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Chapter title: None
21 October 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
Archive code: 8010215 ShortTitle: THUNK21 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[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up.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.]
(Osho ingeniously makes of Satyam Donna the meaning; truth can enter one's being only if one has the quality of feminine receptivity.)
Receptivity is always feminine. The male quality is aggressive, the feminine quality is receptive. It is not only physically that a woman has a womb, it is also spiritually true. When when a man attains to the truth he has to learn the art of being feminine. Hence you will see in the statues of Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna, Christ, a certain quality of femininity, a grace, a sensitivity, an availability, a vulnerability, because truth has to be received, welcomed. You cannot conquer truth, you have to allow the truth to conquer you.
There is no way to be aggressive as far as truth is concerned. Aggression is violence and the violent person becomes incapable of knowing the truth. One has to be utterly loving.
The feminine quality makes you a host and then the guest can come at any moment. Whenever your receptivity is ripe the guest inevitably arrives. Not even a single moment is lost.
(Shirley means a restful spirit. Osho adds 'Anand' to it, and explains to an
American groupleader that if we could only calm down a bit we'd find bliss was already ours.) We have completely forgotten about it, it has become a forgotten language, but it is still there.
It is like when you see a person and you remember his face, you even remember that you remember him, you remember that you remember his name -- you say 'It is just on the tip of my tongue but it is still not coming.' And the more you try, the less is the possibility of it coming because your very effort creates restlessness, your very effort makes you tense, your very effort creates a turmoil and it becomes more and more difficult to search in that turmoil. And finally, you decide not to bother about it you become engaged in something else -- maybe listening to music or cooking food or working in the garden or just cleaning the floor or taking a shower -- and suddenly it pops up. You were not looking for it, you had completely forgotten about it You dropped the very idea and suddenly it is there. What happened? The moment you dropped the idea your rest was restored; you became calm and quiet, you became effortless, you became relaxed. And that's what is needed.
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Sannyas means living life in a relaxed way, with no hurry, with no worry, as if nothing is serious, living life joyously, playfully, from moment to moment, not bothering about the past, not bothering about the future either, not bothering at all; whatsoever happens is good and whatsoever does not happen is also good.
Taking things with such calmness and equanimity brings a restful spirit. Slowly slowly the whole turmoil settles and suddenly there is bliss, out of nowhere it starts welling up. You become flooded with light, with life, with love. Those are the three dimensions of bliss. It makes you more light-full, makes you more life- full, makes you more love-full. And when all these three L's -- these are the learned, one has arrived home. In the universities, colleges and schools they teach you three R's; and their three R's are worthless, mundane.
I teach three L's. The whole phenomenon happens only when you are restful
spirits, at home, at ease.
(Richard becomes Swami Prem Svargo.)
Prem means love. Svargo means heaven, paradise.
Heaven is not something geographical, it is not something outside you, somewhere above the clouds; it is within you. The whole idea of a geographical heaven somewhere out there has led millions of people into all kinds of stupidities.
Heaven is a state of being, it is a state of love. When you are full of hate you are in hell, when you are overflowing with love you are in heaven. The English word 'paradise' comes from a Persian word 'firdaus'.
Firdaus means a walled garden with many flowers, streams, birds. That garden is your potential. Seeds are there, everything is there as a potential but you have to actualise it. God only provides seeds and the challenge of life to sow those seeds, to grow, to protect, to water, to nourish, to wait. And then spring comes and one day the mysterious has happened.
The seed has never given any clue as to what it contained; when suddenly lotuses bloom you cannot believe that they were hiding in such small seeds, in ugly seeds -- closed, windowless. They almost look like small stones, pebbles -- and such beautiful roses were hiding there. if you had cut open the seeds you would not have found anything.
That's where science is missing: it goes on dissecting, cutting seeds and trying to find roses, lotuses, marigolds. It finds nothing, not even a hint, because the potential is invisible. It needs many things, only then can it become visible
By becoming a sannyasin one is taking a step towards the actualisation of all the potential that has come with you from the very beginning. The potential should not die as a potential. That is the only sin, to have been living with such an opportunity and not to have used it. That's the only sin. To have used it to its maximum, its optimum capacity, is virtue.
(That we're alive proves we are loved, Osho tells Haripriya.) We are here -- that is more than enough proof that existence needs us. We are fulfilling a certain need; we are not useless, we are not accidental as science goes on telling people.
