Chapter title: None

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27 November 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8011275 1/08/07

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[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up.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

COAL TO KOHINOOR

(Osho opens the evening by talking to Dhyan Coleman about the difference between meditation and concentration.)

Meditation is misunderstood all over the world because for centuries the idea has persisted that concentration was meditation; and concentration is not meditation at -- it is just the opposite of meditation.

Concentration means narrowing the mind, focussing the mind on one point, excluding the whole existence, just including that one point. It is a tunnel vision; it goes on narrowing and narrowing and then only one thing is left. And

meditation is just the opposite: it is relaxation. It is including the whole existence in your vision; it is not focussing, it is not narrowing, it is widening, expanding. For example, you can listen to me in a concentrated way or in a meditative way. If you listen in s concentrated way then you have to exclude the train, the aeroplane, the traffic noise, the insects and their beautiful sounds and the silence of the night. You have to exclude everything from your vision; you have just to concentrate on my words. But those words will become very poor, they will lose the glory of inclusiveness. They will become poor because they will not have the song of the insects and the silence and the noise and all that exists around, in them.

But you can listen in a meditative way too. Then you are simply available as much to me as to the insects, to the traffic noise; you are simply open. And of course, concentration is bound to be unnatural, forced, violent. And you will get tired of it, exhausted. Anything that goes against nature is tiring and anything that goes with nature is nourishing, rejuvenating. Meditation is very nourishing. Concentration is part of the mind, meditation is something beyond. In fact it burns the mind completely, it consumes the mind totally. You are no more a mind in meditation, you are simply a state of profound silence with no thought, with no desire, with no mind. And Coleman is a beautiful word; it has two meanings. The first meaning comes from Latin. In Latin it means dove; the dove is a symbol of peace and of the renewal of life.

Meditation gives both. It makes you peaceful, at ease with yourself and with the whole existence. It brings harmony, a certain quality which is indescribable, but a few indications can be given about it. One is: there is no conflict in it, no duality. You are not trying to achieve anything, because if you are trying to achieve anything you cannot be peaceful. There is no goal in it, because if there is a goal you will be ambitious, and ambition cannot be peaceful. In fact there is no past in it and no future in it, because the past is a continuous noise and an unnecessary noise. It has no significance, it cannot come back, you cannot undo it, you cannot disprove upon it. Nothing can be done about the past -- it is finished -- but it is hanging around you like smoke, like dust, and it clouds your vision, it creates a disturbance. Any memory can disturb you. When there is no past, only then When there is no future, only then is there peace, because future means aspirations, achievement, goal, ambition, desire. You cannot be herenow, you are always rushing for something, somewhere else, and peace is now and here. One has to be utterly present to the present, then there is peace. And out of that is renewal of life, because life knows only one time, and that is the present.

The past is death; the future is just a projection of the dead past. What can you think about the future? You think in terms of the past; that's what you know and you project it -- of course in a better way. It is more beautiful, decorated; all the pains have been dropped out and only the pleasures have been chosen, but it is the past. It is modified, improved, a better edition, but it is the past. The past is not, the future is not, only the present is. To be in the present is to be alive, optimum -- and that is renewal. A new life begins in you or, life begins for the first time. Before that you were just dreaming about life, thinking about life -- it was 1/08/07

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about and about. Now it is the truth of it, now it is existential. And the second meaning which comes from the Teutonic is even more beautiful, simply far-out! It means a coal burner (laughter). And in fact meditation is a coal burner. It burns all that is coal in you, all that is dark and black and rotten -- it burns everything. It is fire! It burns the ego.

And one significant thing to be remembered is that the chemical composition of coal and a diamond is the same, they are not chemically different. The diamond was once a piece of coal and the piece of coal can become a diamond through pressure. All that it needs is the pressure of thousands of years.

Now in the market there are artificial diamonds; they are created by artificial pressure. The chemistry is the same, there is no difference in chemistry; the only thing added is pressure. And sooner or later he will be able to create better diamonds than the natural ones, because natural ones are bound to have some flaws, but the artificial ones can be looked after from the very beginning; they will not have any flaw.

You will not be surprised one day that people will ask for a diamond which has a flaw because only that will prove that it is natural. It it if absolutely flawless it will prove only one thing, it is artificial. It will shine better, it will have all the qualities that you want it to have, it can be as big as you want. Already in the market there are artificial diamonds, and the person who is not a jeweller cannot make the distinction. In fact the artificial will look better than the natural.

