomes the noblest, the highest, the chosen! And certainly he is the chosen because then the whole universe showers all its joys on him.

Is the Grass Really Greener...?

Chapter #27

Chapter title: None

27 December 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8012265

ShortTitle: GREENR27

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Dhyan Oliver. Dhyan means meditation. Oliver means a peaceful heart.

It is possible to have a peaceful heart without meditation too, but that peace will be the peace of death. It will not be alive. It will be the peace of a cemetery, not of a garden -- no flowers, no birds singing, no sound of the wind passing through the pine trees, no dance. Something empty -- that is possible without meditation, but that kind of peace has no value at all.

Many have tried it and many have achieved it but it is not worth any effort. It is in fact suicidal, it is dying in a very gradual, slow way; it is crippling yourself and closing yourself. If you remain open then there are distractions and distractions disturb your peace. So people have escaped to the caves, to the mountains, to the monasteries. But the escapist is not religious -- never. He is a coward and cowardliness is not a religious quality, it is just its opposite.

I am against that kind cf peace. Then it is better not to have peace. If one has to choose between these two things, a life without peace and a death with peace, then it is better to choose a life without peace -- at least you are alive!

But there is a third alternative available one can be alive and peaceful both. That miracle happens through meditation. Meditation is not an escape, it is the science of centering yourself, the science of becoming the centre of the cyclone. You remain in the world, but still, something in you remains out of it.

Meditation is the discovery of that something which is always out, beyond, transcending. Its name is awareness. If one becomes aware, that awareness is always transcending situations. And awareness cannot be disturbed by any distraction; one becomes aware of the distraction. (A train's horns sound mournfully.) For example, this train -- it can disturb you if you are forcing yourself to remain peaceful, but if you are available to the noise, alert, there is no distraction. It is there, it comes through your ears and passes; you remain unaffected. In fact it can even deepen your silence and peace rather than disturbing it. That's what I mean by meditation.

Meditation is synonymous with awareness. And to be aware is the whole of religion.

Atit Herbert. Atit means going beyond, because Herbert is not a good name, but it has been very good in the past. It means a glorious warrior, it means an army hero. It contains destruction in it.

The days of the warrior are over. We need a totally different kind of man who does not believe in war, 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

who believes in love, who does not believe in destroying, who believes in creating. We need people who are not engaged in manufacturing arms, but who are totally absorbed in growing roses -- and that's what sannyas is all about. It is just the opposite of the warrior.

The soldier and the sannyasin represent two different lifestyles, totally opposed to each other. The past belonged to the soldier, the future belongs to the sannyasin. And we are passing through one of the most significant times because we are passing through a tremendous transformation. The old is dying and the new has to be given birth to. The old will try in every way to go on living, the old always insists on keeping itself alive, somehow -- even if it cripples people. It tends to exploit them; it is a parasite. It does not leave you easily, it follows you like a shadow, and it is heavy because it is big. The present is so small and the past is so huge. It cripples and paralyses the present. It does not allow you to fly.

The warrior was very much respected in the past because war was the only business that humanity had been doing for at least a million years. We only know about three thousand years, in three thousand years five thousand wars have been fought. If we count the days when there was no war happening anywhere on earth, then in three thousand years there have been only seven hundred years. And these have not been in one stretch, one day here, two days there, a week here, a week there. This is the total amount out of three thousand years there were seven hundred years when there was no war. But that too was not peace, it was only preparation time. Between two wars you need a little gap to prepare.

For a world war to happen at least ten or twelve years are needed, because one war destroys so much that it takes time to reconstruct everything -- and then again we are ready to fight. So what is known in history as peaceful days are not truly peaceful days but only days of cold war. So history can be divided into two cold war and hot war -- but it is all war. And it is time to get rid of the whole absurd past.

So go beyond the idea of war, conflict, fight, only then can your life be a joy. And there is nothing glorious about being a warrior; it is ugly. Destruction can never be glorious, only creativity is glorious.

Just to write a single song is far better than to create the atom bomb. It is far more valuable just to write a beautiful story, a parable, than to go to the moon.

We have to change our values, we nave to re-evaluate all our values, only then is a sannyasin born.

Initiation into sannyas is only the beginning -- the beginning of many things which have to be done, which we have not done before, which we have been ignoring up to now. But it is possible. It may not be possible for the whole of humanity right now, but it is possible for individuals to slip out of the past. All that is needed is a little courage, a little trust, a little love for life. And it is there in everybody, we just have to allow it to come to the surface.

Nirdosh means innocent.

Sannyas is an effort to discover your intrinsic innocence. It is not an effort to gain knowledge. The knowledgeable person is always a stupid person. The knowledgeable starts depending on knowledge, he starts functioning through knowledge. Life goes on changing every moment and knowledge remains static and life is growing. So there comes a gap between knowledge and life.

Knowledge means ready-made answers, but no ready-made answer can ever fit life. It is like ready-made clothes you can purchase them -- today they may fit the child but the child is growing and the clothes are not growing. Soon the child will be in difficult if you insist that 'Don't be inconsistent; if these clothes were perfectly okay two years before, why are they not okay now? -- they are the same clothes!' And the gap between knowledge and life is not only of two years; it is of thousands of years.

People are reading the Vedas, the Bible, the Koran; they are deriving their ready-made answers from those ancient books, and life has gone through tremendous changes. If the people who wrote the Vedas are brought to the earth again, I don't think they will recognise anything, they will not be able to recognise anything at all, everything has changed. But this is the trouble with a knowledgeable person, he tries just the impossible, he tries to make life fit with his knowledge. It cannot happen, and then he is frustrated, and in his frustration he starts gathering more knowledge, thinking that more knowledge is needed.

In fact innocence is needed, not knowledge. Innocence means your just being a clear mirror -- it is a state of not-knowing, and your functioning o ut of that state of not-knowing. Then you don't have any answers ready-made. Then life is there, a challenge, a continuous challenge, and you are here to respond, so you respond according to the moment. It always fits; there is no gap between your response and the situation, there is a deep harmony. But it is possible only through innocence.

So the really wise man is not knowledgeable, he is innocent. He drops all knowledge and becomes just a mirror. The moment you become just a mirror you are enlightened, because suddenly you see the 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

tremendous beauty of life. Its very truth is revealed to you, all its mysteries are suddenly open to you, all its doors are open, all locks disappear.

Anand Urja. Anand means bliss. Urja means energy.

There is a great significant, pregnant statement of William Blake; he says 'Energy is delight.' It is almost a seed which can be grown into a total philosophy of life.

People are living in such a stupid way that they go on wasting their energy. They are always low in energy and that is the root cause of their misery, because if the energy is not there, there cannot be any dance in your life. Dance is overflowing energy. If the energy is not there, then there cannot be any flowers in your life, because flowers are just a luxury. The tree has so much that it flares up into flowers. It has to share -- it bursts forth into flowers, colours, fragrance. But if you keep the tree undernourished it will not give you flowers. It may survive but it will not give you flowers and fragrance. And that's how human beings are living, just surviving, and the reason is that we waste our energy and we waste it unnecessarily, on non-essentials.

A few people are after money their whole life; even when they have accumulated too much money they don't stop, they can't stop. It has become a dead habit, they go on doing the same thing. Even on their deathbed they will be thinking of money.

A Jew was dying. The sun was setting and it was getting darker and suddenly he opened his eyes and asked his wife, 'Where is my eldest son?' And one said 'He is sitting on your right. Don't be worried, he is here -- rest.' He said 'And where is my second son?' And she said 'He is on your left, don't be worried.' But he started to get up, he tried hard. His wife forced him to lie down and told him 'Rest, because the doctors say this is the last hour of your life.' And then he said 'Where is my youngest son?'

She felt that he was asking about them because of so much love. Tears came to her eyes and she said 'He is sitting near your feet, we are all here.' He said 'I know you are all here, but who is tending the shop? If this is happening while I am alive, what is going to happen when I am dead? At least let me die in peace --

go and look after the shop!'

This man is dying but his whole concern is the shop, who is tending the shop. Now this type of person cannot accumulate enough energy to bloom. There will be no spring in this type of man's life.

People are running after power, prestige, respectability, people are trying hard to become a member of a Rotary club or if they cannot become Rotarians, then at least they can become Lions -- as if just to be a human being is not enough; one has to be a lion!

People are running after futile things and wasting precious energy. A sannyasin has to become alert and capable of discriminating between what is essential and what is non-essential. And then drop the non-essential. And the essential is not much; it only takes a very small fragment of your energy and leaves so much energy in you that life becomes a blissful phenomenon.

Bliss is nothing but overflowing energy. William Blake is right: Energy is delight!

Anand Meena. Anand means bliss. Meena is a precious stone, a diamond.

Bliss is a diamond and a diamond that is already there inside us -- we are born with it. It has not to be searched for anywhere else. We are not to beg for it, we are not to fight for it, we are not to steal it from somebody, we are not in any need to go anywhere; all that is needed is to search within. Hence it is not a difficult phenomenon, because it is the closest thing to you. It is your innermost core.

Jesus calls it the kingdom of god because once you have found it you become for the first time immeasurably rich, inexhaustibly rich. Then you can go on sharing and giving gifts to all and sundry and you will still have your treasures absolutely intact. You will not be losing anything; on the contrary, the more you give, the more you will have. And one has to learn a simple art of closing one's eyes and looking in, watching inwards. It takes a little time because we have become accustomed to watching outside; our eyes have learned to focus on objects.

When a child is born he cannot see clearly; everything is blurred. Naturally, because for nine months in the mother's womb there was nothing to see, it was all dark; his eyes were closed and he was asleep for nine months. Now when he suddenly opens his eyes he cannot focus. Everything is blurred, all colours are mixing, things are mixing -- that is natural. It takes a few months for the child to be really skilful in focussing.