In these three hundred years science has created one great problem for every human being; the problem is that science has destroyed the possibility of feeling respect for oneself. And the moment a person loses respect for himself he loses all the joy of life, he loses his soul, he becomes soulless. And science has been telling and teaching everybody that man is just an accident, that the whole existence is accidental.
The very idea that we are accidental takes all sense out of life; all meaning disappears. Whether we are or not does not matter -- then why bother to go on living? For what?
The greatest need of man is to be needed. The moment one feels needed life starts having ecstasy. Even if a single person needs you it gives you significance. A child needs you as a mother -- that's enough to live for. A man needs you as a wife and that's enough to live for. A friend needs you... without you there somebody will miss you, somebody will feel lonely -- that's enough for you to feel meaningful. And the religious person is one who feels that the whole existence needs him, hence his joy is infinite.
If even one person can give you meaning by needing you, by desiring you, then you can imagine how much bliss can happen when you come to feel that the whole infinite universe needs you, that you are fulfilling some purpose. Suddenly life becomes poetry, a song. A dance arises in you, a celebration, a thankfulness. That thankfulness is prayer. That gratitude is the greatest experience. My whole effort here is to help my sannyasins to feel the significance of life.
And existence makes no conditions on you. It is not that if you do certain things only then will the love from the whole flow towards you. It is unconditional. It comes to the saint, it comes to the sinner; it makes 1/08/07
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no distinctions.
When a raincloud comes and showers it does not shower more on the saint's
garden and less on the sinner's garden; it makes no distinctions. So there are no conditions from existence that you should fulfil this, that you should do that. Human beings make conditions and destroy the beauty of love.
Existence gives you love without any conditions. Whatsoever you want, you do -
- that's your freedom.
God loves you as you are. But we have destroyed even the idea of god. The Old Testament god says 'I am a very jealous god. If you worship some other god I will take revenge.' Now this is not god's voice. This is so ugly, the very idea that some jealous man is speaking in the name of god, that some jealous priest is wearing the mask of god, is so stupid. It is not god's face, not god's voice; god's love is unconditional. And god is not a person, hence he cannot be jealous.
Jesus is far more right when he says god is love. But Christians misunderstood even that. They thought love was one of the qualities of god -- that is not so. Jesus is saying that god is love, not that god is a quality or that love is a quality; he is simply making both words synonymous. Saying that god is love means god equals love. It is the same energy called by a different name.
Existence is love -- and to feel it is to be transformed. Anand Sagar.
Bliss is an unboundedness, just like an ocean. It is so vast that one is completely in it. Just as a dewdrop slips from a lotus leaf into the lake and becomes one with the lake, in the same way man has to slip out of the ego and become one with existence, only then is there bliss.
Ego is misery, the source of misery, the only cause of misery; and egolessness is the source of bliss. Ego gives you boundaries, identities, it makes you a certain person.
The word 'person' is significant. It comes from the Greek 'persona'; persona means a mask. In Greek theater actors used to wear masks. The word 'person' and the word 'personality' both come from persona.
The ego is a persona; it is a mask, it is not your reality. It has to be dropped, only then do you know what is real. And the real is always blissful. The unreal is against your nature, hence it creates misery. Unreal means unnatural, real means
natural. And your nature is infinitely blissful, it is a constant celebration. Except for man you will not find any animal, tree, star, rock miserable, because only man creates the idea of the ego.
Only man can create the idea of the ego, he is the most highly evolved form of life. But as you grow higher the risk of falling becomes bigger. Animals cannot fall and become an Adolf Hitler or a Genghis Khan or a Tamerlaine or a Nadir Shah -- no animal can do that. A cat is a cat, a dog is a dog, a lion is a lion, a serpent is a serpent. They are simple people; whatsoever they are they are, neither more nor less.
But man moves on high peaks and hence the danger -- he can fall. If he falls he can fall below the animals, if he rises he can rise above the gods. With that possibility of rising above the gods also comes the risk of falling below the animals. The whole thing depends on this simple word 'ego'. If ego becomes too much you start falling, the weight of the ego starts pulling you downwards. If you become egoless you become weightless, and with that very weightlessness you start moving upwards.
