Chapter title: None

‌Chapter title: None‌

12 October 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8010125 ShortTitle: THUNK12 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[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up.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.]

(A seeker of light is the meaning of Douglas; Osho adds 'anand' to it, then addresses the first new sannyasin.)

Douglas also means a dweller in darkness, but both are aspects of one phenomenon: you seek light because you dwell in darkness.

The search for light begins with the experience that 'I am in darkness;' that's the first step. To know that one is ignorant is the beginning of wisdom.

The problem with millions of people is that they live in darkness but they are not aware of it. They think this is light. They live in ignorance but they go on hiding it in such ways that not only are others deceived, they themselves become deceived. They don't want to recognise that they are ignorant. It hurts, it goes against the ego. And the first step for a sannyasin is to recognise the real situation, to figure out where one is, what one is, to be very straight about it, howsoever it hurts. And it certainly hurts because for the whole of our life or perhaps for many lives we have believed in just the opposite.

The person who is suffering from an inferiority complex starts believing in some kind of superiority.

Just to hide inferiority we have to believe in the opposite. The person who is afraid of death starts believing in immortality, just to somehow cover up the fear.

Our beliefs are indicators; they show what we are hiding, they are just the opposite of what we are hiding. Somebody believes that he is light, love, bliss... if these are his beliefs then he must live in darkness, in hatred, in misery.

The sannyasin has to expose himself, he has to stand naked in the sun, because the journey can only begin if we know where we are -- because the journey begins from there. You cannot begin your journey from somewhere else -- where you are not. Wherever you are, even if you are in hell, the journey has to start there. And this brings great authenticity to realise, recognise, whatsoever we are. If it hurts it hurts; it is natural; it has to be accepted. But out of that acceptance begins the enquiry.

The two different paths: the path of belief and the path of enquiry. Belief does not change you; it simply gives you a false idea of something that you are not, of somewhere where you are not. It is a false phenomenon, it creates hypocrisy. It is good to recognise that you don't know; at least it is authentic, sincere. And then don't start believing -- that kills enquiry. Enquiry means going into existence without any belief, discarding all beliefs. And almost half the work is done, half the journey is complete in the first step.

And there are only two steps, not more than that.

One step is to discard all beliefs because they are not your experiences; howsoever beautiful they are they have to be discarded for the simple reason that they are not your experiences. Once you have discarded all beliefs the second step is just of waiting, silently waiting, with the deep trust that whenever the right time 1/08/07

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comes It is going to happen.

The first step has to be taken by you, the second is taken by existence itself. So

nothing can be done from your side, you can only wait in a receptive mood. And when your receptivity is total it happens. It always happens, it is never done. And then life becomes full of light and full of bliss and full of godliness.

Then all those beliefs that you have been carrying for centuries suddenly become realities, but now they are not beliefs -- you know.

Belief is irrelevant in any case. If you don't know, it is irrelevant; if you know, it is not needed. If you know, there is no question of believing and if you don't know what is the point of believing? In any situation belief as such is wrong. Enquiry is right.

A sannyasin is an explorer, an enquirer into the ultimate reality of one's own being and the being of the whole.

(God is less a personality and more a presence, a perfume, Osho reminds us.) The flower has a form, a personality. The fragrance is formless, it has no personality. It is there, it exists, but it exists not in a fixed form, it exists in a formless way. And that's what god is, a godliness. And the experience of this fragrance comes through meditation. There is no other way, there never has been, there never will be.

The really religious person has only one thing to do, and that is to become meditative. And by using the very word 'meditation' there is a possibility of moving in a wrong direction -- because English has no exact word for 'dhyana'; meditation only comes close to it.

English has three words: concentration, contemplation, meditation. Concentration is of the mind. You focus your mind on a particular object, you exclude everything else, you just go on narrowing your vision.

Hence in concentration everything can become a distraction. A dog starts barking and you will be distracted because you were excluding everything and now the barking dog has come in. Hence the concentrator is always angry because small things -- a mosquito -- can disturb his concentration. Anything is capable of distracting you because you are doing something unnatural. Concentration is unnatural. It is enforced, a regimentation. It is something military-like; violently forcing the mind to remain pinpointed on one thing.