Exactly the same happens to the sannyasin because he is a child again, as far as the inner world is concerned, so it takes a few months to focus and just a little patience. One should not feel frustrated if one 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

does not succeed in the first attempt. One should wait, be patient; in the right time the focussing happens.

And it differs from individual to individual. Some people can focus easily, some people take a little longer, but it doesn't matter, it is irrelevant.

Once you have become able to focus inside you discover the diamond, and then all kohinoors, all the great diamonds of the world, are just stones compared to it. Then the light on the outside is almost like darkness compared to it. Then the life that you have been living is almost death compared to it, because now you have tasted immortality, eternity, divinity. Now for the first time you have known the source of nectar within yourself.

Prem Ami. Prem means love. Ami means nectar.

Love gives you the first taste of the eternal. It opens you to the timeless, to the deathless, hence it is the only nectar available to man. In fact there is a deep longing in everyone to never die, everybody wants to remain forever. But this is not physically possible. And even if one day science makes it physically possible, only fools will be ready to become physically immoral; the wise people will not be ready to accept it.

There is a story: Alexander was coming to India and some philosophers, some alchemists, in Greece had told him 'You may meet wise seers in the East who can show you the way, because we have heard that there are places in the East where you can find springs of nectar and if you drink from those springs you become an immortal. Naturally, he was immensely interested, he was asking everybody about it. And the story is beautiful, a wise man showed him the way and he reached a place where there was a beautiful small pool.

He had never seen such crystal-clear water.

It was the nectar, and he was just going to drink out of it when a crow sitting on a tree shouted 'Stop!' He was very puzzled that the crow was speaking. And the crow said 'Wait a minute before you drink, then you can drink. I have drunk from it and I have become immortal; I have lived for millions of years. Now I want to die but there is no way to die; I have tried all ways to commit suicide, but nothing succeeds. And now it is such a boring life, living the same routine every day. And there is no hope even of death coming and finishing it; I will have to live this way forever and forever and forever, so think about it, and decide.

And it is said that Alexander became silent and ran away from the source of nectar; he ran away because he was afraid that he might be foolish enough to drink out of it. He saw the point, that if you become physically immortal. how will you live for eternity? -- it will be tedious, tiring, everything will become boring.

So the desire in every human heart for immortality cannot be for physical immortality -- it is a misunderstanding. It is a desire to find something beyond the body, beyond the mind, beyond time. To become part of that which is forever, to dissolve into it. And love gives you the first glimpse of it; the first lesson in immortality is love.

So to me love is nectar -- there is no other nectar. This story of Alexander is just a parable -- a beautiful parable, significant, but still a parable.

Learn to love. Very few people know how to love. They all know that love is needed, they all know that without love life is meaningless, but they don't know how to love. And whatsoever they do in the name of love is not love, it is always something else. It is mixed with so many things -- jealousy, anger, hatred, possessiveness, domination, ego. All these poisons destroy the very nectar.

To love means to get rid of all these poisons. So drop jealousy, drop possessiveness, drop all ego trips and then slowly you will see a new quality of love arising in you. And it will give you wings, it will make you weightless. And as love goes higher, you go higher. A man is exactly where his love is. If his love exists on the lowest plane then a man is on that plane.

Love at the lowest is sex, love in the middle of the journey, exactly in the middle, is love and love at the very end is prayer. Love has to become prayer.

Prayer is the pure fragrance of love. And once you have come to that purity you will know within yourself there is something which is already immortal. Love is the way to find it, and the far easier way to find it. There are other ways too, but love is the most beautiful way to find it.

My sannyasins have to go on refining their love so that one day love is simply love for love's sake, without any motivation, without any desire, no expectation of getting anything back, but a simple sharing.

In that very moment one has transcended the physical and psychological and has entered into the spiritual.

Brahmen. Eastern mythology believes in three aspects of god. That is the eastern equivalent of the Christian trinity. In the East we call it trimurti, the three faces of god. Reality is one but it has three 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

dimensions.

The first dimension is represented by the god Brahma; Brahma represents creation. The second dimension is Vishnu; Vishnu represents maintaining the universe. And the third dimension, the third aspect is Shiva; Shiva represents destruction -- because existence becomes so old that it has to be destroyed and again recreated. So there are cycles of existence just as there is a cycle of seasons every year, summer comes and winter comes and the rain, and the cycle goes on. In the same way these three are the ultimate dimensions of reality; everything begins with Brahma and ends with Shiva and again begins with Brahma; between the two is Vishnu who maintains.

So Brahmen means the creative aspect of existence. The only way to be really in tune with existence is to be creative. While you are creating something, whatsoever it is -- poetry, a song, some music, some dance, whatsoever it is -- whenever you are creating you participate in existence. You are no more separate from it, in fact you disappear and existence starts creating through you. And if you can catch hold of those moments, if you become aware of those rare moments when there is no ego and creation is simply flowing through you, then creativity becomes meditative.

Every creator knows those moments, but in a vague way. Poets know that there are moments when poetry simply flows; even if you want to stop it you cannot stop it. And there are moments when you are simply dry, there are dry spells when you want tn create something but nothing comes. The more effort you make, the less is the possibility... because the effort simply means ego effort.

Creativity happens only when ego is absent, when you are relaxed, in deep rest, when there is really no desire to do something. Suddenly you are in a grip, some unknown force overwhelms you, takes possession of you. That is exactly the right word you are possessed.

The poets, the painters, the sculptors, they all know these moments but they know them only when they are gone, they only remember them. They look back and they feel that something of great importance was there but it is no more. They catch hold of those moments only when they are gone, the meditator catches hold of them while they are there. That's the only difference between the poet and the mystic, the poet remembers the creative moments, the mystic becomes aware in those moments themselves. And that makes a great difference.

Once you have become aware that you are not and still you are -- that the ego is no more there, the self is no more there, still you are -- you have had a totally new experience of your own being. Buddha calls it nirvana, no-selfness. And the creator comes to it many times; the only thing is he should catch hold of it while it is there.

And that's my whole work here: I want my sannyasins to be creators in many ways, in every possible way, ana meditators. Meditation is just to catch hold of those moments and creativity is to create those moments. When creativity and meditation meet -- you have arrived home, the journey is complete. And then life is just pure contentment, absolute fulfilment.

Is the Grass Really Greener...?

Chapter #28

Chapter title: None

28 December 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8012275

ShortTitle: GREENR28

Audio:

No

Video:

No

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Anand Pushpo. Anand means bliss. Pushpo means flowering.

The experience of bliss has many aspects to it. The first and the most significant aspect is that it is just like a flower opening.

We are born as buds, our petals are closed, and millions of people die as they are born, on the same spot, in the same space, without opening up to life. And unless the flower opens to the sun, to the wind, to the rain, it does not really exist. It comes into real being only when its fragrance is released. And bliss is a fragrance.

Unless a person becomes blissful he has lived in vain, meaninglessly, accidentally, just like driftwood, at the mercy of the winds and the waves. He knows nothing about who he is, where he is going, why he is going, from where he comes. He is absolutely unaware of the origin, of the goal, of the journey. Just like a somnambulist, a sleepwalker, he goes on and on from the cradle to the grave, but in between nothing happens. Life remains empty.

A closed life is an empty life. The open life -- all the doors, all the windows open -- is an authentic life.

Then one is really born.

The first birth is only physical, the second birth that happens through opening up is spiritual. Sannyas is the alchemy for the second birth. And it is never too late; it is only a question of making it a commitment, a decision. Once the decision to open to existence is total, then it can happen to the child, it can happen to the young person, it can happen to the old person, it can even happen at the last moment of life. If just for the last moment one opens up, life is fulfilled. Then one knows there is no death, then one knows that life goes on and on, in different forms. It is an eternal process, an eternal river.

Anand Chhanda. Anand means bliss. Chhanda means a song that springs within your being -- the second aspect of bliss.

Bliss cannot remain unexpressed; that is impossible, that is against the law of existence. You can keep misery unexpressed, but you cannot keep bliss unexpressed; it starts overflowing from you! It is like fire, how can you hide it? It is like the sunrise, it is bound to radiate. It is inevitable that bliss becomes a song, a dance; music, celebration -- all that is contained in the word 'chhanda'. And unless your heart overflows with joy, you are not even aware of having a heart.

People think there is no heart and through medical examination no heart is found. The heart the mystics have been talking about, the heart the poets have been singing about, is not found by medical analysis in any post-mortem; what they find is just a breathing system, lungs. And the reason why they cannot find it is that it is not part of the body; it is the opening up of your soul, it is a dance of the spirit. Certainly it does illuminate the body.

When you light a lamp the flame is separate from the glass but the glass radiates it; it filters through the glass but the glass is not the source of the light. If you dissect the glass you will not find the light. That's exactly the situation with bliss, bliss happens in the soul -- the soul is invisible, no dissection is possible --

but the blissful person mediates it even through his body. Each of his gestures carries the grace of his inner song. His love will be full of joy. Even his aloneness will not be desertlike; it will be the silence of a garden

-- very pregnant, not dead. Even if the blissful person is silent something within his being goes on speaking.

One only needs eyes to see and ears to hear the subtle, to hear the very subtle. Very few people have those eyes and those ears, that's why very few people gather around a Buddha or a Christ or a Zarathustra.

The people who gather around these people are capable of seeing something which others are incapable of seeing.

Remember, your heart starts existing only when you bring joy to your being. So I teach the religion of cheerfulness. One is not to be serious or sad at all, there is no need to be serious or sad. Life has to be taken in playfulness, with great love, laughter and with a sense of humor.

Anand Suniti. Anand means bliss. Suniti means virtue -- the third aspect of bliss.

There are two kinds of virtues possible: one, that is imposed according to the dictates of others -- the society, the state, the race, the religion, the church. It is not true virtue, deep down you are against it. It really creates one of the greatest problems: it creates a split in your being, it makes you doubt.

