Chapter title: None

‌Chapter title: None‌

27 September 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8009275 ShortTitle: ICEBRG27 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[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up.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.]

(Misery makes misers of men -- this was the message to Heidi, a therapist from Norway.) The miserable person is bound to be mean, he cannot be noble. One should not expect nobleness out of misery. That is impossible; that is asking for something which is against nature. But this is what we have been doing for centuries. People are miserable, and society in every way creates their misery. It is a created phenomenon, it is not natural. Except for man nobody is miserable. All the animals, birds, trees, rivers, mountains, stars, they are all in tremendous bliss. Of course they are unconscious of it.

Man has one thing which is tremendously valuable: he can be conscious1y blissful. But there is a danger also. The danger is that he may get trapped in a pattern of misery. No animal can get trapped in it, no tree can get trapped in it.

When one is capable of consciousness one is also capable of choosing. That is part of consciousness, one can choose. Both alternatives are open: one can be blissful, one can be miserable.

Society is for miserable people. It needs miserable people because they are good slaves. Their whole energy is destroyed by their misery, hence they cannot be rebels. Rebellion needs overflowing energy, vigour, courage. The miserable person is so tired, so exhausted, he is willing to do anything, to follow any commandment, any order, howsoever stupid it is. He has no energy to fight against it; he cannot say no. Out of the sheer necessity to survive he goes on saying yes to all the vested interests. And the society consists of vested interests: priests, politicians. All kinds of powerful people need everybody to remain in misery.

Every child is brought up in such a way that he gets caught in misery. And then we expect nobleness, then we expect grace, then we expect love, beauty, joy. We make the person even more burdened. First we destroy all possibility of nobleness, joy, love, grace, truth, intelligence... we destroy everything and then we say now be intelligent, be joyous, be courageous. That makes the people even more burdened, more miserable, because they try to impose a certain kind of nobleness, a morality. That creates hypocrisy in them. If they follow the moral rules they go against their innermost core; if they don't follow them they feel guilty. Either way it makes the misery multiplied.

My effort here is to help you to get out of the pattern of misery; that is the first thing -- because it is a choice. You can get out of it, just a decision is needed. It is simply a question of deciding to get out of the prison. Nobody can prevent you

-- there is nobody to prevent you. It is out of your own choice that you are in it, it is out of your own clinging that you are in it. My first teaching is get out of this trap.

And the moment you are out of misery, suddenly you are noble. There is grace, beauty, joy. Life starts having a new dimension, a new richness. It becomes more festive, it starts taking on the colours of celebration. And that celebration is sacredness, that celebration is godliness.

And the way to come out of your misery is meditation, because the mind has been created by the society, and if you remain inside the mind you remain inside the prison. Mind is the prison, the root cause of all your slavery, of all your

despair, anguish, anxiety. It is continuously destroying you -- it is poison.

And it is very easy to get out of the mind just by becoming aware of the whole mechanism of mind --

thinking, desiring, expecting. All these things have to be watched as if you are just a mirror reflecting whatsoever passes by, with no judgement, with no desire even to judge, just a pure witness -- and immediately you are out of the mind. First it will come in glimpses. For a few seconds you will be out of mind, but those few seconds will give you a taste of freedom, of tremendous ecstasy. And then slowly those small moments will become bigger; the intervals when the traffic of the mind completely stops will become bigger.

And then slowly slowly the knack is learned. If you want to put the mind into a non-functioning state for hours or even for days you can. Whenever it is needed you use it, whenever it is not needed you put it off.

Both ways it is healthy: it will give you freedom and it will also give rest to your mind. And when the mind has rest it becomes, of course, a better mechanism, it functions better. Its memory is clear, its functioning is in tune, its thinking is logical, it functions at the peak.

So it is not against mind to be a meditator. Meditation means going beyond mind, but it is not against mind. In fact, it is a tremendous boon to the mind, a blessing, because the mind also gets tired: it does 1/08/07

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continuous work, twenty-four hours a day unnecessary work, unneeded. But the mind goes on and on because you have completely forgotten how to stop it. By just being a witness you learn the art of stopping it. The moment you are a witness it stops on its own. That's the whole point.

Then nobleness is yours, and then to live is certainly a great gift. One feels grateful to god. Out of that gratefulness arises prayer.

(Meditation is as easy as pie, as Osho tells a new sannyasin, who has been riding a unicycle around the ashram.)

It is slipping out of your mind like a snake slips out of its old skin. It is not a science, it is an art or, to be even more precise, it is just a knack.