And the nature of the mind is constantly flowing, moving. It is natural for the

mind to move, it is a dynamic process, and you are trying to make this dynamic process stagnant.

Because it is against nature any excuse and the mind will immediately jump in and start moving. Even if you force the mind to be still for long periods you will be sitting on a volcano. It will be like a small child: you can force the child by saying, 'I will not give you food today. Sit in the corner and sit silently.' He can do it. You can tell him 'Close your eyes,' and he can. But just see: he is fidgeting, he is screwing up his eyes, afraid to open them but with every desire to. You can see the turmoil that is inside, but he is somehow holding himself back. He is in great trouble.

That is the situation, when one is in the process of concentration.

Meditation is not concentration; it is not contemplation either. Contemplation means you are a little more fluid, a little more flowing, but you have to remain tethered to a particular subject. In concentration you have to remain pinpointed; in contemplation you have a little longer rope. You can roam around but you are tethered. For example, you are thinking about love. Mm? -- you can go on but you are only allowed to think about love. Certainly it has more freedom than concentration but still the freedom is limited. You are in a bigger prison, that's all, but you are imprisoned. And still distractions will come -- less than in concentration but they will still come.

In English even 'meditation' gives a wrong idea; it is as if you have to meditate upon something. But

'dhyana', the word in Sanskrit out of which the Japanese word 'zen' has come, means there is no object, no subject, no concentration, no contemplation. You are simply sitting silently, witnessing whatsoever is. A dog starts barking, you witness it -- it is not a distraction. Music is being played, you listen to it -- it is not a distraction because you are not making any effort to concentrate. You are all-inclusive, nothing is excluded.

The freedom is absolute. The only thing that has to be remembered is not to get identified with anything.

Listen to the music but don't become the music, remain a witness.

So meditation can be defined as witnessing, not getting identified. Now this is a

totally different phenomenon; there is no question of concentration, no question of contemplation. You are just sitting by the side of the road and watching the traffic of the mind; allowing the mind whatsoever it wants to do fearlessly, allowing It wherever it wants to go -- to Timbuktu, to Toronto... wherever it wants to go. You just remain alert, aware, watchful. And then a miracle starts happening: you start becoming aware of godliness in 1/08/07

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everything. Even the barking of the dog starts having a divine quality to it. maybe the dog is a little bit upside-down, but still the dog is god -- just written wrongly, that's all. You have to read it the other way, otherwise there is no difference. And then everything starts having a new message, a new feel, a new splendour. When the whole is transformed through your witnessing it becomes fragrant. There is no flower but there is immense fragrance. You have entered into the unmanifest.

This is the way of entering into godliness. And once you have tasted of godliness you are an emperor.

Then the whole kingdom of god is yours.

(Her name, Carmen, means a song of joy, Osho tells the next sannyasin. He adds 'dhyan' to it to remind her that meditation is the necessary preparation before one's heart can explode in song of celebration.) Without meditation it is not possible. Without meditation one is bound to live in misery. One can cover it up, one can find a few consolations, one has to find a few consolations otherwise life would be intolerable. One has to remain occupied so that one does not feel the inner emptiness. And people find a thousand and one occupations just to keep themselves engaged. They are very much afraid to be left alone, to be left empty.

These are the people who have invented the proverb that an empty mind is the devil's workshop. It is not so. The empty mind is the only door to god. The mind which is continuously occupied with thoughts is the devil's workshop. Out of an empty mind no harm has ever happened. Adolf Hitler is not an empty mind,

neither is Joseph Stalin, nor is Alexander the Great, nor Ivan the Terrible. These are people full of thoughts, great thoughts of changing the whole world, of bringing a revolution.

Buddha is an empty mind, Lao Tzu is an empty mind. And out of these empty people -- Buddha, Lao Tzu, Basho -- god has been experienced. They have been able to sing songs of joy. Their life is a festival, a festival of lights; their life is a continuum of celebration.

Meditation means making the mind empty, empty of all thoughts, discarding all thoughts, remembering that 'I am not these thoughts,' that 'I am separate,' that 'I am just a watcher, a watcher on the hills, looking at the valley.' Creating a distance between the thoughts and your awareness is the whole process of meditation.