On the surface you are one person, in the depths you are just the opposite of it. The logical conclusion of 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

this process is schizophrenia; and the whole humanity is living in a mild form of schizophrenia. Once in a while the schizophrenia reaches to such a height and the insanity becomes so much that the humanity has to commit a mad act, a suicidal act -- that's what war is. After every ten or twelve years we need a world war; it is a kind of necessity. We are living in such a wrong way, we are living with such insanity hidden in us that sooner or later so much is accumulated that it explodes and then man goes on destroying himself.

The real virtue is never according to other's dictates; it comes out of your blissfulness. A blissful person cannot harm anybody, it is impossible. You can give to others only that which you have got. If you are blissful you can only give bliss; if you are not blissful you may intend to give bliss but you will give only misery because that's what you have really got. Intentions don't count. People can create hell for each other with very good intentions. That's what they are doing: parents are doing it for children, children are doing it for parents, students are doing it for teachers, teachers are doing it for students, leaders are doing it for the led, and the led are doing it for the leaders. Everybody is full of good intentions but so full of misery that all those good intentions become vehicles of misery. They prove to be horses and the misery rides on them.

Only a blissful person can help others to be blissful.

And that's what virtue is all about: helping others to know themselves, helping others to be themselves, helping others to be blissful, to be creative. But this is possible only if first you become blissful.

Out of bliss virtue arises naturally. It is a by-product. The cultivated virtue is a false virtue. The natural virtue that comes out of blissfulness is real, authentic, sincere, sane, and it is an immense benediction to others.

Anand Prema. Anand means bliss. Prema means love -- the fourth aspect of bliss.

A blissful person cannot help but be loving and a miserable person cannot help but be angry, full of hatred, jealousy, aggression. One can understand why it is so. The miserable person has nothing to be grateful for -- how can he love? He cannot even love himself, how can he love others? He is so miserable that he hates himself. He is constantly condemning himself. He wants to avoid himself, he does not want to look at his face. He finds a thousand and one excuses to remain as far away from his own being as possible

-- that's what all our occupations and businesses are trying to evade the most basic thing, an encounter with oneself.

But it is understandable why people are trying to evade themselves; they are afraid to see that much misery. And then they know that if they are so miserable and they become aware of it, then it will be impossible to live at all, that misery will drown them. Then suicide will be the only outlet. So it is better not to look at it, to ignore it, to repress it, to throw it into the basement of the unconscious.

But whatsoever you do with it, if you are miserable, you are miserable. You can keep it behind you but it is there and working from behind. And it is going to influence, contaminate and pollute your whole life.

And because the miserable person cannot love himself he cannot love others -- although he tries very much to love somebody. That too is a strategy to evade his own being; he wants to become interested in somebody, focussed on somebody -- that's what he calls love. But whomsoever he loves he cripples, paralyses, destroys, because his misery is there; he is carrying poison within himself.

In ancient India the kings used to have a few poison girls -- they were called poison girls. From the very first day if a beautiful girl was born to somebody then the girl was slowly fed poison in very small doses, and the doses would go on increasing as she grew. By the time she was a young girl her whole bloodstream would be full of poison. All the kings used to have a few poison girls to use as detectives or to use as murderers. It was a very subtle strategy, they were so beautiful that anybody was bound to fall in love with them. They would be sent to the enemy and the enemy was bound to fall in love. Just by kissing the girl the person would become unconscious; making love to the poison girl was enough to kill anybody!

This is really our situation people are full of poison -- poison girls and poison boys, playgirls and playboys -- all are full of poison, but because both are poisonous they don't kill each other, they somehow survive. But survival is not life. They make each other's life miserable.

It is only through bliss that real love moment you are blissful you love without any motivation. It is not an escape from yourself; it is sharing, it is your joy to share it. You don't put any conditions on it, you don't ask anything in return. You don't even create the feeling in the other person that he or she is obliged to you.

You simply give with no motive, with no desire. You give because you have so much, you give out of your abundance -- that is love. And whomsoever such love touches, his life is transformed, his life also starts having a new fragrance, a new flavour.

It is a magical touch -- but this magic is possible only if one is overflowing with bliss. And that is our 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

birthright: we can be blissful, we have all the potential, it is just that we have never tried it. We have not looked at it, we have never worked it out. We have been running from misery rather than taking hold of it and trying to understand its roots and its causes.

Once you understand its roots and causes, in that very understanding is the ending of misery. And the ending of misery is the beginning of bliss. The cessation of misery is the birth of bliss, and bliss brings love.

Just as your shadow follows you, love follows bliss. And this is all a person needs: blissfulness inside and the sharing of love outside.

Anand Anubhava. Anand means bliss. Anubhava means experience -- the fifth quality of bliss. It is not a thought, it is an experience.

One can think about water, and the thirsty person does naturally think about water, but thinking is not going to quench his thirst. He may go on reading all that is written about water, he may understand the formula H2O, he may go into every aspect, he may create a whole philosophy about water; he may even try to build a whole system of life and water may be used as the most basic element -- Heraclitus says that water is the most fundamental element -- but his thirst will remain unquenched. You have to drink water, not talk about it, not philosophise about it. And by drinking, the thirst disappears. Whether you know the chemistry of the water or not does not matter; what matters is that you have experienced it. The same is true about bliss.

There are many people who go on thinking about it, about what it is. Philosophers do great work, and their whole work is an exercise in utter futility. They write great treatises about every conceivable subject, but their own life remains absolutely empty.

My effort here is not to help you to become capable of philosophising but to be fulfilled, to be contented

-- and that is possible only through experience. Experience is not of the mind and experience is not of the heart; experience belongs to your totality. Experience is very inclusive it includes your body, your mind, your heart, your being. Its roots are in your being, its trunk is in your heart, its branches in your mind, its flowers in your body, but your whole being is involved, your whole existence is involved.

Each experience has a totality, an organic unity, it is not fragmentary. Thinking is only of the mind, feeling is only of the heart, action is only of the body, and meditation is only of the being -- but these are all fragments. When all these four are together in a deep harmony, functioning, humming, in organic oneness, then there is experience. And bliss is an experience.

So nothing has to be rejected, all has to be absorbed. That's why I am against renunciation, repression, rejection. One has to say yes to life with one's totality and then one becomes worthy of receiving the gift of bliss. It certainly comes. You just have to say yes so totally that there is nowhere, in any nook and corner of your being, where any no is hiding. when your whole being is just yes and nothing else, immediately bliss showers on you and then it goes on showering forever!

Anand Alok. Anand means bliss. Alok means light -- this is the sixth aspect of bliss.

Misery is dark, it is darkness. In the miserable person you can see a certain darkness, a certain dark aura around him. You can feel that he is dragging a load, a weight; you can see that he is living but reluctantly.

Somehow he is managing, but it is not a dance, it is just a management. He is keeping himself together, otherwise any moment he can fall apart.

If you look within the miserable person you will find nothing but a dark night of the soul -- no stars, no moon, just pure darkness. Just the opposite is the case with bliss, it is a full-moon, the sun is at its height, at its climax, your whole being is sunlit.

Darkness is cold, hence the miserable person be-comes cold, cold like steel. For example, Joseph Stalin must have been very miserable. He was. Stalin is not his real name. In Russian Stalin means a man of steel; it was given to him because he was so cold and so hard and so cruel. Of course the people who called him Stalin were praising him because he was a man of steel, unbendable, strong. But that strength is ugly; it is the strength of violence.

The miserable person is always violent. He has a certain strength, there is no doubt about it he can destroy, he enjoys destroying, he knows no other joy except destruction. He can tortureS he can torture others, he can torture himself, but he is bound to torture. He has nothing else in life -- no creativity, no poetry, no rejoicing. His life is a black hole in which everything dies.

The blissful person is creative, loving, full of light and also light weight-wise, he is weightless. He can fly! There is no height which is not possible for him.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

The change from darkness to light is very simple, because all the ingredients which are needed to create light in you are there. The lamp is there, the wick is there, the oil is there, the matchbox is there. Just a little intelligence to put things in a certain order is needed.

And that's what I call sannyas: a little intelligence to put things together. You need not go outside to look for anything; all that you need has been given to you from the very beginning. But things are upside-down. It is like a jigsaw puzzle; there is a solution to it -- just a little intelligence... It is like a room where the furniture is put upside-down and the chandelier is on the floor and the chair is hanging in place of the chandelier and all the paintings are upside-down. It looks crazy but a little intelligence and you can put things where they belong.

And once this discrimination about where a thing is needed has come to you, you can sort out the mess inside. And the same things which were making the mess make a beautiful cosy house to live in. And when there is light there is warmth -- and warmth is another name of love, another name of creativity, another name of prayer. And the person who is full of light can help many others to become lighted.

It is not accidental that we call this state enlightenment -- one is just pure light -- but whenever a man of pure light comes into contact with somebody who is not yet lighted, a process is triggered. He becomes a catalytic agent. And that's the relationship between the master and the disciple. The master is already aflame. The disciple comes close to the master and at a certain closeness the flame from the master jumps into the disciple and suddenly, lo and behold (he says this as if it is in inverted commas; we laugh) the darkness is over and the light has arrived, and with light comes life.

Anand Divyo. Anand means bliss. Divyo means divine -- that's the seventh aspect of bliss. It is the most divine experience in life, or maybe it is the only divine experience in life. All other experiences which look divine are bound to have something of bliss in them. Love looks divine but it is only divine because it shares a certain space with bliss. There is some overlapping with bliss. Truth looks divine -- again there is the same overlapping. Creativity is divine but again there is the same overlapping. Wherever you find any proof for more than matter, for something higher than matter, then one thing is certain: bliss must be present there.

There is no god as is being taught in the churches and the temples and the schools. It is just a cock-and-bull story, manufactured for childish people. But there are very few people who are not childish, there are very few people who are really mature, hence a mature religion is non-existential. All religions are childish. Worshipping a statue is childish, praying to some god as if he is a person somewhere above in the sky is childish. There is nobody to listen and nobody to answer; you are simply in a monologue but you can think it is a dialogue. All prayers are monologues, but one can believe. Belief as such is childish.

