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Chapter title: None
29 October 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
Archive code: 8010295 1/08/07
Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994
Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished
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[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up.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.]
(Mechthild's way, and that of all his sannyasins, lies beyond battle, beyond conflict, Osho begins.) Life is not a battle although we have been told for centuries that it is. Not only have religious people been poisoning us but even the scientists have co-operated. Religious people have always been saying that life is a struggle, a battle, a constant fight And then Charles Darwin started the idea of the survival of the fittest only those who are capable of fighting are going to survive and the fittest -- and by fittest he means the most cunning, the most clever, the most deceptive.
But the truth is that life is not a battle at all. To take it as a battle is to miss it The true religion will say life is a love affair. And only when we take life as a love affair is there a possibility of knowing its mysteries. We have not to conquer it,
we are part of it -- how can the part conquer the whole? There is no need at all, the whole idea is stupid. We have to enjoy it, we have to dance with it, sing with it.
Hence my whole philosophy of sannyas can be put in two simple words, 'let-go'. And that is the meaning of your name: go beyond the idea of fighting, learn to love and relax and surrender and trust and you will come to know all that is worth knowing, all that makes life a tremendously beautiful phenomenon.
(Bliss isn't a pot of gold at the end of the road, it's the flowers alone the wayside, Osho reminds us.) Truth is not a goal but a pilgrimage from nowhere to nowhere. It is an eternal enquiry because the mysteries are infinite; you cannot come to an end. In existence there is no full stop. Existence is not like a movie film which begins at a point and then 'The End' comes. It is an ongoing celebration, it has been going on since eternity and it is going to continue. There is no beginning and no end.
So the real seeker of truth enjoys every moment of the journey. He is not goal- oriented. The goal-oriented person is always miserable because his joy is not here but there at the end of the journey, and the journey is such that it never ends, so he is always miserable. Wherever he is, he is miserable because his joy, his bliss, is somewhere there on the horizon where the earth meets the sky. But they only appear to meet, they never meet anywhere. You can go round and round the earth and the horizon, where the earth meets the sky, is always ahead of you. But it is an illusion; they are not meeting anywhere.
Truth is never achieved; you cannot possess it, it is not a thing to possess. Truth is the realisation that each moment belongs to it, that wherever you are you are in it or to be more precise, you are it. The seeker and the sought are not two, the journey and the goal are not two, the first step is also the last step.
The moment one drops all goals life becomes a sheer ecstasy. Then there is no need to be anxious, worried, about whether you are going to make it or not. There is no tension because there is no future. The present is enough unto itself.
Jesus says to his disciples 'Look at the lilies in the field. And the poor lilies,' he says 'are far more beautiful than even the great emperor Solomon attired in his precious garments.'
Why are they more beautiful than the emperor Solomon? Jesus answer is
tremendously beautiful. He himself has raised the question and answered it.
He says 'Because they think not of the morrow.' They are not worried about the future -- that is their beauty. They are just herenow.
My sannyasins have to be just like lilies in the field.
(The sought is hidden in the seeker, Osho says again, this time to Sateesha.) We are already gods but unaware of it, because we have never searched for our own being. If we could find ourselves we would find god too. But there are thousands of fools who are searching for god and they don't know at all who they are. Now, searching for god not knowing who the searcher is, is absolutely 1/08/07
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stupid. First we have to know the seeker, the searcher. And the miracle is that the moment you have found the seeker, you have also found the sought. Then there is no need to seek god, because he resides in the innermost core of your being. He is your very being, he is your very consciousness.
So I don't teach worship, I only teach meditation because meditation is the technique to discover your being. In discovering it, all is discovered; in knowing it, all is known.
(Bliss is the flowers along the very spring itself, Osho says to Anand Vasanto.) The moment spring comes all the trees rejoice, they welcome the spring with their flowers, with their perfume. In the East orange is the colour of spring. Its Hindi name is Vasanti; it is from Vasant -- spring. It is the colour of the flowers.
There are wild flowers which explode in the springtime and the whole forest seems to be afire. It suddenly becomes covered with roses and roses; you cannot even see the leaves.
