Chapter title: None

‌Chapter title: None‌

24 November 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8011245 ShortTitle: ALLWAY24 Audio:

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[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up.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

THE PATH IS A BATH

(Osho is talking to Renata, the elderly mother of an Italian sannyasin.) Meditation is a state of absolute silence. It is not action, it is absolute rest. Nothing has to be done for it, all doing has to be dropped; so one can do it in any state of the body. One can do it lying on the bed or sitting in a chair, one can do it when one is ill, sick, because it has nothing to do with activity. It is simply gathering yourself inside, withdrawing yourself from the world, forgetting the world.

When you collect the whole of your energy at the centre of your being, that is meditation. And to be in that state is to be reborn. That's the meaning of Renata: reborn, born anew.

Jesus says to Nicodemus 'Unless you are born again you shall not enter into the kingdom of god.'

Nicodemus was a rabbi, a great scholar of those days. He was afraid to meet Jesus openly because he had such a reputation for his scholarship that going to an illiterate person, the son of a carpenter, and asking him any question about life

would go against his fame, his name, against his reputation and respectability. So he went in the dark, in the middle of the night, so nobody would come to know about it.

When Jesus said to him 'Unless you are born again...' being a scholar he heard it literally. He said 'How is that possible? How can one be reborn? You are talking nonsense.'

Jesus was talking about meditation, but a man who is hung up in the mind is bound to miss the point.

Meditation is nothing of the mind. It is slipping out of the mind and getting into your very life source --

because only from that life source is one reborn. That is true baptism; taking a bath in your own life juices.

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And once you have tasted of it then there is no death, then you know life is eternal. And to know it is to know all.

YOU MIGHT DIE LAUGHING

Being blissful is taking a risk -- because the mob lives in misery, and naturally it does not allow anybody to be blissful. That hurts the crowd, it wounds the mob; they start thinking "How dare you be blissful?" They are very at ease if you are miserable; they are sympathetic, friendly, because you are just like them, you are not a foreigner. The moment you become blissful you are a foreigner, you are an outsider

-- and people have always been afraid of outsiders.

They know the insiders, they are familiar with them, they can rely on them

because they are predictable, but the outsider is unpredictable. And the blissful person is the farthest away from the crowd. He is really a stranger; he belongs to another world, not only to another country. He speaks a totally different language, he lives a totally different kind of life; hence people feel a certain distance from such a person. Either they will condemn him as mad... that is their first reaction. That's what they are doing to many people in Soviet Russia. They will torture them, give them psychological shocks, electric shocks. They cannot accept that you can be so blissful. It is not possible -- you must be insane.

The first reaction of the society is to condemn the person as mad: if one is mad one can be ignored. And there are many people in the madhouses of the world who are not mad, they are simply different and people cannot tolerate that.

If the person is very powerful, like Jesus, Buddha or Zarathustra, then you cannot just call him mad. He will persist, he will try to prove in every possible way that you are wrong. And in a way people start feeling doubtful about their own ideas. When they see a Buddha so silent, so blissful, such a beautiful space surrounding him, they become suspicious of their own idea that he is mad or that he is a fool. And people like Buddha are very persuasive, almost seductive. Then the second step for the society is to condemn that man as anti-traditional, anti- religious, anti-country, and finish him somehow.

They killed Socrates, Mansoor, and many others. One of the most beautiful men, a Sufi mystic, Sarmad, was killed -- his head was cut off -- for the simple reason that he was so blissful that the priests and the king conspired against him. Just before his head was cut off he said, "You can cut off my head, but you cannot cut my laughter. Even when my head is separate from me you will hear my laughter

-- I will haunt you!"

And the beautiful story goes that when his head was cut off it rolled down the steps of the mosque where he was murdered -- laughing, giggling!

Such people can be blissful in life and can be blissful in death too. That is the meaning of the story: they laugh their whole way to God. But that needs courage

-- and that is the meaning of your name: blissful courage. It needs a strong spirit because it will be going against the current.

My sannyasins will have to face many antagonistic situations. They will be thought outrageous, rebels, dropouts; all kinds of condemnations will be heaped

upon them. And if they don't listen -- and they are not going to listen -- then they will even be killed, condemned to death. But it is better to die rejoicing than to live in misery. Just a single moment of joy is far more valuable than an eternity of misery.