The mature person wants to know, not to believe; his whole effort is for knowledge, he wants to experience on his own. He is not ready to believe because some guy two thousand years ago experienced god. Who knows whether he really experienced god or was just hallucinating? Who knows whether he was really an experienced person or was just trying to exploit people and their gullibility? And who knows whether he really existed or not? -- there is no guarantee.

Unless you yourself experience it, god does not exist. And when you experience it you always experience godliness, not god. And that godliness comes as an experience of bliss, tremendous bliss, great ecstasy.

So remember not to be bothered with prayer, not to be bothered with statues, not to be bothered with rituals, not to be bothered with scriptures, not to be bothered with the priests. Only one thing is needed be silent, be utterly silent. I call it meditation. And out of that silence bliss starts arising in you and goes on arising, goes on reaching higher and higher planes. And as bliss reaches higher you reach higher. A moment comes when bliss becomes just like an Everest, sunlit peaks of virgin snow. Those are the moments for which we have all been longing for lives together. And they can happen any moment -- just the right perspective is needed and the right direction. One can go on searching in the wrong place, in the wrong direction, and one will never find.

And one thing mores bliss is something feminine. Perhaps that's why all the seven sannyasins (tonight, awaiting initiation) were women. There was one man but he had to leave. He was looking really out of tune

-- and he also felt that and started coughing! (laughter) So that is the last aspect of bliss -- it is feminine.

Even if a man is to attain it he has to become a little bit feminine, he has to become like a womb so that he can be pregnant with the divine, so he can carry the divine in his being.

The male mind is aggressive, the feminine mind is receptive, and bliss comes to those who are receptive.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

Open the door -- and it is already standing at your door. Just open the door, say hello and it comes in!

(laughter) It won't knock on the door and it certainly won't ring the bell (laughter); it will wait. Unless you invite it, it won't make any noise.

One has to invite and welcome it; one has to become a host, then bliss comes as a guest. And the moment bliss enters your being, for the first time you know the grandeur, the splendour, of life. For the first time you become aware of what a gift has been given to you. And out of that experience arises gratitude, gratitude towards the whole. To me that is prayer.

-- How long will you be here?

-- I'm not clear about that. Maybe until the end of January or longer.

-- Let it be longer. Be clear about it: longer and longer and longer! (laughter) Good.

Is the Grass Really Greener...?

Chapter #29

Chapter title: None

29 December 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8012285

ShortTitle: GREENR29

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Dhyan Wolfgang. Dhyan means meditation and the wolf represents two qualities cunningness and courage.

The first quality is a hindrance in meditation, but the second quality is of tremendous help. So just be half of the wolf! (laughter)

The mind is cunning but meditation cannot be cunning; meditation is innocent. Meditation simply means dropping the whole structure of the mind, and cunningness is part of it.

Secondly, courage is never part of the mind. Mind is always a coward. because of its cowardliness it becomes cunning. Cunningness is not a quality of the courageous. The courageous person is never calculating; he knows how to risk, he enjoys risking. And he trusts his intelligence -- why should he be cunning? Cunningness simply means you are not trusting your own intelligence, so you have to find a substitute for it. Only unintelligent people are cunning. And mind is never intelligent. It is cunning, calculative -- intellectual, certainly, but never intelligent -- and very cowardly. That's why it clings to the known and is always afraid of the unknown. It clings to the past and is afraid of the new. It remains within the boundary of the familiar and never wants to cross the boundary of the familiar.

The uncharted is scary for the mind, but the uncharted is real life, the unknown and the adventure for the unknown is the only joy there is. Immense courage is needed. Meditation is intelligent, hence there is no need for cunningness. Meditation releases your intelligence. It drops the mind and encounters reality directly. And dropping the mind is dropping the familiar, the past, the known.

Meditativeness is immense courage, but life belongs to the courageous, bliss belongs to the courageous, love belongs to the courageous, truth belongs to the courageous.

Anand Bettina. Anand means bliss. Bettina means consecrated to god.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

The only possibility of one's knowing bliss is merging with the whole, dropping all separation, dropping the very idea of the ego. The moment you drop the ego bliss explodes. The more you become enclosed in the ego, the more miserable you become, the more dark, dismal, sad, frustrated, your life is, because ego surrounds you like a capsule, it becomes an imprisonment; it destroys your freedom.

Freedom is the meeting and merging and melting with all that is -- stars and flowers and rivers and mountains, people and birds and animals, with all that is. God is only a name for this totality.

The moment you surrender yourself to the whole, immediately life is transformed, instantly misery disappears and bliss arrives, and arrives forever -- because once you have tasted it and once you know how it comes there is no need to be miserable again. It is impossible really to be miserable again.

People are miserable because they have never tasted bliss, so they have become accustomed to misery, they think that's what life is all about, that there is nothing more to life. And once they start settling with this idea, they are already dead.

So people die near about the aye of twenty-one. That's why every country thinks a person becomes adult when he is twenty-one; in fact he is dead! (laughter) It is a strange thing that all over the world twenty-one seems to be accepted as the age when a person becomes adult. But the reality is that that the time when he drops all adventure, when he drops all longings, when he drops all dreams, when he settles with the ordinary, mundane life, when he starts thinking that this is all there is. Then the society thinks he is not adult; but he is really dead. He may actually die after sixty years but that life is posthumous. After twenty-one people are living posthumous existences. But if they can drop their ego any moment, at any time, at any age, again they become young, suddenly they are fresh again, innocent, again there is awe and wonder, again the aspiration to reach the stars. Again the poetry has come back!

It is a beautiful name, Bettina: it simply defines the whole idea of sannyas; surrendering the ego to the whole. The moment you are not, for the first time you are -- remember it!

Veet Barbara. Veet means transcendence. Barbara means a stranger.

The ordinary life gives you again and again the feeling as if you are a stranger here, as if you don't belong to existence, as if you are alien, a foreigner, something like an accident, that you were not supposed to be, that you were not meant to be, that it is just a coincidence that you have happened, that existence has no need of you. This is the predominant idea all over the world, and moreso in the modern mind, because in the past man was living a more childish life -- more primitive, more wild, uncivilised, raw, and people were not thinking much about life -- there was no time.

The whole energy and time was absorbed by the struggle to survive. For the first time in the modern world millions of people are having a little bit of time to think about what this life is all about -- and they are all feeling like strangers. They are all feeling unwanted and that makes a very deep wound. If you are unwanted, the natural consequence is a suicidal tendency then why go on, for what? Nobody needs you, nobody is going to miss you. Stars will be there and flowers will bloom and birds will sing and the sun will rise, and everything will go on continuing; summer will come and winter will come and rain. You will not be missed, and somebody will replace you! But this whole idea is basically wrong.

We are not accidental, we are very essential -- far more essential than the stars, the sun, the moon, because we are the only entities which have become a little bit conscious. Existence has come to flowering in man. Yes, trees are beautiful and the roses are beautiful, but nothing compared to the flower of consciousness. It is just a small flower but it can become very big; it can become a Buddha, a Christ, a Zarathustra -- it all depends on us.

The basic requirement is the change of the , you are not a stranger, not accidental -- you are immensely needed. Existence has created you for a certain purpose. There is a hidden hand behind you. There is a destiny to be fulfilled, a message to be delivered, a life to be lived in deep harmony with the whole. And you will be helping the whole evolution.

The greatest need of man is to be needed. And when one feels that the whole existence needs one, a great respect for oneself arises. And that respect triggers respect for others. A great love for oneself arises and that love triggers love for others. Then suddenly you find you are not a foreigner, not a stranger; this existence is yours, you belong to it, it belongs to you. And then a totally new story opens, a new chapter of life. That's what sannyas is: the beginning of a new chapter.

So go beyond the idea of being a stranger, transcend that idea, drop it completely. And it can be dropped very easily if one becomes a little silent, gets out of the mind, puts the mind into a state of non-functioning; in that stillness one immediately experiences the at-tunement, the at-onement with existence. And from that 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

moment onwards life is a dance, a festival, a sheer blessing.

(David is from the States. He is billed as a painter. Osho gives him the name Premgit, and then observes without any preliminaries:)

You look angry (Premgit's face breaks into a smile.)... but that's the situation all over the world: the younger generation is an angry generation. Everybody is angry -- angry at god, angry at existence, angry at everything. Such anger has never been known before. For the first time man has shown his anger towards reality, existence, so it is not specific to you, it is the very atmosphere today.

But through anger one cannot live a creative life; life becomes destructive. And before you destroy anything you have to destroy yourself. And people are being destructive in every possible way. All over the world there is anarchy, chaos. In fact it has become very symbolic of being young, to be an anarchist, to create chaos.

If there is some purpose behind destruction, if you are doing it to create something, it is beautiful, but if destruction becomes a goal unto itself -- destruction for destruction's sake -- then we are committing suicide.

Sannyas is becoming a loving being. It is just the opposite of being angry, it is just the opposite of being in rage. And I can understand why people are angry, their life is so unfulfilled. It is absolutely understandable. Life is not giving them anything and people are no more ready to believe in a heaven beyond death, they want it right now. And there is nothing wrong in asking for it right now but it is not a question of asking, you have to create it.

One can live in hell, one can live in heaven -- it all depends on how you live, on what lifestyle you choose. Sannyas means love is going to be your life-style, creativity is going to be your worship, aesthetic sensibility is going to be your meditation. And sharing whatsoever you have brings many flowers to your being. They happen only when you start sharing.

If a tree is a miser it will not blossom. Fortunately trees are not misers, they are not Jews, otherwise they would not blossom. Before blossoming they would think 'Why? For what? And how much am I going to get out of it?' Because trees don't bother about getting anything, they blossom and release their fragrance. But in that release they come to a fulfilment, a tremendous contentment.