The more distance there is, the better, because when the distance is great you cannot feed those thoughts and they start dying of their own accord. They need your co-operation, your continuous co-operation. And meditation means withdrawing your co-operation, you are not fighting with the thoughts, you are allowing them to move, to have their life, but you are no more co-operating, no more nourishing them, no more getting identified with them. And as you become unidentified, Just a watcher on the hills, they start dying.

They are no longer getting any feedback, they are no longer invited guests. They start turning away.

A moment comes when the mind is utterly empty -- and that is the moment when the heart explodes into songs, because songs need space and the mind is taking up the whole space with all kinds of junk and furniture, rotten furniture. But people are such that they call rotten furniture antique. They go on collecting antiques. The more rotten it is, the more old it is, the more valuable. And the mind is full of all kinds of nonsense -- relevant, irrelevant, contradictory. Nothing has to be chosen out of the mind, all has to be categorically rejected: I am not it.

In the East we have defined meditation as a process of neti-neti. The word 'neti- neti' means neither this nor that; 'I am neither this nor that.' One goes on denying: "I am neither this nor that,' and a moment comes when there is nothing to be denied any more. A vast emptiness surrounds you, infinite emptiness

surrounds you. Only that much emptiness, that much space, can help the heart to open up for the first time. The heart needs infinite space, it needs the whole Sky, only then is there bliss and there is singing and there is dancing. And that singing, that dancing, that blissful state, is the ultimate goal of sannyas.

Your name, Carmen, exactly defines sannyas: a song of joy.

(To Peggy Osho speaks of the differences between moonlight and sunlight.) Sunlight is masculine, harsh, taut, passionate, aggressive, violent. Moonlight is feminine, soft, tender, receptive, loving. And this is not only poetry, even science has become aware that there is a difference between moonlight and sunlight.

Mystics have been aware for centuries: more people have become enlightened on the full-moon night than on any other night. I have never heard of anybody becoming enlightened in the day. Buddha, Mahavira, Lao Tzu -- they all became enlightened in the night. It cannot be just coincidence.

Night is feminine, day is masculine and enlightenment happens only in a very receptive mood, in a very feminine mood. Whether one is a man or a woman does not matter, but one has to be receptive. You cannot 1/08/07

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conquer god, you can only invite and wait.

And the feminine mind knows how to wait, how not to be aggressive; the masculine mind is aggressive, in a hurry. That's the difference between the East and the West: the West is masculine, full of sun energy; the East is feminine, hence it looks slow, lazy. In the East there is no desire for speed. The East is ready to wait for eternity. The West is continuously after speed. Nobody bothers about where you are going, everybody is thinking about how to reach there quickly. Nobody is interested in where, for what. The whole interest is in it being quick.

In the East we are not interested in quickness, in hurry, in speed, but we are certainly interested in where we are going. How long it takes does not matter;

our concern is 'What is our ultimate goal in life?' It may take eternity -- there is no worry about that.

The night represents, just as the East represents, the feminine. And the full-moon night is the most feminine of all nights. It is not only that more people become enlightened on the full-moon night, more people also go mad. Hence the word 'lunatic': it exists in all languages. It comes from 'lunar', moon-struck.

It is not only the ocean that is affected by the moon, our whole being is affected. And in fact eighty per cent of our body is ocean water. That eighty per cent is certainly affected.

The moon is symbolically significant. It simply receives the sunrays and transforms them. Through the moon a miracle happens: the hot energy of the sun becomes cool, the passionate sex-energy becomes compassionate is love. The whole process of the moon is alchemical.

Your name has two parts; one is love, the other is child of moonlight. Love is a child of moonlight. Love is basically feminine.

A man has a need for love once in a while but the woman lives in love for twenty-four hours a day. The man has many other interests also; one of his interests is love. But the woman has no other interest, her whole interest is love. And out of that love other interests may grow but they are part of love, they are not competitors to love. Hence a man can always sacrifice love for his art, for his music, for his meditation, for religion -- he can easily renounce love. It is only one of his interests, it is not his whole being. But a woman cannot do that.

It is because of this fact that you don't find so many women enlightened because nobody has worked out from the woman's side how to attain enlightenment. Enlightenment has remained basically a masculine interest. And of course when it is a masculine interest love has to be denied; love is an unnecessary distraction. So all the religions have been against love.

