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‌CHAPTER 5

6 March 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin brings her five-year-old daughter to take sannyas. Osho tells her: Help her to get into dancing as much as possible; that will become her meditation, Osho then tells her. Children can enter into meditation through dance very easily, because dance is not anything unnatural, artificial; man is born with the faculty of dance. Because we have stopped dancing naturally, the body is suffering very much. There are a few things that can happen only through dance: flow is possible only through dance. So help her to participate in dancing meditations. If she can get into dance, meditation will happen of its own accord.]

And meditate on Christ, think of him. He is one of the doers to god.

Christianity has destroyed his image, so don’t be bothered about what Christians say of him; have more of a direct contact. There is no need to be worried about the theology that has arisen around him: find the man.

The man was immensely beautiful; he transformed humanity. Man has never been the same again since Christ; he is a milestone in human evolution. And it is perfectly good that we divide history from the time of Christ – before Christ, after Christ. That’s perfectly right; nobody else deserves that.

Before Buddha there had been many other buddhas, so Buddha cannot be the demarking line; before Buddha and after Buddha won’t fit. He was one of many buddhas. But Christ is the beginning of a new line, a new work; he is the first Christ. With Buddha, some tradition that had been there for centuries, bloomed; with Jesus a seed fell into the earth but it has not bloomed yet. Christianity has been trampling on the soil, churches have been built on the soil and the seed is dying.

Buddha has compassion, immense compassion, but a passive kind of compassion. Christ has a very active compassion; he is ready to fight for it. Buddha will not fight. He will feel for you, he will

be tremendously moved by you, but he will remain sitting under his Bodhi tree. Christ will rush to you, will start doing something; his compassion is active. And that is very much needed in the world. A passive compassion is good but it won’t change the world. A compassion is needed which acts, which starts doing something, which really gets involved in life, becomes committed. Christ brings commitment, involvement to religion.

Meditate, just silently sitting think of him and slowly slowly, you will be surprised: you start feeling many things about him. You will see him walking again, you will see him talking to his apostles again, you will see him on Lake Galilee, and you will see him on Golgotha.

I am saying this to you because you have seen him once. You have been a contemporary of Christ’s, so all those memories can be revived again. Just a little effort and you can dig up those memories from inside you.

That’s why I liked the name and I will keep it. Deva means divine, vigyan means science.

Gyan means knowledge, vigyan means science. The difference is this: that knowledge remains speculative, science is experimental. k is not just thinking, it is doing something. Knowledge is only logical; you can do it sitting in your room. It needs no methodology, no lab, no experiment; it is purely logical, it is a mind game. Science is experimental, it is not just a mind game. The mind is used in it but the conclusion has to arrive through experimentation. Only the experiment will prove whether you are right or wrong. You cannot decide it a priori; you have to go hypothetically into the experiment.

And so is the case with religion: it is the science of the divine. k is experimental, it is experiential, it is existential. You cannot only think about god; you have to do something. You have to meditate, you have to pray, you have to search and seek, you have to go withinwards. And all that you start with is only hypothetical; it is always ‘perhaps’. The truth is to be proved only when you have arrived through your experimentation. Only the experiment will give you the conclusion.

So the real seeker never starts with a belief. The real seeker only starts with a hypothetical belief. He says ‘suppose’, and goes into it. That’s all that can be allowed, a supposition. He says, ‘Suppose there is a god, then what will I do? So let me start doing it! If in doing it I find that god is, then my supposition has been proved right, then it becomes valid.’

So sannyas is just hypothetical, it is a beginning. One remains open but one starts searching and experimenting. Slowly, slowly, one experiment leads you into another and so on, so forth, and a chain comes by and by. One thing is triggered by another thing, and one day suddenly you arrive at the truth. Only then, trust; otherwise everything is hypothetical.

[Throughout this month bhagwan has been insisting people to stay for the enlightenment day celebrations on the 21st. The new sannyasin says he wishes to do a vipassana course in Kanpuri, but this will be over the 21st.]

Then don’t go, because that meditation will not help that much. Go after the twenty-first. And you can do Vipassana here; there is no need to go anywhere. If you are only going for Vipassana, you can do it here.…

You can go but... I have told you that you will be missing something. Then go – that is not my business; I am not saying don’t go. I have done my work, I have told you that you will be missing something. If you choose to miss then it is perfectly okay.