Share your life -- that's what love is. Share your energies, share your creativities and create a small aesthetic aura around yourself. Instead of anger, create love. It is the same energy. When love goes sour it becomes anger. So in a way it is a good indication that energy is there, it is just going in the wrong direction. And my effort here is to change the younger generation into flower people!

Become a song of love, not a curse of anger, and immediately you will see that life is an immense gift.

We are not worthy of it, yet some unknown source of energy has showered it upon us. We have received it not because we deserve it but because existence has it in such abundance and out of its abundance it has given to us.

And then there is gratitude. That gratitude I call prayer. And when one's heart is prayerful, one is religious, simply religious -- not Christian, not Hindu, not Mohammedan, simply religious. I teach a religionless religiousness.

How long will you be here?

-- I don't know.

-- Be here until your anger turns into love! (Premgit grins and the group breaks into laughter.) Good, good.

Premdip means a light of love.

Love is my message. Love is my Gita, my Koran, my Bible. And a man without love is a man without light, a house without light, just full of darkness. Gautam the Buddha used to say that when the house is dark and there is no lamp inside it attracts thieves, enemies, the wrong kind of people. When the house is full of light thieves don't dare come close to it.

The same is true about man's being, if there is the light of love inside you many thieves will not dare come close to you. Hatred, anger, jealousy, ambition, ego -- all are thieves because they go on stealing your being from you, your joy from you. They are parasites, but they can come only because you are not lighted within.

And there is no need to fight with them, because the fight is not going to help at all. All that is needed is to light a candle inside. Love is just a small candle, but it is enough. It dispels darkness and it creates fear in the enemies, in the thieves, they cannot come close to you.

And light is not only light, it is also warmth. These are the two aspects of the same thing love and 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

warmth, light and warmth. Love is the coin; these are the two aspects, warmth and light.

And a man with light and warmth starts living at the maximum for the first time. People can either live at the alpha point or at the omega point -- both paints are available. People live at the alpha point, at the lowest. They live minimally, just one per cent at the most; ninety-nine per cent remains unlived.

Psychologists have been researching and they say that the very talented people live five per cent to seven per cent, and the people we call geniuses -- like Albert Einstein or Leonardo da Vinci or Shakespeare or Mozart -- they live at the most near about fifteen per cent.

Of course psychologists have not yet thought about people like Gautam the Buddha, Lao Tzu, Zarathustra, Jesus. In fact they don't have any way to measure these people. They cannot accept that they are lacking the methodology, so rather than accepting their own limitations, they condemn Jesus as abnormal, insane, crazy. But the real thing is that if you think that the genius lives at fifteen per cent and a person lives at one hundred per cent he will look crazy. His life will be such a flame, his torch will be burning from both ends; he will look crazy, he will look insane. But only these few people have really lived; others have only pretended to live, others have gone through empty gestures of living.

To live authentically the most essential thing needed is a heart full of love. And the heart is full of love, we just have to allow it to open up. It is like a bud: if we allow it to open it becomes a lotus flower.

In the past we have actually called the fully enlightened person a one-thousand petalled lotus. You must have seen statues of Buddha and pictures of Buddha, sitting on a one-thousand petalled lotus. That represents the ultimate flowering of consciousness. But love is the beginning and love is the end.

Sangit Sarjano. Sangit means music. Sarjano means creativity.

Life can either be lived as mathematics or as music, either as prose or as poetry. And the choice is open.

One comes just like a tabula rasa, a clean slate: nothing is written on it, you have to write your story. And because the people all around you are living for money, for power, for prestige, respectability, and all that rubbish, one starts imitating them, life becomes just mathematics. It loses all music.

And a life dominated by mathematics is not life at all. It is phony and it is joyless. Life can have joy only if it is lived as music. mind is mathematics, meditation is music. Mind is prose, meditation is poetry.

So one has to shift from the mind to a state of no-mind. That state of no-mind I call meditation.

The mathematical, the prose life can accumulate things of the outside world but it cannot be creative.

One can become wealthy, one can even become the conqueror of the world, but deep down one will remain very poor. The inner richness comes to only those few people who are creative. What they create is not the point -- it may be a painting, it may poetry, it may be anything, just a small garden, just a beautiful house, just delicious food. Whatsoever it is, it is not the point, but they are not doing it for any other ulterior motiveS they are enjoying doing it. The very doing of it is their joy, the thing in itself is their reward. If other rewards come, that's besides the point; their real joy is in doing the thing. And they are so absorbed, abandoned, that they lose their ego.

So these two things are of great importance living life as music, creating a harmony in everything that you do, in everything that you are, and out of that harmony not relaxing into an escape -- which religious people have done down the ages. When you are in harmony the second thing is that your harmony has to be creative. You have to enrich the world, you have to leave the world a little better, a little more beautiful than you found it; only then does one feel contentment, only then does one live and die joyously.

Dhyandas means surrendered to meditation.

Meditation is the key word, it is a master key. It unlocks all the mysteries of life. Nothing else is needed, just a meditative awareness, and one finds one's home, one's source and one's goal. The whole of religion can be reduced to a single word and that is 'meditation'.

And one of the most beautiful things about meditation is that it can be done by a child, by a young man, by an old man, because it is not an exercise of the body or the mind; it is just the opposite: it is relaxation of body-mind. So even on one's deathbed one can create Buddhahood. Even in the last moment of life one can open up and can die a beautiful death, a death that becomes a door to the divine.

So now this is going to be your whole work -- and I say the word 'work' with inverted commas, because it is not like work at all; it is more like play: relaxing, sitting or lying down, doing nothing, just being. Be alert and watchful, watchful of what is happening all around, the traffic noise, the train passing by, the thunder in the clouds, a dog starting to bark, a child starting to cry -- just silently with closed eyes, available to all that is happening, not trying to concentrate on anything... because that is effort, that is tiring. And 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

concentration is of the mind, it is not meditation. Just relax, be available and open. Noises will come and go, but they will not distract you. In fact they will enhance your silence, they will become a background to your silence.

The moment you have found the knack of how to make the world, the noisy world, a backdrop to your silence, a contrast to your silence, you have found the secret. Then any moment one can close one's eyes and disappear into one's centre. Then on the circumference the cyclone goes on and on, but one remains centred, without any distraction. Then life has no disturbance in it, neither has death any disturbance in it.

And if one can remain centred in life and death one has found god. That centering is god. There is no other god. One has found eternity, immortality, deathlessness.

How long will you be here?

-- I had ten days here, I leave tomorrow.

-- Good. Then if you can find time, come back, otherwise meditate there and I will be coming there!

(laughter) Good.

Vishnudas. Vishnu is one of the names of god. Vishnudas means surrendered to god.

God is not a person, not a creator; god is the soul of existence. Existence is his body, his periphery, his manifest form, and god is existence's hidden centre, its unmanifest form.

So god is not separate from life but life's very centre, its very essential core. Religions have done a disservice to humanity by teaching people to renounce life because if you renounce life you are renouncing god. You cannot find god anywhere else. God has tc be found here and now and god has to be found in this and all the religions have been teaching you about that, the far away, the beyond. They have all helped man to postpone because the beyond is far away; it is not a question to be decided today. One can wait --

tomorrow, perhaps the day after tomorrow, in old age, or maybe after death or maybe next life -- there is no hurry.

Hence religiousness became only a formality and churches have become just like Rotary clubs where a few phony people gather together and start saying 'Hello. How are you?' and talk about the weather. In the Rotary club they talk about the weather, in the churches they talk about god -- but it is the same. Whether it is weather or god makes no difference.

They don't mean it; something has to be said, otherwise silence becomes awkward. And it is just a sunday phenomenon every Sunday you so to the church. It is prestigious, respectable, and it is good to meet people, to shake hands and to exchange gossips.

The reason why it happened that the whole of religion became phony was that these people were teaching a life-negative attitude. Only pathological people can become interested in something that is against life; hence your so-called saints are almost psychologically ill, neurotic. The really healthy people cannot be against list. And the healthy religion can only be life-affirmative. To me god is synonymous with life. Life is his dance and he is the dancer. Life is his song and he is the singer. And if you want to find the singer you have to enter the song, if you want to find the dancer you have to learn the dance. And you have to penetrate into the dance -- only then will you be able to find god.

That's what I mean by surrendering to god: surrender to this beautiful universe, to its multi-dimensional variety. These are all gods in different forms, all aspects of god. Live it totally, intensely, passionately --

that's what I call surrender to god.

My sannyasin is not a monk and nun in the old sense; he is a totally new kind of religious person. He has no past but he has a future and he has the present. And the monks and the nuns of the Catholics and the Protestants and the Jainas and the Buddhists have the past but they don't have any present and no future at all.

Is the Grass Really Greener...?

Chapter #30

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

Chapter title: None

30 December 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8012295

ShortTitle: GREENR30

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Prem Visarjan. Prem means love. Visarjan means dissolution.

Love consists in dissolving the ego, hence love is the only phenomenon which cannot be converted into an ego trip. They cannot exist together. It is just like light and darkness is it is light, darkness disappears; if darkness is there then light is not there -- they are never together. The same is true about love and ego.

And love fails because we try to do the impossible we want them both! We don't want to dissolve the ego, we protect it. We want ego to follow our love and our love to follow our ego. Because of this absurd desire love becomes impossible. And whenever there is a conflict between love and ego then ego is going to win, for the simple reason that it is gross and love is delicate, as delicate as a rose flower and ego is as gross and as stupid as a rock: the rock can crush the rose very easily. So one has to be very watchful and alert.

Unless the rose is saved life is lost.

My whole message is of love. And the first and the most fundamental law of love is: be ready to drop the ego. And it never brings anything except misery, so there is not much to dropping it. It is sheer foolishness to go on clinging to it. A little bit of intelligence and one can see the point, that ego brings misery, anger, hatred, jealousy, possessiveness. All kinds of poisons grow out of it and it makes your life a mess.