Coal and diamonds are chemically of the same category. When the coal remains bidden underneath the earth and goes on being pressed by the earth and its weight and its heat ... because as you go deeper into the earth, it becomes hotter. At the very centre of the earth it is pure fire; everything is in a melted state -- it is just like the sun. So the farther in you go, the more heat and more pressure there is. And both together transform the coal into a diamond. Ordinarily a man is just coal, but meditation can transform the coal into a beautiful kohinoor. Hence I say the second meaning is really far-out. The first is beautiful but nothing compared to the second.

-- How long will you be here?

-- I don't know, I really don't know.

-- Be here till the coal is burned! MIND, YOUR MISERY

A man without meditation never comes to know the blessedness of life. He can only feel complaints against life. Without meditation one's approach is bound to be negative; one only picks the wrong things.

One picks the thorns in the rosebush and forgets about the flowers. That's why you see the whole humanity in misery. It is of peoples' own choice, they ready to jump upon anything that is wrong. Once I used to work as an editor on a newspaper, and there I discovered that a few people are born proofreaders. Nobody can compete with them. Here is Vivek -- she is a born proofreader. (Vivek, who cares for Osho around the clock, is sitting on his left. She looks at him now, a surprised smile on her face, and then laughs.) Just show her anything and she will immediately see the word that is wrong. The whole page is there but she simply lands on the word -- and always correctly! (laughter) Without missing the target she will immediately go to the word. Just as there are born poets there are born proofreaders! (laughter) But life if you are born proofreader you will have many troubles. Meditation changes your approach from the negative to the positive. Of course meditation cannot make a person a good proofreader. He will go on missing the word that is wrong! (laughter) Life is both thorns and flowers. It is better to choose the flowers. But this should not be done artificially. That is what is known in the West as positive thinking: those kind of people teach

'Think positively, affirmatively; go on denying the thorns and go on searching

for the flowers. If they are not there, invent them.' That is going to be shallow and superficial, because your mind is not yet meditative, and mind's basic quality is being negative. So you have certain cultivated habits. You can teach the dog a few tricks, but the dog does not become a genius. Even if he knows a few tricks he will do something foolish, he is bound to do it. A few people were playing cards and a man was standing watching. He was amazed because three were men and the fourth partner was a dog, he could not believe his eyes -- the dog was doing perfectly well. So he asked 'To whom does this dog belong?' The owner was also playing, he was one of the players; he said 'He belongs to me.' The enquirer said 'This dog is really a genius.' The owner said

'Nothing like that. He is still a fool, because whenever he gets good cards he wags his tail (much laughter) and he exposes everything.' That's what happens to positive thinkers!

A meditator is not a positive thinker, a meditator simply drops the mind. And the moment the mind is 1/08/07

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gone there is positivity without any effort -- an effortless positivity, a effortless affirmation of life. Then suddenly it is all spring, then suddenly it is all a festival of lights, and one for the first time experiences blissfulness, blessedness, benediction; and out of that arises a gratitude towards existence.

COMMITMENT OR LUBRICANT

(Osho speaks on what religion means to the man in the street.) Man has two worlds available to him, the outer and the inner, but the inner is so obvious that one tends to forget all about it The obvious is almost always forgotten because we take it for granted. The outer is not so obvious, it is not so easy, hence he become interested in the outer. We are always interested in the familiar, and the outer is unfamiliar. And that's the first wrong step. Once you become interested in the outer there is no end to it.

Man has reached Everest, the South Pole, the North Poles the moon, and now

they are striving to reach Mars and nobody is bothered about the purpose. And man has not even made an intensive effort to know himself. We know more about the moon than we know about our own being -- this is sheer stupidity. I am not against knowing about the world but the first and the foremost thing in life is our own centre.

Self-knowledge should be our first priority, and once we have known ourselves then we can enquire about the whole world. Religion comes first, science can only be secondary. But that is not the case: science has become the most important thing and religion is almost ignored. At the most people think of it as a social, formal thing; nobody bothers much about it. Religion has become a Sunday affair. Just as there are Rotary clubs and Lion clubs, there are Catholic clubs and Protestant clubs and Hindu clubs and Mohammedan clubs called churches, temples, mosques, synagogues ... just clubs where you say beautiful things to each other knowing perfectly well that nobody means what they say -- nice nothings.

But it is good for your social life; it gives you a certain social status, it helps you to function within the pattern of society. It functions like a lubricant, if people see you in the church and you listen to the sermon and you pay respects to Christ and to Buddha and to Krishna you are thought to be a good person --

religious, respectable, and you can exploit that respectability in your business life and in other ways.

Religion is just a lubricant, it makes your life smooth, that's all, but nobody is really interested in it, nobody is ready to risk anything for it.