It is easy to teach science, very easy, because it consists of something observable; it relates to the objective world. The student can see what is happening with his own eyes. He can see water evaporating at one hundred degrees. There is not much of a trouble in teaching science; just a very average intelligence is needed.

To teach art is a little more difficult because tremendous intelligence is needed. If a person wants to be a painter he will have to learn two things, not one. In science he has to learn only one thing: he has to become informed. If he wants to be a painter he has to learn the technique of painting and the art of painting --

which are two totally different things. For a technician painting is only a question of arranging colours in a certain pattern, with a certain geometry, certain proportions; it is almost science. But then it cannot be a great piece of art. It may be perfect technically, but something will be missing in it. It will not be original, it will be a repeat, because for originality not only technique is needed, for originality immense intelligence is needed.

Zen monks have been painting for thousands of years and they say that to learn real painting one has to learn the technique for twelve years and then for twelve years one has to stop painting completely and forget all about it. And then after those twenty-four years one has to start painting again, so the technique is forgotten, so the technique does not come in between you and the painting. Now you can start painting as if you don't know painting, you don't know the technique of painting, so you can be original.

The second stage of twelve years is far more important than the first. The technique has to be learned, certainly -- without knowing about colours and canvases you cannot paint -- but that is only a preliminary process. Then you have to forget all about it so you don't become addicted to the technique. The technique goes deep into your blood and bones, but you are not at all self- conscious about it. It functions, but you are now free from technique; it does not hinder you.

Art -- music, poetry, painting -- is far more difficult to teach, a longer process. And a knack is the most difficult thing to teach because it needs three things; it needs a certain technique, it needs tremendous intelligence and also it needs some intuitiveness. Intuitiveness is the highest peak of intelligence. The very word 'intuition' is significant. Education is tuition -- somebody teaches you. Intuition is something that happens to you; it cannot be brought in from the outside.

The master can create a certain atmosphere, a certain energy field; it is a very indirect process. It is just as a gardener prepares the ground and then sows the seed and then waits; there is nothing else he can do about it. Now everything depends on the seeds. They will find their way in their own time. It will be something like intuition. You cannot persuade the seeds to grow faster, you cannot tell them "This is the time -- go ahead." You cannot order them; you have simply to wait. Prepare the ground, remove all the barriers, rocks, weeds, etcetera, give them a beautiful bed, watering, sun, and then wait, then wait for their own intuition to unfold. You cannot do more than that.

That's the function of the master; to create a certain energy field in which your intuition one day suddenly becomes aflame. It cannot be caused, it cannot be forced. It can only be helped, and that too in a very soft way.

That's the whole purpose of sannyas: to create an energy field, to create a communion of people, to create a loving, invisible force, a have of love, so that the wave can take you, can possess you.

Meditation is only a method: it helps to remove the barriers. It is spade-work. Weeds are removed, thoughts are removed, mind is removed. It is just a removing -- it is a negative process: rejecting, rejecting everything that is inside so one day there is nothing to reject. All that can be thrown out has been thrown out and you have a pure space, just space. And that space is the right preparation. In that space your intuition, the seed of intuition which you have been carrying all along, suddenly bursts forth unpredictably. One cannot say when it will happen, but one thing is certain -- it does happen. That much can be said; the time 1/08/07

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cannot be predicted, but it happens. If the space is ready it happens sooner or later -- and it is always sooner rather than later.

And your name Jack is very beautiful; it means god's gracious gift. The gift is already with you, but you have not opened the treasure, the doors of the treasure. The parcel has remained with you unopened, and it has remained for so long with you unopened that you may have completely forgotten about it.

My work is to help you to find where you have put it and to find how to open it. And then life becomes a splendour, a grandeur of inconceivable dimensions. Then for the first time you know what depth means, what height means; then you are no more flat. Ordinarily people are just flat: they don't have any depth, they don't have any height -- just flat ground. They don't know the depths of the Pacific, they don't know the heights of the Himalayas. They are missing something.

The real adventure begins only when you start moving deeper into your being and also higher into your consciousness, and the processes are two sides of the same coin. If you go deeper you go higher, if you go higher you go deeper. It is one dimension, the vertical dimension. People who are living a flat life are living horizontally, and of course, their life is just like a flat tyre, utterly punctured! And you must know about tyres -- you are a unicyclist!

Become something vertical. Sannyas is a change from being horizontal to vertical. And then life is really bliss, a gift of god. One cannot repay god, there is no way. One can only be thankful, tremendously thankful. That's what prayer is, that's what religion is: a deep gratitude to existence for what it has done for us.