Love brings harmony, great joy, music, poetry, dance, and life becomes a celebration. Initiation into sannyas is initiation into a life of celebration and that is possible only through love. But one has to pay the price; and the price is dropping the ego.

Prem Arpito. Prem means love. Arpito means dedicated to.

Sannyas is dedication to love. It is a love affair. It is not religion in the ordinary sense. It is not a cult, a creed, a dogma; it is purely a love affair, a love affair with existence itself.

The religions that have existed on the earth have proved not bridges but walls. They have prevented people from merging into existence. They have condemned existence, they have all been life-negative, and when you are life-negative you cannot be love-affirmative because life and love are synonymous. To be dedicated to love also means to be dedicated to life. There is no difference; they are different names for the same phenomenon.

I teach affirmation of life, no escape, no condemnation but rejoicing in all that is -- from the smallest to the biggest, from a blade of grass to the greatest star -- enjoying life moment to moment, merging into life moment to moment more and more, not holding back anything. The day you are one hundred per cent in tune with life you have arrived. You have arrived at the goal of love.

And Jesus is right when he says god is love.

Prem Kusum. Prem means love. Kusum means a flower.

Love is the most delicate phenomenon. There is nothing more delicate than love in existence, hence it is the most precious thing. It is the flowering of your heart, the opening of your heart. And the moment the heart opens like a flower the whole existence becomes available to it. Then it can dance and sway with the wind, with the rain, with the sun. Suddenly all barriers disappear; as you open up, barriers evaporate.

Opening up to existence like a flower means coming out of an imprisonment, otherwise we are living in encapsulated ways, closed to everything, hiding, rationalising.

The whole life of a closed person is fear-oriented. He is afraid to open; he is afraid because, who 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

knows? -- if you are open and vulnerable, you may be cheated and deceived. Some enemy may enter. You may open the door for the wind but who knows? -- instead of the wind some disease may enter, some enemy may come in; instead of the sun-rays some murderer may come in. It is better, safer, to keep the doors and windows closed.

Yes, it is safer, but then your life is enclosed in a grave, you are already dead. And millions of people are living posthumous lives. They have died long ago; now they are simply dragging within a grave. They just somehow manage, the grave surrounds them. Then it is not any wonder that they are miserable misery is their own creation. A closed being is bound to be miserable because he is living death, not life.

Open up! Just as the closed life is fear-oriented, the open life is love-oriented. Trust existence. And what have we got to lose? Death is going to take everything away anyway so in fact all fear is stupid. When death is the only certainty in life then only fools can be afraid, otherwise what is there to lose? And anyway, death is going to come and take everything away -- then why not live and why not dance and why not sing and why not be vulnerable? If you are cheated, so what? If you are deceived, so what? At least you lived and through all those experiences you will learn, you will grow, you will become mature.

Mistakes are not necessarily bad. One should not commit the same mistakes again and again -- that's all.

If you can invent a new mistake every moment, that's just far out! (laughter) Then Buddhahood is not very far away because each mistake is a lesson, it gives you a maturity, it gives you ripeness -- and ripeness is all.

Prem Samarpito. Prem means love. Samarpito means surrender.

There are two kinds of surrender. One is when you are forced to surrender -- that is ugly. Never allow that to happen. It is better to die than to surrender because you are forced to surrender. But there is a totally different kind of surrender: you are not forced to surrender, you simply feel like surrendering. That is love when on your own you feel like merging, melting, becoming one with somebody or with the whole of existence.

Of course it always begins as a relationship -- that is natural. The first step of love is relationship, the second state of love is relating -- and there is a vast difference between the two. In relationship you exclude everybody, you focus on one person. It is a kind of concentration of the heart. But all concentration becomes a concentration camp! (laughter) Basically it is fascist. To begin with it is okay but one should not start living there, in a concentration camp.

But there are people who like concentration camps. Just today I was reading a news item: in London they have made a Nazi concentration camp. A group of people has created all the conditions of a Nazi concentration camp and those who want to become prisoners there for seven days, have to pay thirty pounds (much laughter)... and people are doing that for lodging and boarding. They are beaten and tortured. Every kind of thing is done to them -- all that was done in the concentration camps in Germany. It is an exact replica except that it is small, it is on a smaller scale. Nobody is killed or burned -- except for that everything is being done. And it is booked far ahead! (laughter) And the people who have participated in it have almost all escaped within two or three days. Nobody has yet been able to complete the whole seven day period.

But all those who have participated say it was really an adventure, thrilling.

Life has become so dull, life has become so boring, that even a concentration camp seems to be an adventure. It brings a thrill. You are beaten, you are tortured. People are awakened in the middle of the night. They have to be naked and to run around in the cold and be whipped -- and they call it adventure! But I can understand what exactly the case is: people's lives are so dull and dead, so loveless, so juiceless, that they are ready to try anything new. They are in such a desperate state.

That's why thousands of people are committing suicide around the world, because that seems to be the only thrill. Jumping from a fifty-storey-building is certainly a thrill. And it is better than working for fifty years in an office as a clerk, far better; at least for a moment you will feel alive. While falling down to the ground (much laughter)... you will feel 'So far, so good!' And as the end approaches nearer, the thrill becomes more and more of a crescendo. And when you crash, that is the climax! (much laughter) This shows what we have made out of life.

So love also starts as a concentration camp -- a one-to-one affair, exclusive. Both are prisoners and both are the gaolers; they function in both ways. Each is imprisoned by the other and each is a gaoler in his own right. It is a beautiful game! But one should not remain there, otherwise life is wasted. One should learn the lesson, the beauty of it, the ugliness of it -- both have to be learned. And the ugliness is to be dropped and the beauty has to be preserved.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

That's what relating is: you drop all that is ugly in love -- possessiveness, exclusiveness, domination, suspicion, doubt, every effort to curtail the other's freedom. When all these are dropped and your love becomes just a relating, not a relationship, closer to friendship.... You can have many friends, you can also have many lovers -- and one should start growing from one to many, but that too is not the goal.

The third state is when love is just a quality. You are not attached to one or to many: love is just like breathing -- it is your nature -- so to whosoever come in contact with you are loving. This is the third stage: very few have attained to the third. And there is a fourth state which only so few people have attained that they can be counted on fingers.

The fourth is when your very being is love -- it is not a quality, your very existence is love. You have forgotten all about love. Because you yourself are love there is no need to remember it; now you act out of it, simply, naturally, spontaneously. At that fourth point one is surrendered to existence.

At the first you are surrendered to a person, but there is a condition -- he should be surrendered to you --

so the surrender is not total, it is conditional. In the second you are surrendered to many people. It is better than the first because now surrender is not focussed; it has more freedom, it has grown a few new dimensions, it has grown wings. In the third you are simply surrendered to existence, to the trees, to the mountains, to the stars, to all that is. And in the fourth you become the surrender itself. In the fourth love means surrender it is equivalent to it, synonymous with it. And this is the state of being a Buddha or a Christ.

Nothing is higher than that. One who achieves that has achieved all. His life is fulfilled, he has come home!

How long will you be here?

-- Nine months (then she corrects herself)... nine weeks.

-- Let it be months! (laughter) Otherwise come back but nine months is the right time to be in the womb of the master! (more laughter) Nine weeks is a little bit too early!

Prem Pujari. Prem means love. Pujari means a worshipper.

Love is worship. There is no need to go in any temple or church or any synagogue to worship. That is a pseudo, false kind of worship; cheap, but not real. It is like plastic flowers, there will be no fragrance; in a way they are very permanent but that permanency has no value.

If love can exist even for a single moment that is far more valuable than a person's whole life of worshipping, of going through all kinds of rituals in temples and churches. A single moment of love will give you more insight into reality than a whole life's worship can give. In fact the more you worship, the more dull and stupid you become.

You can go and watch the people who go to the churches, to the synagogues, to the temples, to the mosque -- you can see their stupidity. Humanity has suffered much from these stupid people. And because they are hiding their stupidity behind a very beautiful facade, a religious facade, they have been able to do all kinds of nuisance -- and with good intentions. They kill you for your own sake, they murder people, they burn people alive for their own sake.

Christians have done that, Mohammedans have done that, Hindus have done that -- everybody has done that. The hands of all the priests of all the religions are full of blood. More blood has been shed in the name of religion than in the name of anything else. This cannot be true religion; something is basically wrong.

Hence I say, create a temple in your heart. And in fact the temple is already there, you only have to discover it. And be loving, loving to all that is.

Share your joy, share your creativity, share whatsoever you can. Let that be your only worship and your life will have the flavour of real religiousness. You will not be a Christian, certainly, neither a Hindu nor a Mohammedan; you will be simply religious. And to be religious is beautiful; to be Christian or Hindu is ugly. every dogma creates a limitation, it gives you a confinement; it imprisons you and makes a slave of you.

My sannyasins have to be absolutely free beings -- free of all kinds of slaveries, howsoever old, ancient, howsoever respectable, it doesn't matter, even if the chains are made of gold and studded with diamonds, they have to be thrown they are chains all the same.

There is no got other than love and there is no other worship either. So just be loving and in that you will find both the worshippers and the worshipped, the devotee and the deity -- both will be discovered through love. They are aspects of the same coin.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

Prem Viraga. Prem means love. Viraga means non-attachment.

Ordinarily love is found with deep attachment, but attachment functions like cancer to love: it kills it.

Attachment is a disease of love, it is poison to love. But there is a great misunderstanding people think attachment is love, and once you think that the illness is health, then it is very difficult to get rid of it. You will not go to the physician, you will not take any medicine, you will not go through any surgery; in fact you will protect it by all means. It is a treasure to be protected.

So the first thing my sannyasins have to be very clear about is that attachment is not love, it is anti --

love. And we have to drop attachment if we want to grow in love. And I am using the word 'cancer' for attachment for a special reason if you leave it as it is, it will go on growing. It has to be immediately removed. Whenever it is found that one has cancer, then giving it any time is dangerous. It is to be removed as quickly as possible, because it is growing every moment. Those cancer cells go on multiplying themselves. They are like Indians (laughter): they go on reproducing children and children and children --

they don't believe in birth control.