Religion is no longer important, and that is the fall of humanity. That's why there is so much darkness and gloom and misery settling in people's hearts. They are accepting life as a tragedy -- meaningless, futile

-- a tale told by an idiot, with no significance; it is no mere a song. And the reason is that we are not at all interested in the inner.

Sannyas means initiation into your own interiority. You have gone too far away from yourself, you have to be brought back home. Sannyas is a home-coming -- and the method is meditation.

Just as mind is the method to go out, meditation is the method to come in. It is

the same energy, the same door: on one side of the door you have the label 'entrance', on the other side 'exit'. It is the same door; when it opens outwards it becomes mind, when it opens inwards it becomes meditation. It is the same energy. And my whole work here is to help your energy take a one-hundred-and- eighty degree turn.

Once you can see just a glimpse of your being and its grandeur and its splendour, then the whole outside world simply becomes insignificant, it loses all value and you are for the first time really born. The journey towards home has started. And when you reach the centre of your being you reach god because god is nothing but your innermost centre.

On the circumference we are different people but at the centre we are one, at the centre we all meet. The farther away we go from the centre, the farther away we go from each other. The distance between persons becomes wider and wider farther away from the centre; as you come closer, you start coming closer to people also. Hence love is a natural by-product of meditativeness because you start feeling a new kind of closeness with people, with trees, with rocks, with stars -- with everything that is. And when you are at the centre suddenly you know that there is only one -- we are all part of one organic unity -- and that's the meaning of god.

BLISS, YOURS FOR THE RECEIVING 1/08/07

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(Her name, Anand Pratiksho, means bliss and awaiting, Osho tells another sannyasin.) Pleasure can be achieved because it is physical. Even animals achieve it so there is nothing of much importance in it. And pleasure consists only of two things, food and sex -- which are not very different. In fact they are two sides of the same coin: food keeps you surviving and sex keeps the race surviving. Sex is food for the race and food is sex for the individual -- and that's why they are convertible. People who become very interested in sex will start becoming more proportionate in their bodies; people who are not interested in

sex will start gathering fat, they will start eating more. This is like a pendulum.

Any country which is against sex will become too interested in food. And all the religions which have been against sex have helped people to become more and more fat and ugly. The responsibility goes to the religious organisations who are against sex, because then where can the energy be put? Then if people start stuffing themselves with ice cream and things like that -- anything will do, they have to chew upon something... They cannot chew on people, so they start chewing things. If they can chew on people then they don't bother about things too much. Then chewing gum is not needed -- they eat each other! That's why the French expression for sex, 'eating', is significant. It is really significant because it shows that both are joined together. Looking at a girl, a man says to somebody, 'I would like to eat this girl' -- how does this eating come in? He wants to chew... and to be chewed upon! Lovers are chewing gum to each other! (much laughter)

In any country -- for example, India, which has been against sex for many centuries you will find people eating too much and they will have many sweets and food. I don't think any country has as much variety as India; each province has its own varieties. India must be the most inventive as far as food is concerned.

There must be some psychological reason behind it. Why so such variety, why so much concern. The concern is because sex has been denied now only one pleasure is left, so the whole energy becomes focussed on it.

Americans, particularly Californians, are more physically proportionate; they don't gather weight. Even when they are older they look young, for the simple reason that sex is accepted as a natural phenomenon; there is no need to become obsessed with food. In a way American food is plain, continental food in Europe is plain -- except Italian food! (laughter) But Italians have suffered from the Catholic church -- that is the reason why they have become so inventive with spaghetti (laughter).

It is easy to find pleasure; it is not any distinctive quality about human beings. Happiness also is not very difficult to find, just a little more difficult than pleasure. Happiness consists of aesthetic sensibility: Music, art, poetry, painting, sculpture -- all these dimensions. It needs training, learning and discipline.

If one wants to understand classical music you have to go through a certain training of the ear, otherwise it has no joy for you, no happiness for you. But still it is within human limits, within human capacity, to learn about music, to learn about poetry, to be able to appreciate philosophy, literature and great works of art.

But bliss is beyond human capacity. Pleasure is animal, happiness is human, bliss is divine; it is a gift from the ultimate. All that we can do is to be open and waiting. That's what a sannyasin has to learn, to be open, silent, vulnerable, available. But other than that nothing can be done about bliss; it comes when it comes. Of course, whenever you are ready it comes, but one has to wait, one cannot demand, one cannot say

'I want it right now. One has to be infinitely patient. That is the meaning of your name: awaiting bliss.

Preparation is needed but it is only a preparation to receive the guest. You have to become the host and the guest comes whenever the host is ready, but you cannot force the guest to come, there is no way to force him. Bliss cannot be forced; it descends from the beyond. And because it comes from the beyond it cannot be taken away from you, nobody can take it away.