I teach you only one thing, and that is, be blissful -- whatsoever the cost. LOVE: PUT WINGS ON YOUR WORDS

(Osho speaks to Anna about the meanings of her name -- prayer, grace and mercy -- in relation to love.) Without love there is no prayer, no grace, no mercy. On the tree of love all these flowers bloom. People can pray without love -- that's what they are doing all over the world, in all the churches, temples and synagogues: they don't know what love is trying to pray. That is very absurd, their prayer will be parrotlike; they will simply repeat words, their words will not have the support of their heart. And without the heart beating in those words they are dead. Only the heartbeat can make them alive, can give them wings, can make them reach to the ultimate.

All these prayers that are happening in the world are not heard. Unless love is there at the source prayer is a hypocrisy. It is a very dangerous dishonesty -- very dangerous because you are not being honest even with god. Somebody is repeating the words of Jesus, somebody is repeating the words of Mohammed, but 1/08/07

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when Jesus prayed it was out of love, when Mohammed prayed it was sheer joy! Those words don't mean much; what matters is the inner gesture -- and that inner gesture is missing if love is not there.

And if love is there you need not learn prayer -- it comes of its own accord. All these three qualities are consequences, by-products of love. Love and you will see that you are becoming more and more prayerful; love and you will see you are becoming more and more graceful; love and you are in for a great surprise, you are becoming more and more compassionate and merciful. And a thousand

and one other things will follow too. Love opens the doors of the divine.

So learn the simple art of love. Love for the sheer sake of love, for no other reason, and don't miss a single opportunity to be loving. There are thousands of opportunities every day, but because we are unloving we don't even see them, we by pass them, we overlook them, we ignore them. Because we are unloving we immediately jump on anything that is going to support our unloving mind; we go on searching for negativities. We go on counting the thorns on a rosebush, forgetting all about the roses.

So love means to become attuned to the roses. Be positive, affirmative, look for the good and the beautiful and the true -- and they abound! And when you start looking for them your love will go on growing. And love is not something that becomes complete one day; it is an eternal pilgrimage. It goes on becoming more and more complete but it is never finished. No point comes where you can say 'Now I have arrived.'

Love is not a goal but a journey -- and that's the beauty of it -- because all goals are dead and a journey is alive. Love is life, love is god, love is sannyas!

BLISS AND AWARENESS: THEY ENHANCE THE DANCE

(Anand Prabodhi's path is to combine the two.)

Bliss and awareness are two sides of the same coin: become blissful and you will be aware, or become aware and you will be blissful. One can do both simultaneously -- and that's the best course because then things happen in a faster way. Then it is not such a long and gradual process; both together can make an opportunity even for sudden enlightenment.

So use them both together, be blissful and be aware. They will enhance each other, they will support each other. They are not things which have to be developed separately, although that's what has been done in the past. A few people have tried to be blissful -- in the East they were known as bhaktas, devotees; and a few people have tried to be aware -- they were called gyanis, the knowers.

In India there have been two basic trends; one is of blissfulness, prayer, love, devotion, surrender, the other is of awareness, meditation, watchfulness', witnessing. Because they both worked separately it took very long. In fact it took

so long that India had to think in terms of there being many lives. India is the only country which has thought in terms of there being many lives. Christianity, Judaism, Islam -- they think of only one life; they have not really pondered over the matter. One life is not enough, one life is too small to grow in. There are s thousand and one things to be done and the mundane takes so much that nothing is left for the sacred.

The Indian seers have been watching this, that this small life is not enough to know god, hence slowly slowly they started exploring 'Is there any possibility of there being more lives?' Then they found that there is a possibility; we have been before, we will be afterwards -- there are many lives. But the triggering point was that they were all working either on awareness or on blissfulness -- and then it takes very long. They developed the whole science of yoga so that you can live long even in this life because the work has to be completed. They started thinking of how to prolong life through physical exercises, through chemicals, through breathing exercises, they have tried many things and certainly they have found ways to prolong life.

But the whole point is that if those two things can be put together there is no need to go into the tortures called yoga. You need not bother about the length of life.