[A sannyasin says: I have guilt feelings towards my family. I feel I can’t drop them right now.]

Then don’t drop them! Who is telling you to drop them.Just tell me, what is the problem with your

parents?

[The sannyasin answers: They don’t accept me as a sannyasin. They’re afraid to lose me.]

Then you will have to decide, because one day or other everybody has to go beyond the boundaries of the parents. Otherwise one never grows, one never becomes one’s own self. There is no need to hurt them but there is no need to be dominated by them either. Just make it plain that this is how you would like to be. If they can accept you, perfectly good; if they can’t accept you, then too that is perfectly good.

[The sannyasin says: I’m very afraid to hurt them.]

You need not positively hurt them, but if they feel hurt, that is their business, that is their problem; what can you do about it? Or if you want to drop sannyas you can do that. I am not saying anything to anybody. If you feel that you can’t hurt them and that this will be hurting them, forget all about sannyas! Just be there...

[The sannyasin answers: I don t feel to drop sannyasBut I don t feel that I can finish things this

time.]

So next time you can; there is no hurry. Let it take a little time, there is no need to do it in a haste. This time go, be loving towards them, be respectful towards them, even if they reject you. They are your parents. You should not make it a condition that unless they accept you, you will not respect them; that again is forcing something on them. Be free and let them have their freedom. If they want to feel miserable about it, that too is their freedom; you cannot interfere in it. You can do everything possible not to make them miserable, but you cannot commit suicide just because they will be miserable.

And their misery is just stupid, because you are not doing anything harmful to anybody. Just by becoming a sannyasin you have not harmed anybody. They must be having some very orthodox ideas. They don’t know what religion is, they don’t know what sannyas is. They must just be thinking that they have lost their hold on you. But that possessiveness is ugly, and they are being hurt by their possessiveness, not by your sannyas. That has to be understood: how can your sannyas hurt them? It is their possessiveness; they want to dominate you, they want to remain your boss. They would like you to do only that which they want you to do. But that is not right; that is destroying you. That is not love!

[The sannyasin says: My sister is writing that I will give them – yes, it’s good blackmail – a heart attack if I come back.]

Nobody has given anybody a heart attack. If they want to give themselves one, they can, but you cannot. Even if you die, do you think your father or your mother will die of a heart attack? Otherwise the world would be empty if people started dying like that! You have not done anything; you are just wearing orange clothes and they will have heart attacks! Then they must be waiting for it, asking for it.

That is all stupid; these threats are just there to manipulate you.

[The sannyasin says: I don t feel the strength, the energy, to go against them; to say ‘no’. I feel guilty.]

Just go there, see whatsoever happens, and whatsoever feels good, do. From my side, never feel guilty. If you drop sannyas I am perfectly happy. You look after the other side; from my side, never feel guilty. If you never come back there is no problem in it. I am not your father and I am not trying in any way to impose anything on you. Whatsoever you become, it’s perfectly good. If you feel that this is less of a problem for you, drop sannyas. Choose whichever is the lesser evil, and I bless you either way. So from my side you are completely free; the other side you have to decide about. Just go and see whatsoever happens.

If you feel the heart attack is coming, drop sannyas but ask the doctors first, don’t trust your sister because a heart attack can be simulated. Ask the doctors; take your parents to the hospital and let them be checked. And if you see it is really coming and the cardiogram says, ‘Now, beware!’ simply drop sannyas; that’s perfectly okay. With me there is no problem. All I am saying is that you have to be yourself and you have to learn to be free.

These are all threats and they have violence in them. There are two kinds of violence: the male violence and the female violence. The male violence is aggressive, direct. The male violence says, ‘If you don’t listen to me, I will kill you!’ The female violence says, ‘If you don’t listen to me, I will die.’ But these are both violences, there is no difference.

One is active, the other is passive – that’s all. So don’t be worried about this. Just go and see. And whatsoever you do is good. I am not here to create any problems for you; I am here to solve them, if I can. I will not burden you with new problems. So from my side you are going completely free, and there, just see – there is no need to decide right now – and respond!