My effort here is multi-dimensional. I am trying to do many things here. Now is the time for love to find a way towards enlightenment so that women can also be Buddhas. It has not happened in the past.

You see Jesus and Mohammed and Mahavira and Chuang Tzu and Lieh Tzu and Zarathustra, but they are all men. And unless women start becoming enlightened

humanity will remain lopsided, the balance will not be there. And unless women become enlightened they cannot be really free, because enlightenment is the ultimate in freedom. The freedom of women cannot come through stupid movements like Women's Liberation. It can only come through a totally different approach: women should learn how to become enlightened. If we can create a few women Buddhas in the world the woman will be freed from all chains an d fetters.

And there is no difficulty at all. In fact nobody has bothered about it, nobody has thought about it.

Woman was never taken into consideration, she has been ignored. She has never been given the same status as man; she was thought to be just secondary. But because of this the whole of humanity has suffered.

Enlightenment is everybody's birthright.

Man can easily make an approach through meditation but the woman can more easily make an approach through love. Love is going to be her meditation. To be loving, totally loving, unconditionally loving -- that is going to be her path towards light, towards godliness. And out of love the woman will have a new birth.

She will become a child of light, a child of moonlight.

Your name is significant. And you can see that thousands of women are gathering around me. It has never happened before. It has always been a male- dominated quest. For years even Buddha denied entry to women, he was against it. He was afraid, and I can understand his fear. His whole method was male- oriented, and he was afraid that if women were allowed to become initiates, sannyasins, then the males would find ways to be distracted. They might start falling in love and the whole method would be disturbed, the whole process would be disturbed.

Mahavira, another enlightened man of the same category as Buddha, who established Jainism, said that women can be enlightened only when they are born again as men. In this life when they are women all that 1/08/07

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they can do is to work to be born as men, only then is enlightenment possible -- not through the body of a woman. First they have to attain the body of a man. And I can understand what he means by it His method is such that there is no space, no place, for love in it.

Mary Magdalene loved Jesus more than any of his disciples did but she was not accepted as an apostle; those twelve fools became apostles! And they all escaped when Jesus was crucified. He was taken down from the cross by three women and all the apostles escaped. But still those three women are not respected.

Even Jesus did not show any respect to women, even to his mother he did not show much respect.

Once his mother came to see him when he was talking to a crowd. The people said 'Your mother is waiting outside to see you,' and he said, 'Tell that woman that nobody is my father and nobody is my mother.' Tell that woman... This is ugly, but this has been the approach of all the male-oriented methodologies.

My effort is to create a path for women also, because unless they are free religiously they will not be free in other ways. Religious freedom is the central core of all other freedoms. And even in the twentieth century there are religions that don't allow women in their temples, they don't allow women to be priests; no woman can be a pope.

This is ugly, unnecessarily violent. It is something of the rotten past, still a hangover of the past. It has to be completely finished.

As meditation can lead to enlightenment, love can lead to enlightenment. They are different paths but they reach the same peak.

(While she had been awaiting her sannyas, Brigitta was sobbing, so much so that Shiva, Osho's bodyguard, saw fit to move over to her and soothe her, whereupon her weeping slowly subsided. She is quiet now as Osho shows her her new name: Amrit Sadhya.) The goal of sannyas is to go beyond time and to realise the timeless, the unchanging, the eternal. Only the eternal can be true; the momentary is only a reflection of the truth, it is not truth itself. And whatsoever

we know in the world is momentary. Everything begins at a certain point in time and then ends at a certain point in time.

The search is for that which has no beginning and no end. Unless one has found that one cannot be contented, one cannot feel fulfilled.

So remember, that has to be found, and it can be found because it is not far away, it is within you.

Because we go on looking outside we go on missing. We have to look in and all that we have been missing will be found. The whole kingdom of god is within you.

(She closes her eyes and slowly raises her arms so they are stretched out, one on either side of her.) Good, Sadhya. How long will you be here? (If she makes a reply it is inaudible.) Be here forever. Good!

(Mind is a moron: it is always demanding more. Give it more and it asks for still more, Osho explains to Anutosha.)