Bliss also functions in the same way for your inner flowering, for the flowers of your consciousness. So my sannyasins are not to be serious. Seriousness is a disease which has to be avoided. They are not to be sad; they have to be
cheerful, enjoying small things of life, not bothering about whether these things are worth enjoying or not. The real thing is to enjoy; what you are enjoying is immaterial.
If you can enjoy even ordinary things of life, of course you will become capable of enjoying the extraordinary. And the person who cannot enjoy the ordinary loves the capacity to enjoy anything.
Omar Khayyam was a Sufi master who has been very much misunderstood because Fitzgerald, who translated him for the first time into English, could not understand the Sufi message. His translation is the best possible and as a poet he has done something superb -- many translations have been done of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam but nothing has gone beyond the translation of Fitzgerald -- but he was not a mystic, just a poet. So he understood the language, the beauty of the language, he translated it very sincerely, but still he missed the point created a misunderstanding around the world about Omar Khayyam.
People started thinking that Omar Khayyam was just a drunkard -- talking about wine, song and dance --
that he was just a materialist, that 'Eat, drink and be merry' was his message. This is a great misunderstanding and very unjust to Omar Khayyam.
Wine, song and dance are symbols. What he means by using them is that one should enjoy even small things -- eating, drinking -- just the small things of life, things of no spiritual quality. But the spiritual quality comes from your enjoyment, not from the things. One can eat just ordinary food with such joy, with such gratitude, with such prayer, that it becomes a meditation. It starts having the quality of the sacred.
In one of his poems Omar Khayyam says, 'I want to warn the so-called saints that if they don't enjoy this life they will become incapable of enjoying the other.' And he is perfectly right, because enjoying something is an art and this life is an opportunity to learn the art.
If you cannot enjoy flowers here how will you be able to enjoy flowers in paradise? Those flowers may be of gold, studded with diamonds -- everlasting, eternal -- but if you cannot enjoy the momentary, not even the momentary, how will you enjoy the eternal? The momentary gives you an opportunity to learn the art --
that's the whole function of life.
So my sannyasins have to enjoy everything possible. Go on finding way to enjoy even things which seem on the surface unenjoyable. If you search you will find some way to enjoy even the unenjoyable things. And that's the whole process of inner transformation. A moment comes when you c an enjoy everything. That is the moment when light descends, when god penetrates you -- you are ready, your heart is ready.
Unless that happens god never enters. The host is not ready -- how can the guest come?
(Love is the first rung of the ladder to god.)
Love is the seed of prayer. The problem is that everybody in this world wants to be loved but is not ready to love, is greedy for love but not ready to share; hence everybody wants love and nobody gets it.
How can you get it? -- because nobody is willing to give it.
Love has to be given, only then do your inner sources start flowing. The more you give, the more you will be surprised that you are getting energy from some unknown sources and you are more full than ever.
Once this secret is known then all miserliness disappears; then one simply gives for the joy of giving. And the moment you can give love without any desire for any return it becomes prayer. And that is its blessedness, that's the moment when a person turns towards the sacred. The vast dimension, the infinite door of the eternal, opens up.
1/08/07
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Love that has a desire to get something in return remains human but love that has no motive becomes divine. Ordinarily people are not even human as far as
love is concerned; they are very animal. And by animal I mean they want but they don't want to give.
One has to move from the animal to the human and from the human to the divine. This is the whole process of sannyas, the alchemy of transformation.
(Osho gives Uta the beautiful name Prem Purva -- love for the East.) Prem Purva.
The East represents the spiritual search, just as the West represents objective enquiry. The West represents science and the East represents religion.
Love for the East is only a metaphor; it is love for the inner search, for trying to know what the ground of your being is, who in fact we are, what this consciousness in us is.
As you start moving inwards a few identities are broken. The first identity that is broken is with the body. You suddenly see that you are not the body; you are in the body but not the body. Then the second identity is broken; you come to know you are not the mind; you are in the mind but not the mind. And the final and the last identity is broken when you come to know: you are in the heart but not the heart, in the feelings but not the feelings.