And then come back.

Krishnada. Krishna is a name of god. Literally it means one who attracts; it means the magnetic force. God is the centre of all attraction. It is the ultimate gravitation, everything hangs around it; it is an energy-field. So the word krishna literally means the magnetic energy-field. And we are all moving, knowing, unknowingly, towards that field. Groping in the dark, stumbling, sometimes going astray, sometimes coming back again to the path, but somehow deep in our beings is a search for god. It may take thousands of lives but we go on searching. Unless the search is complete, contentment is not possible; one remains discontented. You can have money and the discontent remains; you can have power and the discontent remains. You can have all that this world gives, can give, and the discontent remains. It disappears only when you have arrived at the innermost core of existence, at krishna.

And da means brother. Krishnada means god, the brother. However far away we may be, man is cousin to god. Trees are also cousins to god, so are rocks. This existence is a family, it is a brotherhood. I don’t think of god as father but as brother, because with the father it becomes authoritative, serious; then disobedience becomes the sin. If Jews and Christians had not conceived of god as father then Adam’s eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge would not have been such a great sin. There was no need to make such a fuss about it.

All that he had done was in innocent disobedience; god tempted him to disobey. But that Christians and Jews have called the greatest sin, the original sin. There is nothing much in it, just a childish temptation to go against the authority; it is perfectly good in itself. It simply shows that Adam had some spirit in him, that he was not bogus, that he had some soul to rebel.

Think of god as father and suddenly religion becomes authoritative and disobedience becomes sin. Conceive of god as brother and disobedience is not the question at all. You are not obliged to obey the brother; the brother can at the most advise you, he cannot command. And once commandment disappears, disobedience disappears.

This I would like to become one of the fundamentals of future religion, that existence is a brotherhood; there is no god figure, there is no father figure. We are all alike. Maybe Buddha is awake and you are asleep, but you belong to the same reality, you are the same reality. You can take advice from Buddha, you can gather a few clues about how to find your awareness, but there is no authority in it.

Vasu means the good. It is not concerned with any act; it doesn’t mean the good act. It is concerned with the being, good being. And whatsoever is flowing out of good being is good.

In the past it has been said again and again to man to do good then he will be good. I say just the opposite: be good and then whatsoever you do will be good, because action comes out of being. Being is primary, not action. Because the emphasis in the past has been on action people have become hypocritical. The being remains bad and they go on doing good acts. They become respectable, they are even thought of as saints, but if you look inside them nothing has happened; they are the same old rotten beings.

They manage, they discipline themselves, they cultivate themselves with virtues and they do service and they do prayer and they do this and they do that, but this is all doing. Doing remains peripheral, it never penetrates the centre; and the centre is the real matter. Unless the centre changes, all changes are just superficial, decorations at the most. Vasu means good being. It does not arise out of good acts; it arises out of deep meditation. Meditation imparts good being to you, and out of good being, good acts flow. Then there is no disparity between the being and the act; then the act is just a shadow of your being.

[A sannyasin says: I don’t have the feeling that anything much has happened to me and I really don’t know who I am, who you are, and what, if anything, there is between you and me... what I’m doing here]

I understand. The problem arises because you have great expectations. The problem arises because you would like miracles to happen to you. Your expectations are so fantastic, so far out, that whatsoever happens falls short; you cannot feel grateful for it.

People who have great desires can never feel grateful because whatsoever happens is always tiny compared to their desires, it is not much. And because you can’t feel grateful, much more that could have happened cannot happen, because it happens only through gratefulness. So you get trapped in a vicious circle: you desire much, because of that you cannot feel grateful. Whatsoever happens you can’t take any note of; you simply ignore it. And then you become more and more closed.

If there is no desire, if you have no idea what should happen, you are without any idea, then things happen. Those things are already happening, but then you take note of them. You feel tremendously thrilled because this has happened and you had not expected anything. If you are expecting that when you go on the road you will find one lakh rupees Lying there and you only find a ten rupee note, you will say, ‘What am I doing here?’ But if you had not expected that one lakh rupees, a ten rupee note is good... nothing wrong in it! And if you had been grateful then from the same source from where the ten rupee note has come ten million can come. But you remain open in gratefulness.

