15

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‌CHAPTER 15

15 April 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Bodhi means enlightenment, awakening, awareness, intelligence, prem means love – love for enlightenment. And there is a deep search in you, very deep; you may not be even aware of it. It is not part of your conscious mind. Some rumours may be reaching to the conscious mind but it is rooted in the deep unconscious and not only in the unconscious but in what Jungians call the ‘collective unconscious’. It is coming from the very deepest core and only when it comes from that deep core does it have any meaning.

When the conscious mind tries to become aware, alert, when it starts searching for truth it leads nowhere, because the conscious mind is such a small part, such a tiny part – only one-tenth of the whole consciousness. It is just a small lighted spot, it cannot affect the whole consciousness. But if it comes from the deeper, darker realm, when it comes from deeper than you are, then something becomes possible, otherwise the interest remains philosophical.

There are many people who think about meditation but they only think. They never do, they never become. There are many people who think of God but it is only a kind of formality. It is one item in a thousand other items in their life, it is not whole and soul. And unless God grips you whole and soul, nothing is possible. With God one can’t be partial – one has to be total, either all or nothing. There is no way in between. So if a person has some curiosity, some enquiry in the conscious mind, he becomes a scholar. He reads scriptures, listens to people, philosophises. Slowly, slowly, he himself becomes capable of abstraction but his God remains abstract, a thought in the mind – a beautiful thought, a nice thought, but impotent. His God is not existential.

But your search can become existential. It can be a turnabout, it can be a conversion. You can die in it and you can be reborn. So it is going to be hard, too, because that death precedes the new birth and that death is hard.

But if you can keep a little courage, great will be the benefit. And that is the whole significance of being initiated into sannyas. Alone you may lose the track, alone you may not be able to put all at stake. With me it becomes easy. Love for me makes it simple. Related to me you can take the quantum leap. Hence, trust has always been the foundation of all religious search. Doubt is perfectly good when one is philosophising. In fact without doubt there will be no philosophy. It starts in philosophy, in doubt. Religion starts in trust, in a mad kind of love. That’s what sannyas is all about.

I am ready to take you to the farther shore. You cannot see that shore yet but you can see me, you can feel me, you can imbibe my vibe, and slowly, slowly you will be able to enter the boat. The first step you have already taken.…

A tremendous love to become a buddha is there, hidden in you. This can be accomplished in this very life. Just be possessed with that desire, with that longing, and let the unconscious infiltrate the conscious.

The conscious cannot infiltrate the unconscious, remember, because it is a tiny part, but the unconscious can infiltrate the conscious. Then one is joined – the conscious and unconscious both become bridged by a longing. That longing creates integration or what Jung calls ‘individuation’. A man is never an individual unless he is possessed by a desire so deep that it is deeper than life, so deep that he is ready to sacrifice his life for it.

A man never comes to know what life is unless he comes to desire something which is more valuable than life itself; then only does he come to know what life is. Unless you have something more valuable than life you will never know the meaning of life.

[A sannyasin, returning to the West, is scared because she feels she is going really crazy – completely disassociated from the world and her body. Osho checks her energy.]

It is not something negative. It can be used and can be used beautifully and very positively. It is just that you are not feeling identified with your body... and that’s perfectly good. There are methods of spiritual growth where that identification has to be broken. All paths of awareness follow that key: one has to remember that one is not the body. It is happening naturally to you. But I can understand: coming from the West, one feels very puzzled and weird if one starts feeling that one is not the body. Then who is one?

Nobody is the body. We live in the body – we are not it. We participate in it, we co-operate with it but we are not it. We live through it but we are not it. We flow through it but it remains an abode, a vehicle. Sometimes this awareness happens through long meditations and sometimes it can happen without any meditation being consciously done on your part. When it happens without any effort on your part then you feel very puzzled, just as you are.

You must have meditated in your past lives. It has remained there like a potential; that’s why a little bit of it has lingered on in your whole life, for years. Coming here and starting meditating and getting deeper into the spaces that meditation creates, it has become intensified. But it is beautiful there is no need to be worried, not at all. You have to be happy about it. Relax into the idea, enjoy it. Something great is happening. If you can use the opportunity you will be able to know who you

are. The situation is getting ready where you will be able to see yourself utterly unidentified with the body. To see oneself as consciousness is to see the real man, is to see the original man. So don’t be worried – rejoice, be glad!