Pleasure can be taken away -- your food can be stolen, your man can be stolen, your woman can be stolen. That is not very difficult, it is very simple. Your happiness can be destroyed very easily; in fact it is always in a process of deterioration. You cannot enjoy the same music again and again, you cannot enjoy the same novel of Dostoevsky again and again. Maybe once, maybe twice, but the third time it is boring, and if you have to read it a fourth time it is torture. If you have to read it a fifth time you will have to be hospitalised! (much laughter) So it goes down the drain automatically; then one has to go on searching for new sensations and novelties. And it is very difficult to find them because if you have enjoyed Dostoevsky or Tolstoy or Chekhov then it is very difficult to enjoy anybody who is secondary.

You will only be able to enjoy somebody who is at least on a par with Dostoevsky, in fact somebody who is even better than Dostoevsky -- but them? Out of the whole of humanity only can be given which come close to Dostoevsky, as far as novels are concerned. Or only a few names can be given as far as 1/08/07

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painting is concerned, and a few names for music. Soon happiness is exhausted.

But bliss is inexhaustible. You cannot achieve it, it cannot be taken away from you. Once it descends it is forever yours. And the miraculous thing about bliss is, it is never boring. It is always the same, not even a slight change ever happens; it is eternally the same. But it is strange that the same bliss is in some sense new every moment -- both old and new. It somehow knows the secret of renewing itself without changing. It is a miraculous quality.

Once a person is blissful he is blissful forever. But the quality that has to be learned is of awaiting, of patience, of trusting that whenever the time is ripe it is bound to happen, it is inevitable. This is what I call trust -- and trust is the essential core of sannyas.

-- How long will you be here?

-- Till you throw me out!

-- I will never throw you out. I always throw people in! (laughter) Good. OBLITERATION OR TRANSFORMATION

(In his sannyasins lies hope for humanity, Osho is to say in his address to Deva Soundaryo. First he explains that her name means the divine is beautiful, or vice versa.) There are no other proofs for god than the beautiful experiences of life. A sunset can overwhelm you so much so that for that moment you are no more, only the sunset is. The observer is dissolved, there is only observation; the duality between the seer and the seen is no more there, there is only one bridged experience. The observer and the observed are both bridged together, as if you and the sunset are two poles of the same phenomenon. Suddenly your heartbeat starts pulsating with the beauty that is the sunset ... or there is a bird on the wing and suddenly you are one with it. It is not the bird on the wing, you are on the wing and the whole sky is yours.

It can happen in many ways -- either in nature or listening to music or reading poetry or just sitting silently doing nothing, just enjoying your own breathing, your own presence. But all these moments are of beauty and these are the only proofs of god. When you see a rose flower or a lotus opening in a lake there is proof. It is not logical proof but it is far more significant than logic can ever be; it is aesthetic proof.

Suddenly you know that the world is full of meaning and splendour, that it is not accidentals that there is some underground meaning, some undercurrent of meaning. You may be aware of it, you may not be aware of it, but the world is moving towards a certain destiny, towards a certain fulfilment.

The more you experience these beautiful moments, the more your life starts becoming beautiful. So never miss any beautiful moment. Rejoice in it, dance with it, sing with it, be silent with it. In some way or other become one with it. Let the observer be the observed too. Dissolve yourself in it and you will find immense nourishment. You will become aware that the world is not just matter; hidden behind matter is something far more significant -- matter is only the expression of something immaterial. We can call it god, the truth, the soul of existence, the very heartbeat of the universe.

And the sannyasin has to find that heartbeat -- not only to find it but to create a certain synchronicity between his heartbeat and the heartbeat of the whole. When you are in synchronicity, in accord with the whole, your life is out of the prison. Then the imprisoned splendour is released, and that explosion of joy, of light, of love, of celebration, is enlightenment, is nirvana.

The whole work that is going on here is to bring as many people together for this ultimate explosion, because the more people there are joined together, the more is the possibility of the explosion. It own happen to individuals too, but then it does not affect the consciousness of humanity much. I would like it to happen like a chain: thousands of people becoming enlightened all over the world simultaneously, like lightning. They will transform the whole consciousness of humanity, they will take humanity to a new plane. And that is very much needed today, it is needed today more than ever, because either humanity has to come to a deep understanding about life or we are on the verge of going insane and committing global suicide.

Something tremendous is going to happen by the end of this century. There are

many who are preparing for a global suicide and there are very few who are preparing for the transformation of consciousness. My sannyasins have to belong to those few because with those few is the whole hope for humanity.

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Going All the Way

Chapter #28

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