There is no other problem. The problem is simply.… And it is not only with you, it is with many people: people come with great desires. Drop all desiring and just be here.

And don’t bother about what you are doing, because that question will not leave you wherever you are, so what is the point of bringing it here? If you are in England the question will be there; if you are in Australia the question will be there. Whatsoever you do the question will be there: ‘What am I doing here?’ The question will remain relevant anywhere you are. Even if you are in paradise the question, ‘What am I doing here?’ will be relevant. Even if you are with god, one day or other you will start asking, ‘What am I doing here?’

That question is irrelevant because it will be relevant anywhere. That question has to be dropped. We are simply being here – not doing anything, just being here. And being here is such a joy. What are these trees doing here? What are these birds doing here? They are utterly cheerful just by being. You have to learn cheerfulness in just being here. Not that something has to be done, then you will be happy; that you have to earn, you have to do, you have to perform, then you will be happy. Even if you perform, the question will be there: I have performed, now what am I doing here? That question has been asked by all kinds of people in all kinds of situations so it seems to be utterly nonsensical.

Then one asks, ‘Who am I?’ – that too is of the same type of question. That who cannot be answered because who is the fundamental mystery of existence. You cannot go behind it, because that will be going behind yourself. To know who you are you will have to go behind yourself and look at yourself. But that is not possible because you will be behind and whatsoever you look at will not be you. So in fact the question ‘Who am I?’ is a koan.

Maharshi Raamana used to give that to every disciple: to go on thinking, ‘Who am I?’ But man is so foolish that those disciples are still repeating, ‘Who am I?’ They think that some day the answer is going to come. There is no answer! That question is such that by asking it continuously again and again, you go on getting deeper and deeper into yourself. One day you suddenly see that the question is absurd. ‘I am!’ and there is no way to answer who you are. All answers are false. Then there comes great relaxation, and in that relaxation is knowing.

But I am not saying that you will know who you are; nobody has ever known! No Buddha has ever known who he is. Then what is the difference between a Buddha and An ordinary man? The

ordinary man thinks he knows who he is, and the Buddha is one who knows that there is no way to know who he is: that is the difference. The Buddha has come to recognise the futility of the question, has renounced the question, and is simply happy by being. He no more asks, ‘Who am I?’ The ordinary person believes that he knows, or if sometimes his belief is disturbed he is very much confused and he starts searching for the answer.

That’s where you are, that’s what every sannyasin has to pass through. Between the ordinary person and the Buddha is the sannyasin. The state of a sannyasin is the state of confusion, chaos. So if you are confused, things are happening, something is going on. There is no fear. When I see some sannyasin not confused at all, I am worried; then I see that this man is going to remain ordinary, he will not go anywhere.

Simply relax into this confusion. One day this confusion will also disappear. And when the confusion has disappeared you will not have the answer, remember; just the confusion would have disappeared, the question would have disappeared. An answer never comes; there is no answer. Life is a mystery: not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived.

Just try what I am saying.

[The sannyasin says: Can I ask one more question?]

Next time, mm? For this time it is enough – it can make you a Buddha if you understand!

[A sannyasin had been in individual therapy which was abruptly cancelled because the therapist left. The sannyasin said: I was so afraid of something that was going to happen, and then when suddenly it was over it was as if nothing were there; I was the only torturer.]

That’s how it is! You are the only torturer; you are the torturer and the tortured, the gaoler and the prisoner. That’s what people go on doing, playing both the roles; they enjoy it so they go on playing. Even when they ask how to drop it, they are simply enjoying the question; they don’t want to drop it. If they really want to drop it, there is nothing... nobody is preventing them; they can simply drop it. But they ask how. That means that right now they are not ready to drop it; they will postpone it in the name of ‘how?’

[She answers: I couldn’t go through that again!]

Then drop it! This is the secret of all the groups: if you don’t drop your misery, you will have to go into groups. If you think that a group is more miserable, then drop your misery. These groups are simply an opportunity to become more miserable so you can choose, whatsoever you want to. [The primal therapist] will be away for six weeks, so for six weeks you can meditate over it. If you can drop your misery on your own, perfectly good; if you can’t, then [she] will have to help you, mm? So wait for [her]!

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