These two things together can become a sudden enlightenment because they support each other, enhance each other, enrich each other.

So remember it: on one hand be more blissful, cheerful, take life joyously, and on the other hand become more alert and watchful of everything -- you are doing, thinking, feeling. Be aware even of your cheerfulness and be cheerful even about your awareness.

(Osho continues on the theme of the synthesis of bliss and awareness in his address to Sugito.) 1/08/07

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A man without bliss is a man without song, without dance, without any

celebration. He is dull, he is dead; he only vegetates. His life is a long drag. Somehow he has to live because he has found himself alive on this strange planet, so he has to drag his way towards the grave. And how can he be blissful?

-- because he knows nothing about life, he knows nothing about consciousness, he knows nothing about birth, death.

He knows nothing really. Maybe he has accumulated much information about geography and history and philosophy and religion, but it is only information; he himself knows nothing. And without your own knowing your life cannot be a song, it cannot be a joy.

My effort here is to help you to be a little more alert, more conscious, so that you can experience that which you are. And the very experience of it brings bliss, the very acquaintance with it and you are showered with bliss. And out of bliss life becomes a festival -- a festival of lights. Suddenly the spring comes and you are all flowers, and then each action is a song, then whatsoever you do has a golden touch to it.

I call this the greatest miracles transforming a dragging life into a dance, changing the heavy, serious kind of life into a light-hearted laughter. It is possible, it is possible for everyone. Not a single human being is born without the possibility. If we don't realise it we are responsible and nobody else.

Sannyas means taking the responsibility for whatsoever you are. With that acceptance, transformation sets in. The very acceptance that you are responsible for your life, makes you a creator of your life. You start changing; you cannot wait, because all waiting is waiting for Godot -- who never comes.

Then one starts changing one's life right now because there is no tomorrow. And if you don't do anything, nobody is going to do it for you. And if you don't do it now then you will never be able to do it --

now or never! DEEP-ME DIVING

To become one with your interiority is the whole process of sannyas. We are living on the outside absolutely unaware of who we are, because our being is on the inside and our wandering is on the outside, so the meeting never happens. basically everybody is searching for themselves, is trying to find out, figure out,

what this life is, what does this mean? but they are looking everywhere else except into their own interiority -- and that is where our reality is.

A sannyasin has to slowly dive deep within himself. I am not against the outside world; live on the outside but find moments to dive within. And then your outer life also will have more richness, more fragrance, it will have more dignity, grace, integrity. You will be able to live even on the outside in a more authentic way, you will not be a hypocrite; you will be simple, sincere, ordinary, honest. You will not be a saint but neither saints nor sinners are needed; they both exist together and they both have to be got rid of.

They are both ugly phenomena, both are extremes, and life is exactly in the middle. One need not be a sinner, one need not be a saint; one has just to be an ordinary human being. Then life is balanced, and a balanced life has harmony, a balanced life has music, poetry.

So on the outside also if you become acquainted with your inner being you will be a totally different person. You will have a certain coolness around you; even in the hottest moments you will remain cool --

not cold, but cool, together. Even in the hardest moments you will not be disturbed. Even in the greatest crises you will remain centred and grounded because you know that whatsoever is happening on the outside is not as much significant as your inner peace, your inner silence.

Once you know the taste of your inner world everything on the outside becomes valueless. Success and failure are almost games. Then what one is on the outside

-- a president or a peon -- doesn't matter, it makes no difference. One can be a beggar or one can be an emperor -- it is all the same. But for that one has to find moments, intervals, gaps, to go in. And in those moments forget the whole world, as if it doesn't exist. In the beginning it is 'as if', but soon you will realise that really it doesn't matter, it is not a question of 'as if'.

But that will come only later on; we have to begin a hypothetical way. My effort here is very scientific: we have to begin with a hypothesis, as if the outer world does not exist, for a few moments every day at least. And then slowly you will see that your 'as if' was right, it coincided with reality, it was consistent with reality. Your hypothesis was not just a hypothesis, it was a truth. You were not aware then but as you enter your own being you will become more and more

aware, that the real is inner and the outer is only made of the same stuff as dreams.

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Going All the Way

Chapter #25

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