The same is true about attachment, and it is far more dangerous than cancer because cancer can only destroy your body; attachment can destroy your very soul because love belongs to the soul, love is your soul.

So never be attached and never Force anybody to be attached to you -- remain unattached. And unattachment does not mean detachment. Detachment is cold; one is indifferent, one doesn't care. Care, care as much as possible, remain warm, but don't cling and don't allow the other to cling to you. All clinging has to be dropped. And the energy that goes into clinging has to be used in making your love warmer. The same energy can be used in making love more intense, more passionate, more total, more healthy, more sane.

Only a love free from attachment brings health and wholeness.

Prem Abhinava. Prem means love. Abhinava means eternally new.

Love is always new, it never becomes old. It cannot become old. If it becomes old it is no more there, it has already died. One can go on carrying the corpses -- that's another matter. But love as such has an intrinsic quality of newness. The newness of the flowers, the newness of the stars, the newness of children, the newness of dewdrops, the newness of the early morning sun -- all those newnesses are part of love. But love can remain new only if you remain new. It is not possible for love to remain new if you go on becoming old.

Mind is always old. It is the accumulation of the past, it is just a record of the past; it goes on keeping the past filed. So whenever you need to use it you can use it. It has no idea of the new; hence love is not of the mind, it cannot be of the mind. It arises from a different center in your being; it arises from the heart.

And the heart is always new as the mind is always old. That's why heart and mind never met. They cannot understand each other, there is no communication between the mind and the heart. Their languages are different; the mind speaks the language of logic, the heart is very illogical. And existence is illogical, hence the heart is closer to existence than the mind.

The mind speaks the language of arithmetic and calculation; love is a gambler, the heart is a gambler --

it knows no calculation. It moves into the uncharted without any worry, it risks, but in risking is adventure, in risking, life becomes an ecstasy. If you can go into a new adventure each moment, then your life becomes a dance, then it is not a drag.

The mind speaks the language of prose and the heart speaks the language of poetry. It is untranslatable.

By the time it is translated into the language of the mind it loses its real meaning, its significance, its flavor.

So one has to put the mind aside if one wants to understand love. And the only way to understand love is to be in it, to be drowned in it. And then this freshness is always with you. Then life becomes full of flowers, then each moment is so new that there is always wonder, surprise, awe. And to live a life of wonder and awe is to live a spiritual life. Others talk about spirituality; only lovers know what it is! Lovers have encountered the divine. Logicians have only been thinking about it, philosophizing about it, but they have not tasted anything of it.

Love is a wine; you have to taste it, you have to drink it, you have to become drunk with it, only then do you know what it is.

Prem Artho. Prem means love. Artho means meaning, significance.

One of the greatest problems facing humanity today is that of meaning. Almost everybody who is a little bit intelligent is feeling that life is meaningless, and to feel that life is meaningless is a very dangerous 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

situation. Then the question naturally and inevitably arises: why go on living, for what?

Marcel says that the only real philosophical problem worth considering is that of suicide -- and I agree with him. It is moreso in the contemporary context. Men in the past have never felt this way, for the simple reason... It is not that it was something great, that people were more spiritual and more religious, as the phony spiritualists go on saying, it is not that people were better in the past so they never felt meaninglessness. The only thins is that people were so occupied with their very survival, they were continuously working to somehow exist, that there was no possibility for them to think about the meaning of life.

It is a higher question, it belongs to a higher plane. Still, in the poor countries, nobody bothers about the meaning of life. The question is not of the meaning of life, the question is of bread, of butter, of shelter, of clothes. People are dying, starving, people are naked; they are without any roofs. They are sleeping on the streets. How can they think about the meaning of life? -- there is no time. That's why in the past it was not a problem at all.

Man for the first time has become a little affluent, a little rich, particularly in the western hemisphere, and the problem has suddenly erupted. Now people have enough to eat, their necessary needs are fulfilled, hence they have time to think about significant matters. And this is the first thing: what is the meaning of life? Why are we here at all, why do we go on existing?

Now, unless love becomes our experience life will remain meaningless. No philosophy can give it meaning. Hence the future depends on releasing love energies, otherwise man is bound to commit suicide --

global suicide. He is preparing for it every day. mountains of atomic weapons are in existence. We can destroy seven hundred earths like this -- we have already made that much atomic preparation. In other words each man can be killed seven hundred times. And we are piling up our arms and discovering new methods of killing. It seems we are determined to commit a global suicide sooner or later. And I don't think anybody will object to it; in fact everybody will feel relieved, relieved of an empty life.

But if love happens life becomes so full, so overflowingly full, that one would like to live and one would like others to live. Only love is the hope for the future.

Hence I have decided that love has to become the basic message of my sannyasins. Their whole life has to be grounded in love. If you can feel the meaning of life through love you can trigger the same process in others.

I am preparing sannyasins so that they can go around the world with flames of love within their heart and can share their light and their fire with others who are in immense need. If we can fill the world with a few million meditators, lovers, rejoicing and dancing and celebrating, humanity can yet be saved. There is still a chance, all hope is not lost.

Is the Grass Really Greener...?

Chapter #31

Chapter title: None

31 December 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8012305

ShortTitle: GREENR31

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

Sagaresh means the god of the ocean.

Man can live either as a dewdrop, as an ego or as a vast ocean. Both the possibilities are open and available -- it is our choice. The only condition to be fulfilled to become oceanic is to let the dewdrop disappear, evaporate. Unless the dew drop disappears into the ocean it remains very small, limited; and all limitation creates misery.

Bliss means unlimitedness, vastness; bliss is oceanic. And one can be as vast as the whole universe; just a small thing has to be dropped the idea of the I. And it can be very easily done because it is a false idea, it is our own invention. It does not exist in reality.

Veet Tanha. Veet means transcendence. 'Tanha' is a word used by Gautam the Buddha for desire.

Transcending the desire of to be something, to reach somewhere, to possess something, to become something, is what sannyas is all about: it is to transcend the desiring mind. The desiring mind is a beggar, and whatsoever you give to the beggar it makes no difference -- it goes on begging, it is its nature to beg. So even if one possesses the whole world the mind will not feel contented. Discontent is its very quality. So one has to slip out of the mind to be contented, to feel fulfilled.

The moment you stop desiring -- and desire comes in many forms, in all sizes, in all shapes... There are people who have renounced the world but now they are desiring the pleasures of heaven -- it is the same desire. They are not in the marketplace, they have moved to the monastery, to the mountains, to the deserts, but the desire has not left. It has only taken on a new colour, a new dimension; it has come in again from the backdoor.

So desire in all its forms, even the desire to attain the truth, is a barrier. The desire to know god is a barrier. Any desire, desire as such, takes you away from your reality. The moment you drop all desiring, suddenly you explode into light, into love, into infinity, into eternity; suddenly all that you have been desiring and not finding is found. No-desire is the way to find, desire is the way to go astray.

Aradhana means prayer, but not the prayer that goes on in the churches and the temples and the synagogues.

My definition of prayer is silence, because words are useless when you are communicating with the divine. When you are communicating with the whole no language is needed. Language is human. Below humanity there is no language, above humanity also there is no language. So if you are communing with the trees no language is needed. You can hug a tree, you can kiss a tree, but no language is needed. If you start talking with the tree you are simply crazy! (laughter)

The same is true about that which is above humanity, again language loses all meaning; you have to be silent. And with the beyond... you cannot even kiss it, you cannot even hug it. It is invisible, so you can be in utter silence, just being, and that is prayer. And in that moment of silent being the communion happens.

So forget all the prayers that have been taught to you -- they are all false. Learn only one prayers wordless gratitude, gratitude for the whole, for all the beauty of existence, for all the joy of existence, for our life, for all the gifts that the whole has given to us -- the capacity to love, the capacity to dance, to celebrate, the capacity to be aware, to be silent, to be prayerful. All these are immeasurable, inestimable gifts, and we cannot return them in any way. We have nothing to give back, but we can be thankful.

So a silent thankfulness is my definition of prayer.

Shunya means absolute zero.

The western mind associates zero with nothingness. The eastern understanding of the zero is not of nothingness but of no-thingness -- and there is a vast difference between the two.

Nothingness gives you a negative idea; no-thingness gives you the idea of space. There is no thing in it but there is spaciousness. It is full, full of space -- and that's the only thing that a sannyasin is required to create in himself, the space.

We are so full of rubbish, junk, garbage -- all kinds of furniture. All our thoughts, desires, memories, imagination, fantasies, are nothing but rotten furniture. We have to throw it out so that space can be created.

Once you are full of space and nothing else, the miracle happens: the whole universe rushes into you, Then the stars are within you and the flowers are within you and the birds are singing within you. Then suddenly you are in a deep harmony with the whole. you are the whole. And to me that's the only possibility of being holy: to become one with the whole.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

Hence zero means a new kind of fullness. It is not empty. It is empty of all rubbish, but the moment rubbish is removed, something immensely valuable rushes in. It was always waiting at the gate but there was no space for it to come in. The guest has been waiting and waiting and waiting, but the host is so occupied inside that even if the guest knocks on the door, the host is not going to listen -- it is so noisy inside. And even if he listens there is no space to call the guest in.

Meditation means creating a zero within you and the moment you have created the zero you have invited god; that's the only invitation possible. He immediately, instantly enters in and your whole life is transformed. Then there is no birth, no death, no misery, no anguish. You have become one with the whole, relaxed, restful -- you have found your home!

Dayananda means compassion plus bliss.

They are two sides of the same coin, they happen simultaneously. Bliss happens within, compassion happens without. Bliss is the inner side of compassion, compassion is the outer side of bliss; or, compassion is the body and bliss is the soul.