Science knows only one law, the law of gravitation. But the mystics have known another law, the law of levitation. Just as things fall downwards things also rise upwards -- but for that one has to become absolutely weightless, one has to remove the rock of the ego. And that's the whole work of sannyas: removing the rock of the ego. Then you have wings and you can have what Plotinus calls the flight of the alone to the alone, the ultimate flight, the flight of man to god, the flight from the finite to the infinite.
(Love is a bridge, Osho had said some nights ago. And so is meditation, he tells Dhyan Divyam.) Meditation means becoming absolutely silent, still, serene, as if nothing moves inside, everything stops
-- the mind, time. There comes a full stop to all movement. In that full stop, when the ordinary movement of the mind stops, you start moving into a now dimension. The ordinary movement of the mind is horizontal.
When it stops, the energy cannot stop. Energy is basically dynamic, so when the horizontal movement stops, energy changes its movement to a new dimension; it becomes vertical.
Once the energy becomes vertical you are joined to god. That change from
horizontal to vertical is meditation. You just have to drop all the old known movements of the mind so the energy accumulates and has to find a new path. It cannot remain static, remember. This is the whole strategy of meditation.
Because energy cannot remain static there is hope. If you stop the energy moving as it has always done, in thoughts, desires, memories, imagination, dreams, when you cut out all these, when you put a full stop there as if the road had ended... Energy cannot remain static, it is essentially dynamic. So when the old 1/08/07
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movement completely stops it takes a new turn, absolutely new -- you are not even aware that such a possibility ever existed. From being horizontal it becomes vertical.
That is the symbol of the Christian cross. Christians have missed its meaning, they think it is just a cross. But it is part of the old eastern symbol, the swastika; it is just a part of the swastika. The swastika is a cross with a few more things added to it; but the cross is the middle section of the swastika. The cross symbolises these two possibilities. One is horizontal -- Jesus' hands are crucified on the horizontal and the whole of his body is on the vertical. His hands represent work, action, and his whole body represents rest, relaxation. The vertical means relaxation and rest.
So once your energy stops moving in the old structure and pattern a new door opens for you. You cannot open it because you don't know where it is. All that you can do is stop the old flow and let it find the new route. Because energy can move only in two ways there is no problem; if the horizontal is blocked it has to move vertically; it will find its own way.
That's why I say meditation is the bridge between man and god -- it is divine. Amrita Pritam.
Amrita means the immortal, the timeless, the deathless. It represents god because god is immortal, timeless, eternal, deathless. It represents the real.
The unreal is momentary, it s changing continuously. It is like a dream world, everything goes on changing.
You see a movie -- scenes go on changing, but something behind the scenes, the white screen, remains the same; it is hidden behind the changing scenes. When these scenes stop, when the projector stops, you suddenly become aware of a new thing which was always there when you were looking at the picture but you were not aware of it.
God is just like the screen of the whole changing world. The whole changing world is but a projection.
Hidden behind it is the immortal, the eternal.
So Amrita is another name for god. And Pritam means beloved: beloved of god, beloved of the eternal, the immortal.
This is the most significant thing that I want to insist on again and again for my sannyasins to remember, because the mind tends to forget it. In fact the mind has great investment in forgetting it, because if you remember it then the mind becomes useless. If you remember the eternal, if you remember the ultimate, then the mind becomes very insignificant, because the mind is just a momentary phenomenon. If you watch a thought it arises one moment, the next moment it is gone. If you watch any mood, it comes, it is there for a little while and then it is gone.
If you are aware of the eternal, attuned to the eternal, you won't care much about all these passing phases. And we become so much disturbed. A little bit of anger arises and we are completely clouded by it, we forget everything -- it becomes the most important thing -- and we know that tomorrow we will not even remember it. After few days it will look so insignificant.
There is a great Sufi story. A king asked a Sufi mystic, 'Can you give me some advice which will be helpful to me in the critical moments of life, in the dangerous moments of life?' The Sufi was wearing a ring he took off the ring and gave it to the king and he said 'Under this diamond there is a message, a small note, but don't remove the diamond unless a real need arises. Unless you feel that you have come to the moment where nothing else can help, only then remove the diamond and you will find the message.'
The king was tempted many times but he kept control. And then the moment came. His country was invaded, he was defeated, he lost all that he had. He was being chased by the enemy and he ran away on his horse. The enemy was coming closer and closer -- he could hear the noise, the sound of the horses. He knew that within a few minutes they would reach -him. And then he came to a cul-de-sac, the road ended. It was a mountainous region and suddenly there was a great abyss and there was no way to go further. He could not go back, the enemy was there, just on his heels, and their sound was becoming louder and louder and louder. Suddenly he remembered the message.