(Love is the first lesson in learning of god, Osho told Prem Sanatana.) Love is the only quality, a natural quality, that has something of eternity in it. Hence love is the first experience of god, the beginning of the experience of god. God is much more than that, but love opens the door. God is inconceivable, but love is not inconceivable. Love is natural, so love functions as a bridge between man and god. If the bridge is not there you cannot reach god; god remains simply an empty word.

But with love immediately you start understanding god in a new way. It is no more an empty word; it starts having great content in it, great meaning in it,

great significance in it.

Knowing love is the first lesson in knowing god. That is the beginning of the alphabet, the ABC. Of course god is far more, because the alphabet will have to go to XYZ, but if you have begun rightly with ABC, XYZ is not far away. A good beginning is almost half the journey, a right beginning is half the journey.

Begin with love so one day you can know god. And never begin with god because you cannot begin there. That's where all the religions have failed: they begin with god, which is not possible. You are stuck on this bank and you start your journey on the other bank, where you are not. So your journey remains just a fantasy, a journey of dreams -- beautiful dreams, but dreams are dream, beautiful or ugly. When you wake up you will see that all that time has been wasted. Even if they were nice dreams they have not given you anything.

So there are worldly people who dream of worldly things, and there are so-called religious people who dream of religious things, but both are dreamers -- both are stuck on this bank. And god is the farther shore.

A bridge is needed or a boat is needed if a bridge is not possible. Love can function both ways. Either it can become a bridge or it can become a boat, but it can take you to the other shore.

The so-called religions teach you to begin with god, and of course then you have only to believe in god.

You don't know, you have to believe. This is the beginning of superstitution, and all kinds of stupidities will be born out of it -- Christian stupidities and Hindu stupidities and Mohammedan and Jewish, and there are thousands of forms. Stupidity comes in every size and shape, in all colours; whatever you choose it is available. The market is full of stupidity and you have infinite variety; you can choose. You can go on changing from one stupidity to another.

But unless you know, you don't know. Belief is not knowing. Belief is a deception, deceiving others and deceiving yourself. And I am not worried about others -- if you deceive others it is okay -- but don't deceive yourself because that will destroy your whole life. And my understanding is that the person who deceives himself is the person who will deceive others. The person who cannot deceive himself cannot deceive others either; it becomes impossible for him to deceive. And belief is the greatest deception.

The only way to begin is with love, because that is a natural phenomenon. Everybody is born with a loving quality. You have to purify it, you have to make it more and more refined, cultured, so it loses all animality and lust, and slowly slowly starts rising higher than lust. Drop jealousies because those are 1/08/07

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poisons, heavy weights that keep your love low; it cannot rise high. Possessiveness, ego trips, domination --

go on dropping all these, and slowly slowly your love will become weightless. A moment comes when there is no jealousy, no possessiveness, no lust, and love is pure. You have wings, you can fly. Now you have something in you which can take you to the ultimate source of life, to god.

Hence I say love is the first glimpse of eternity, and the last glimpse is god. Love is the beginning of god and god is the end of love. Love is the first step towards god and god is the ultimate goal of love.

(Contrary to popular opinion, yoga isn't a set of strenuous exercises, just the converse: it's total let-go.

Osho was addressing Anand Yogendra.)

Yoga means the art of communion, becoming one with the whole, dissolving yourself into the whole like a dewdrop slipping from the lotus leaf into the lake. The moment it falls into the lake it becomes the lake. It loses one thing -- its small identity, its ego, its boundary -- but it gains infinitely; it becomes the whole lake. The dewdrop was always in danger, the sun will rise and it will evaporate. Dewdrops are always on the verge of death, any moment death can happen. But once the dewdrop becomes part of the lake, death becomes impossible.

Man is just a dewdrop, and that's why he is miserable, afraid; afraid of death, afraid of a thousand and one things, constantly trembling inside. And it is natural, understandable. The only way to get rid of all this fear, trembling, is to

become one with the whole.

That's what yoga is: the art of dissolving yourself into the whole, losing your boundaries, losing your ego, your identity. In the beginning it seems to be very difficult because that's all we know about ourselves.

The function of the master is to help you, to encourage you, to seduce you, to push you to take the jump.

And if one loves the master, trusts the master, things become simple, very simple. That's what sannyas is all about; it is just a trust. And in trust it is easy to take the jump; without trust it is impossible to take the jump.