The moment you go beyond the mind suddenly there is contentment, nothing is needed. All that is needed is already given, it is already the case. We have been provided with all that is needed; it is waiting inside. But the mind goes on searching outside. All that is needed is a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn so that we can look within, and there is suddenly fulfilment. It is not gradual, it happens in a single moment, not slowly. In a single blow all discontent disappears and there is immense peace. There is no question of wanting more because one cannot imagine there can be more. It is impossible to imagine that there can be more.

The whole thing is to shift the energy from the mind to consciousness. Mind means content, it is not consciousness. And consciousness is a separate entity, it is not content. It is like a mirror, reflecting whatsoever passes in front of it. Many things pass, they are contents in the mirror; the them. When nothing passes the mirror is empty. It has no content of its own, it is pure nothingness. And that nothingness is our reality. And not only is it our reality, it is the reality, the unmanifest reality of the whole.

Once you have entered into the unmanifest within yourself you have entered into the world of god. And the by-product is immense contentment, bliss, fulfilment,

the feeling that one has arrived home.

(Dorothy, billed as an astrologer from the States, is a plump, warm-faced woman, rather older than the majority of sannyas-takers. Osho gives her the name Anand Nityama.) Anand means bliss. Nityama means eternal.

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Happiness is momentary, bliss is eternal; hence happiness always brings misery. Before happiness there is misery, after happiness there is misery, and when happiness is there, deep down you know it is not going to last, hence there is misery. Before there is misery, after there is misery and in the middle too. So happiness remains just a very thin superficial thing, very superficial; deep down you know that it is going, it is going, it is already gone. You try to cling to it but it is impossible to keep it; it has to go.

But bliss is without any beginning and without any end, and unless we discover bliss our whole life is a wastage; chasing after happiness is an exercise in sheer futility. If the same energy is put in the search for bliss one can find it very easily. And even now it is not too late, because it is not a question of time, it is a question of totality. It can be attained in a single moment. Sometimes it has happened that a person has attained at the last moment of his life. That's my observation about Jesus himself, that he attained it at the last moment.

When he was put on the cross he was not yet a Christ, he had not yet realised it.

And then he said to god

'Have you forsaken me?' That shows there must have been some desire, some expectation; he must have been waiting for god to do some miracle. That shows mind, expectation, desire. And there is frustration when he shouts 'Have you forsaken me?' There is frus-tration, there is anger. He feels as if god has forgotten him, completely forgotten him. Is this the moment to forget him? He has sacrificed his whole life and is nothing happening, no miracle? No hand has appeared from heaven to save him, to show the world that he is the son of god.

There is anger, there is complaint, but immediately he understood. He was a man of immense intelligence; he quickly understood, at the last moment he understood and he relaxed and he asked for forgiveness and he said 'Let thy will be done -- not mine but thine. Let thy will be done, let thy kingdom come.' The complaint has disappeared; there is no anger, no frustration, no desire, no expectation. He has surrendered totally. In that very moment when he surrendered his mind he became enlightened. It happened in a single moment.

That's why there are many statements of Jesus which are not those of an enlightened man -- because he had no time to make any statements after his enlightenment. Buddha lived for forty years after his enlightenment; enough time to say the unsayable. What Jesus said and what is recorded in the Bible is not exactly the truth because he himself had not known it. He was coming closer, but even if you are close to truth it is not truth. There is nothing like approximate truth. Even the approximate is a lie.

So there are many things about Jesus which cannot be explained as being of an awakened man. He behaved many times like an unawakened person and the reason is that he became enlightened at the very last moment.

I am saying this to you because now you are old and you will be getting older, so don't get depressed, don't feel hopeless. Even at the last moment it can happen.

In India we have a proverb: If a person gets lost in the morning and can manage to reach home even by the evening when the sun is setting, it is not too late; he has not to be thought of as lost.

There is enough time, there is always enough time, but intensity is needed. So now withdraw your energy from all non-essential things and put the whole of that energy into becoming silent, loving.

Remember these two words, silence and love. Be silent as far as you are concerned and become loving as far as the world is concerned. Let there be a synthesis of silence and love. And I feel you will be able to manage it.

I Am Not As Thunk As You Drink I Am

Chapter #13

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