These three barriers crossed, suddenly you have entered the ultimate truth of your being. It is pure consciousness, it is just witnessing, seeing, knowing.
I am not against the body -- I am not against anything. The body is beautiful, a beautiful temple to be looked after, but one should not get identified. I am not against the mind either, it is one of the most beautiful mechanisms to be used, but one should not become one with it. And I am certainly not against the heart, not against feelings. Enjoy them, use them, dance with them, sing them, but remember that you are a witness, that you are beyond all this. You are a watcher on the hills and everything else is in the valley. The deepest in the valley is the body, then the mind, then the heart. The heart comes closest to your being but still it is not exactly your being. This is the discovery that has to be made and this is really the whole meaning of life.
The people who have not discovered their consciousness in its purity have missed an opportunity: They were given a great chance, a great challenge, and they wasted it. This is the only sin as far as I know.
Forgetting yourself is the only sin, remembering yourself is the only virtue. (Osho points out the futility of fretting.)
Man is always in anxiety -- sometimes more, sometimes less but the anxiety is always there. Either it is concerning the past which is no more, hence it is futile. Nothing can be done about it, but people go on brooding, thinking that they should have done this, they should not have done that. And it is so absurd because now nothing is possible, the past is no more there, it is finished. And thinking about it, becoming concerned about it, is waiting the present -- which is and can still be used -- too. Or people are anxious about the future, about what they are going to do tomorrow, how they are going to manage and how they are going to make their future beautiful, rich, successful -- and the future has not come yet.
And ninety-nine per cent of what you are thinking about it is never going to happen, so that ninety-nine per cent of your thinking is absolutely futile. And the one per cent that is going to happen... because your energy is wasted in thinking about the past and the future you will not be able to respond to that one per cent. When the right time comes you will suddenly find you don't have enough energy to cope with it.
One should become aware that the past is no more and the future not yet; both are non-existential. And anxiety is concern. for the non-existential. In fact you cannot be anxious about the present moment even if you try. What is there to be anxious about in the present moment? If you sit silently and try to be very anxious about the present you will not be able to. Nobody has ever been able to, it is not in the nature of things, it is impossible. Yes, you can be anxious about something which is past or something which is in the future, but not about the present.
A sannyasin has to live in the prevent. And life always comes as now, as the present, so one who lives in the present without any anxiety has enough energy, in fact more than is needed, to accept the challenge that life gives. And then it is a joy, the challenge is a joy because it sharpens your intelligence, gives you integrity and gives you a chance to adventure into the unknown.
Go beyond the past and the future and you will go beyond anxiety. And to live without anxiety is the only way to live. The people who are living full of anxiety
are simply dying, not living. They are on their 1/08/07 Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994
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deathbed already; missing that which is and wasting time on that which is not. There cannot be anything more foolish than this.
I call that man intelligent who can see this and can drop the past an d the future. My definition of intelligence is the understanding to drop that which is not and to live in that which is. And immediately life becomes a light, a festivity, a great joy.
(Man unconscious lives like a mole -- moving through a dark night of the soul, Osho calls it.) He cannot answer as to why he is doing something. In fact he himself feels puzzled as to why he is doing it. Sometimes in spite of himself he goes on doing things he does not want to do. Who wants to be angry? Who wants to be jealous? Everybody knows that being angry, being jealous, being possessive, is destroying your whole life. It is not some mystery -- everybody understands it, everybody has experienced it
-- but still one goes on in the same rut, going on moving in the same circles, mechanically. One decides many times that now it is enough, one is not going to do it any more. But again just after a few hours you will see the person behaving in the same way. This is what I call unconsciousness, this mechanical life. To me, this is the night.
Without the dawn, without the daybreak, one will never know what truth is, one will never know what bliss is, one will never know what god is. Then life is just a dragging from the cradle to the grave -- a long, long unnecessary journey. But there is a possibility of going beyond it. That possibility exists in everybody.