He opened the ring and removed the stone. There was a small note; it said 'This too will pass.' A great silence descended on him. 'This too will pass.' And it actually happened that slowly slowly the sound of the coming enemy receded -- they had taken a wrong turning, they had moved in another direction.
Finally he collected his army again, conquered the enemy, came back to his capital and was received greatly by the people. They were shouting with joy, dancing, celebrating, the whole capital was decorated, the roads were full of flowers and he felt very great, as if he had suddenly become young again. He was 1/08/07
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riding on that wave of victory with great pride and suddenly he remembered the message -- 'This too will pass'. A great calm descended on him again. And he felt it is all the same -- defeat, victory, nothing remains.
The people were puzzled -- after that day their king had changed, he was a totally now man. They asked him again and again 'What has happened to you? You don't look disturbed at all, you don't look rootless at all.
The old worrying, the old anxieties, have all disappeared. You look so calm and quiet and collected -- what is the secret of it?'
Finally he called his court and he showed them the ring. He said, 'There is not much secret in it. This ring is the secret, this is my only scripture. Now I don't
need any other scripture. This simple message, one single sentence, "This too will pass", is enough. Whenever something comes to my mind -- anger, jealousy, hatred, greed -- I simply remind myself that this too will pass, and suddenly it is no longer there. It suddenly passes because it is bound to pass; and then I am again settled in my eternity, I am again rooted in the ultimate, in my very nature.'
To remember that we belong to the eternal, to remember that existence loves us, that we are beloveds of existence, is enough to get rid of all anxieties, anguishes, tensions, worries. Then life and death are the same, success and failure are the same. Then what happens does not matter. What matters now is of a totally different dimension: the beginningless, the endless, the immortal. To continuously remember this is the whole secret of sannyas.
The orange will remind you -- this is just like the ring -- the mala will remind you, my picture will remind you. These are just devices to keep you continuously aware that whatsoever happens on the outside is irrelevant. Let it pass and remain rooted, grounded in your own centre.
To be centred is to know what god is, to be grounded in one's nature is to become enlightened, is to become a Christ or a Buddha.
(Osho interpreted Dhyan as meaning silence this time, in talking to Dhyanprem about his new name.) There have been people in the past who lived in silence but they sacrificed love for it. There have also been people who lived in love but they sacrificed silence for it. And to me, both missed the wholeness of life.
The wholeness of life is possible only when love and silence go hand in hand together in deep harmony.
Silence is subjective, it is something that happens within you, it belongs to your interiority. And love is relating with others. Love is moving into the world, love is other-oriented.
A person who simply becomes an introvert becomes closed to the world, and to be closed to the world means to be closed to the sun, to the moon, to the flowers, to this tremendously beautiful existence. It is moving alive into a kind of grave. That's what your so-called monasteries were supposed to be: graves for people who were not dead yet. Monasteries gave them an opportunity to live a dead life. They escaped from the world, they were afraid of love, very much afraid of love.
There are Christian monasteries where no woman has ever entered and Christian nunneries where no man has ever entered. For one thousand years no woman has entered the monastery at Athos and once you become a monk in that monastery you cannot got out. You enter forever. There is an entrance but no exit. It is a grave; a communal grave you can call it -- many people living in one grave.
This is not wholeness, not health. And these people are bound to become stupid, imbeciles, idiots, because to remain intelligent you need all the challenges of life, all the problems of life. The challenges and problems go on giving opportunities for your intelligence to grow. They sharpen your sword, they don't allow any rust to gather upon you. And there have been people who have lived in the world, in the world of love, in relationships of all kinds, but they lived an insane life because there was no silence in them.
Up to now this has been the way for ninety-nine point nine per cent of humanity. We have existed in a lopsided way. My sannyasins have to bring a new synthesis; they have to live in silence and love together.
It should be easy: when you are alone be silent, be meditative, move to the innermost core of your being; and when you are with somebody, share your joy and love -- relate, sing, dance, love, laugh. They are not against each other. In fact just the opposite is the case: love will help you to attain deeper silence, and silence will help you to attain deeper love. They support each other, They are not antagonists, but complementaries.
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I Am Not As Thunk As You Drink I Am
Chapter #22
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