It is better to begin with the inner, with the centre, because once the centre is transformed the circumference follows automatically, but not vice versa. You can try to be compassionate but it will remain just an effort, something cultivated, painted. It will not change your centre, in fact it will create a division in you; your circumference and your centre will become enemies.

At the centre there will be misery, at the circumference you will be trying to be compassionate. You will start falling apart, you will become schizophrenic. That's what the whole humanity has become, schizophrenic.

So never start from the circumference -- that is one of the most significant things to remember: every beginning has to be from the centre towards the circumference.

If you really want to change the tree, change the roots; don't go on painting the flowers and the leaves --

your painting won't help. If the leaves are looking pale you can paint them green, but they will die sooner because of your paint. You can deceive people but you cannot deceive the tree, you cannot deceive existence. If you really want the leaves to be green, then you have to think of the roots: nourish them, water them, and the leaves will automatically be green and the roses will become bigger and bigger, more and more fragrant.

Start with the centre, start with bliss, and compassion follows like a shadow.

Krishnananda. Krishna is one of the names of god. Ananda means bliss. Krishnananda means divine bliss, godly bliss.

Man's real search is not for god, it is for bliss. Of course when you have found bliss you have found god too, but those who are trying to find god have started the journey from a wrong angle. The word 'god' does not ring any bells in the heart. If you were not told about god from your childhood you may not have ever thought about it.

In Communist Russia children are not told about god so they don't bother about it at all. Buddhists don't believe in god so their children don't bother about god at all. Jainas in India don't believe in god so their religion is a godless religion, there is no question about god at all. Not a single Jaina has ever asked me whether god exists or not. But as far as bliss is concerned, whether you are told about it or not, you will seek it. You will seek it in Communist Russia, you will seek it in a Buddhist home, you will seek it in a Christian family; you will seek it wherever you are. Atheist, theist, communist, fascist, it doesn't matter.

So bliss is our true search. Of course when bliss is found much more is found with it. And because of that much more we had to give it a new name, because it is not only bliss -- it is bliss plus many things, many indefinable things, many mysterious things -- so we had to coin the word 'god'. But that word is meaningful only when you have found bliss; before that, the word is utterly meaningless, there is no need to talk about it.

If one goes on searching for bliss one finds god too. And whenever you think about god you always think of him as being somewhere outside and whenever you think of bliss you cannot think of it as being outside; it has to be something inner -- an inner glow, an inner rejoicing. God can be worshipped, bliss cannot be worshipped. So around the idea of god religions can be created, anti-religions can be created, but around the idea of bliss no religion is created, no religion can be created. hence what I am doing here is not creating a religion, but only a kind of religiousness.

My sannyasins are not searching for god, they are searching for bliss within themselves. But once you 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

have found bliss simultaneously you have found many more things: truth, god, freedom, love, compassion --

the list is almost endless!

How long will you be here?

-- Not so long... or forever.

-- Be here. Forever is better -- a little more! Good.

Shunyananda. Shunya means zero. Anand means bliss.

To be absolutely silent, thoughtless, is the meaning of zero. And out of that no-thingness, out of that zero, bliss arises. Bliss is our intrinsic nature, but it is covered with layers and layers of rubbish. It has to be excavated, you have to dig it out. It is just like making a well: you go on digging layers of earth and then rocks, and one day, you find the springs of water. They were already there but between you and the springs of water there was this earth for twenty feet, thirty feet, forty feet. It differs with different people.

Sometimes there are big rocks and they have to be dynamited -- for that we have invented dynamic meditation. When you really do 'hoo, hoo, hoo,' all rocks are dynamited. Just sitting silently, doing nothing it won't happen! (laughter) 'Hoo' really hits hard and it hits at exactly the right place, where one needs to be hit.

So one has to go on digging. All the methods of meditation are nothing but methods of digging.

Bliss is within you, you just have to become empty of all that is covering it. Once the zero is found, suddenly, immediately, instantly, bliss starts overflowing you. And it comes like a flood; you cannot contain it. It becomes a dance, it becomes a song, it becomes a sharing!

How long will you be here?

-- Two weeks.

-- Then come back again, because in two weeks you will be able to find only the rock (much laughter). So dynamite it a little more, time will be needed, so come back again. Good!

Karunesha means goddess of compassion.

Compassion makes one a god or a goddess, but to achieve compassion is a long pilgrimage. From passion to compassion the distance is great. Passion is very gross, compassion very subtle; but compassion is rooted in passion so passion has not to be denied, it has not to be rejected. Roots are always ugly and passion contains the roots but those same roots can create beautiful flowers. Seeing the roots one cannot conceive that they may be hiding such beautiful flowers. It is impossible to conceive -- roots are so ugly!

The same is true about passion and compassion: passion is like roots hidden underground in the unconscious; and compassion is like a flowering branch -- so many flowers that the branch cannot carry the burden of it, it bends and touches the earth. Passion can be transformed into compassion through the process of meditation. Meditation is the bridge from this shore to that further shore.

So I am not against passion, I am not against anything at all; I am for transformation. Take hold of whatsoever energies are given to you by the whole and even if they look ugly in the beginning, don't reject them, try to refine them. Try to find out, there must be some hidden treasure in them. If nature has given them to you they must carry some message, they must carry something of immense value. But those messages have to be decoded; they are not given directly but in a code language. And meditation is the art of decoding man's animality.

Once it is decoded the same animality becomes man's godliness. Man is only a process from the animal to god. Man is not a place to stay; it is a bridge to be crossed.

One of the most significant sayings of Jesus is Life is a bridge -- don't make your house on it, pass over it. This saying is not contained in the Bible, but Sufis have carried it down the ages.

One of the great emperors of India, Akbar, made a new capital, a really beautiful capital which was never populated because he died. When the capital was ready he died. That's how it happens: by the time you think to enjoy and you have prepared everything, death comes and knocks you down. Death always comes at the right moment -- and the right moment means when you are ready to retire and relax.

He had made a beautiful capital, Fatehpur Sikri, and he wanted to retire there with his wise men and poets and singers and musicians; he was tired af the kingdom and the whole politics and he wanted to retire.

He had planned a beautiful town with beautiful palaces and gardens, and the entry was by a bridge across the river on the other side. On the bridge he wanted some message and he told his wise men to find a beautiful message which could be written just at the gate. And this was the sentence chosen. Life is a bridge

-- pass through it but don't make your house on it.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

Man is only a bridge, a bridge between the unconscious and the conscious, between matter and spirit, between passion and compassion, between animal and god. The bridge is the same -- the name of the bridge is meditation.

So put your total energy into meditation.

Turiyananda. Turiya is a special word used by the eastern mystics; it does not mean anything, it is only a number -- it means the fourth.

George Gurdjieff used to call his path the fourth way.

Man can be divided into four stages. The first is the waking stage, the second is dreaming, the third is dreamless sleep and the fourth is the state of Buddhahood -- that is called turiya. Turiyananda means the bliss that happens by achieving the fourth state of consciousness.

So one has to become more and more aware, alert, watchful, so aware that even in sleep one can watch one's dreams, and one can remain aware that the dreams are passing by. The day it happens is of immense importance. The day you can watch your dreams just passing and you can be a witness to them, you have come half the journey already because you have passed two stages: the first of waking and the second of dreaming. And then the third is not very difficult: if you can watch dreams, you can also watch a dreamless sleep. The sleep is there, the body is resting and you are fully aware of the restfulness.

And then the fourth, which is awareness of awareness itself, happens. Then the journey is complete, the circle is complete. When you become aware of awareness itself then nothing is left. You have come to the source, the source of your being, and one source of your being is also the source of all. It is not only your source, it is the source of the whole existence. At the source we are all one. That one can be called god --

that oneness, rather.

So this is the word for you to remember, the key word -- awareness. It will bring all the blessings that are possible and impossible. The possible happens through it and even the impossible happens through it.

Vedananda. Veda means wisdom and ananda means bliss.

Knowledge is a barrier to wisdom, the only barrier. The moment one is ready to renounce knowledge one attains wisdom. Wisdom is innocence -- one has become a child again but with a difference, and a difference that really makes a difference. A child is innocent because of ignorance and the wise man is innocent, not because of ignorance but because he has renounced knowledge.

The child has to go into knowledge and the wise man has gone beyond it; he has left knowledge behind.

So in a way they are ones both are without knowledge. But in another way they are very different from each other; the child is yet ignorant, he will have to become knowledgeable; and the wise man is tired of knowledge, he has known its utter futility and he has dropped it.

This is the second birth. Jesus calls it being born anew. He told one of the rabbis, a professor and a scholar, Nicodemus, 'Unless you are born again you shall not enter into my kingdom of god.'

No knowledgeable person, no rabbi, no scholar, no pundit, no pope, has ever entered into the kingdom of god. They cannot; they are so full of knowledge. And it is really very strange that these same people --

the popes, the bishops, the priests -- go on telling their congregations that Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden because they ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge; the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge was the cause. If that was the cause then what are these fools doing? -- they are spreading knowledge. They go on telling people 'Read the Bible, repeat it every day...'

These are the people who will hinder people in getting into the kingdom of god again.

My work here is to help you become innocent, to be reborn. That fruit of the Tree of Knowledge has to be thrown out. Once it is thrown out the doors of the kingdom of god suddenly open for you.

Table of Contents

Chapter title: None

Chapter title: None

Chapter title: None

Chapter title: None

Chapter title: None

Chapter title: None

Chapter title: None

Chapter title: None

Chapter title: None

Chapter title: None

Chapter title: None

Chapter title: None

Chapter title: None

Chapter title: None

Chapter title: None

Chapter title: None

Chapter title: None

Chapter title: None

Chapter title: None

Chapter title: None

Chapter title: None

Chapter title: None

Chapter title: None

Chapter title: None

Chapter title: None

Chapter title: None

Chapter title: None

Chapter title: None

Chapter title: None

Chapter title: None