Just a little effort is needed to bring those seeds to sprout. That's what meditation is all about: helping your consciousness become clearer, dispelling your unconsciousness, claiming your being from unconsciousness.
Slowly slowly, as land can be reclaimed from the ocean, man can reclaim his
being from the darkness.
But it can be done only very slowly; it cannot be done in a hurried way, it cannot be done in a hasty way.
One has to be very patient and trusting that it takes time. It is not like seasonal flowers which are there within weeks; but within weeks they are gone too. This consciousness is not seasonal, it is eternal. It is like the cedars of Lebanon, it grows slowly. But once it has started growing you are constantly moving higher and higher into joy, higher and higher into a new kind of vision, clarity, perceptiveness.
Everything remains the same and yet nothing is the same any more because you are changing and you have started moving upwards. You have a bigger vision, a bird's eye view; you can see more than you have over seen. The higher you go, the more you can see. And small things start disappearing from your life.
When the first man walked on the moon looked towards the earth he didn't say my America -- there was no America left -- he said 'MY EARTH.' He himself was surprised that he said earth; he had never said it before. When you are on the earth you are an Indian, an American, an Italian -- this and that -- a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Christian, but looking from that height all boundaries disappear. For the first time he could feel that the whole earth was his. Now there was no question of excluding even Russia. He didn't say 'Earth
-- excluding Russia.' It was simply 'my Earth.' And for that moment he could see the point, that as you go higher small things are left behind. Standing there on the moon he was not a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan, Catholic or Protestant~ belonging to this church or that. He had no nationality,, no religion, no ideology.
The height did it, ordinary physical height, BO what to say about when one grows spiritually and reaches to spiritual moons? From there one can laugh at small problems that one was so much concerned about and one can feel pity and laughter simultaneously for people who are unnecessarily still dragging themselves along with thousands of small problems. They all become irrelevant.
I don't help you to solve your problems -- that is not my work. That is the difference between psychoanalysis and all its branches and religion: psychoanalysis tries to solve your problems, religion tries to give you a new
height; from that height these problems become irrelevant. That's the difference between Freud and Buddha. Freud is trying to solve small problems -- and you cannot solve them. You solve one problem, another arises because the person remains on the same plane; he will create another problem. So psychoanalysis is never complete. There is not a single person in the whole world whose psychoanalysis is absolutely complete, who is completely psychoanalysed.
Even psychoanalysts who have undergone the process for ten years or twelve years are still living with the same problems, To others they may be of some help but for themselves, you will be surprised: they are the same type of people. To others they are very wise, they will suggest to you not to be possessive.…
Wilhelm Reich, one of the greatest psychoanalysts, for his whole life taught 'Never be jealous.' And he was so jealous. His wife, who has written her memoirs, wrote that she had never come across such a jealous person. He was fooling around with so many women, but with his wife he was very possessive. He was 1/08/07
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working like a detective, continuously watching, searching, looking for clues -- and of course he knew many ways to look for clues because his whole work was that, making people free of possessiveness.
So he had two faces one face, his public face, when he was helping people to become non-possessive, free, and the other face, his reality, when he was very possessive, so possessive that the wife got fed up with him and had to divorce him. She was also a psychoanalyst and she was helping others, but they did not manage to help with each other's problem at all.
Basically the problem is not that you have small problems; they are bound to be there. The real problem is that your height has to be changed. You have to come to a higher vision and from that point you have to look; all those problems simply lose meaning.
So psychoanalysis cannot help, ultimately only religion can help. Psychoanalysis
is a patchwork: one hole appears and psychoanalysis covers it, another hole appears And again it patches it up; then a third hole appears. Those holes go on appearing because the real cause is never changed.
My function here is to help you to see that unless you change your altitude the problems will remain.
Once you go higher in your consciousness the problems that belong to a particular altitude become irrelevant. You will face new problems, higher problems, better problems. And it is good to face higher problems. At the ultimate height there are no problems. One simply faces one problem: what to do now?
(laughter)
I Am Not As Thunk As You Drink I Am
Chapter #30
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