In doubt you cannot take the jump because you will always be doubting whether to take it or not and it will always remain an either/or, either/or, either/or.

And there is no way to decide through the mind because the mind has no way to know the unknown, it remains confined in the known. And you have never experienced the melting with the whole, so it is a gamble. The doubting person cannot risk. It really needs guts, great courage, to trust, to put all the doubts aside.

In spite of all the doubts one falls in love with someone who has known, who has taken the jump, who has found. And in trust one takes the quantum leap. It is a single step. Once you have jumped, then nothing can prevent you. Even if you doubt on the way you can doubt -- nothing to worry about. Now you will reach the lake; you cannot hang somewhere in the air.

So once somebody has jumped I don't bother about it at all. I don't even look -- it is finished, I start working with somebody else, because there is nowhere in the air you can stop, you have to go to the very bottom. So my work is finished once somebody has taken the jump.

And the moment you become one with the whole there is bliss. Life for the first time has meaning because for the first time there is no more death. For the first time you know you have always been here and will always be here, that you are indestructible. In knowing it there is rejoicing, in knowing it there is freedom from fear, in knowing it one starts dancing.

Then there is nothing else to do -- dance, sing, rejoice!

Then this whole universe belongs to you because you are part to it.

(The momentary ultimately proves misery-making; only the eternal can bring ecstasy -- this to Amrit Satyam, a psychiatric nurse from Holland.)

We live with momentary things. That's why there is so much misery, because whatsoever is momentary is not going to satisfy. By the time you become aware that it is there it is already gone. This life is almost a flux: it is continuously moving, slipping out of your hands. Nothing is certain, nothing is stable. Everything is in a constant movement.

You cannot make your abode in this momentary world, on these shifting sands. If you make your abode on these shifting sands it is bound to collapse; it is absolutely inevitable. The collapse is going to happen any moment, and you cannot live at peace.

You fall in love, then there is fear about whether the love is going to remain tomorrow or not. Your lover may leave you or you may start thinking to leave your lover. So we start making arrangements to stabilise it, to make it something permanent, and in that very effort all joy is lost.

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Lovers start trying to possess the other so that tomorrow it is still there, but in trying to possess love you are already destroying it. You are not even waiting for tomorrow to destroy it, you have destroyed it today...

because nobody wants to be possessed, nobody wants to be thought of as a commodity. Nobody is a thing.

To behave with a person as if he or she is a thing is to humiliate; it is utterly disrespectful. And everybody resists it, hence the fight starts.

The desire is for something eternal, but that cannot be fulfilled in the outside

world. Somebody is poor and he thinks that if he becomes rich he will be happy. The moment he becomes rich he is not happy, he is simply more worried. Now he is worried about whether he is going to remain rich or not, because things go on changing. The market goes down, the prices change, the banks go bankrupt, governments become communist, so nothing can be certain. So there is a constant worry. When he was poor at least he used to sleep well; now he cannot even sleep, his sleep becomes a restlessness. He is constantly worried, nightmares surround him.

Through great effort a person reaches the highest post of the country, becomes the prime minister or the president... and then the fear. Almost the whole of his life is wasted in reaching the highest post, now he clings to the chair, afraid that others are pulling his legs. There is a long queue of people who all want to be the president or the prime minister . There is immense competition, cut-throat competition, and everybody is against everybody else's necks. He cannot rest at peace. He has reached after such a long effort and now all that he can do is to cling to the chair, to somehow survive there.

This is what goes on happening unless we start looking inwards. The outside world is not going to satisfy because it is a changing world, momentary, and our innermost longing is for the eternal. And that cannot be fulfilled on the outside.

I am not against the outside world. All that I want my sannyasins to be aware of is that your desire is for the eternal and that cannot be fulfilled on the outside. So on the outside remain joyful with the momentary, don't ask that it should be eternal. Nothing can be eternal on the outside. Enjoy the momentary as momentary, knowing perfectly well that it is momentary.

The flower that has opened up in the morning is bound to die by the evening. It has come with the sunrise, it will go with the sunset. So rejoice! I am not against the flower -- rejoice! But remember, don't cling, don't hope, otherwise you will be disillusioned. Rejoice in the momentary on the outside, and search for the eternal in the inside.

That's my message to my sannyasins. And inside you will find amrit, nectar, the immortal, the eternal, the divine. And once you have found that then there is nothing more to be found. Then all is bliss, then all is joy. Life is fulfilled. One has come home.

Just the Tip of the Iceberg

Chapter #28

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