It will create a few difficulties. That’s why people don’t go into such things deeply. It will create a few difficulties. Yes, if you cannot identify yourself with the body, people will look like monsters. When you are identified with your body you think of people as their bodies. When you are not identified with your body people don’t look like bodies. They look like ghosts and their bodies seem to be a separate phenomenon. Then the body looks like a monster, like a robot. One loses all proportions: one cannot feel one’s own body so one cannot see the other’s body. All normal perceptions become different, a gestalt-change happens. So that will be a difficulty for a few days only. If you can relax and enjoy it, it will disappear. It is just in the meantime.

You have to settle as consciousness. You have become unsettled as body but you have not yet settled as consciousness, so you are just in between; that is creating the trouble. If you take it negatively you will have to settle as the body, which will be a loss. Something, a great opportunity, was knocking at your doors and you didn’t open the door. Settle as consciousness – even if it takes a few months time and you have to pass through great difficulties.

Relating will become difficult for a few months. Love will become difficult for a few months. Making love will look ridiculous, a torture, ugly. This will happen. If you are consciously alert about this you will not be disturbed. You just have to give it six to nine months and slowly, slowly you will settle on a new plane, you will settle as consciousness, then all trouble will disappear. People will be people again, not monsters. You will be able to use your body again but you will be the master, the body will not be the master any more. And everything will become normal, absolutely normal, but with a new understanding, with a new light.

In Zen they say ’Before one starts meditating mountains are mountains, rivers are rivers. When one goes deep into meditation, mountains are no more mountains and rivers are no more rivers. Everything becomes a chaos, everything becomes confused: boundaries merge into each other, overlap. When one has reached the ultimate of meditation, mountains are again mountains, rivers are again rivers.

You are just in the middle when mountains are no more mountains and rivers are no more rivers. That’s why you are feeling as if you are going crazy. Just relax into it. Don’t be afraid; I will take care.

Whenever you feel too disturbed or anything just go to the centre, dance with sannyasins, sit with sannyasins, be with them.

That’s why I am giving a particular colour to sannyasins: so you can recognise each other everywhere, anywhere. So small communes start developing in every place, because my people will need those communes. Soon this will be the situation of many. Then those communes will help you to remain earthed, centered, rooted. They will become a support, they will function as a mother to you. When a person becomes really helpless, when these moments come, one is helpless.

In the old days there were always communities. Jesus himself lived in a particular community called the Essenes. He grew up with them. He was an Essenian and he attained all his being through them.

Sufi schools have existed down the ages. Their function is, when somebody starts getting crazy like you... And everybody who is on the path one day or other has to go into it, it is a must! One has to go through it – nobody can avoid it. Alone one may go really mad but with the help of others – people who are ahead of you or people who are in the same situation or people who can create a very very blissful atmosphere to grow in, who can support you, who can say ‘Don’t be afraid, we are with you’ – one can pass this dark night of the soul.

Yes, this has exactly been called by Christian mystics ‘the dark night of the soul’. But only after this dark night is the dawn... and it is not far away.

So remain in contact, continue to meditate and don’t be afraid. And whenever you feel that it is becoming too much, put it (a box) on the heart and come back, mm?

Sat means true, bodhi means enlightenment – true enlightenment. There is a possibility of untrue enlightenment. One can imagine it; then it is untrue. One can start believing that one is enlightened. There are many false messiahs. It is not that they are all charlatans, are deceiving people. There is more of a possibility that they themselves are deceived, they are in a kind of illusion, a hallucination.

One has to remember that the true enlightenment is when you are not; that is the criterion. If you are still there to claim then it is not true, because you and enlightenment cannot exist together, just as darkness and light cannot exist together. When light comes, darkness disappears; when enlightenment comes, you disappear. There is nobody to take possession of enlightenment, nobody to claim it. If the claimer is there, then it is untrue enlightenment. If there is nobody to claim – there is only light and light – nobody to grab it, nobody to say ‘I have experienced’, then it is true. And if we can avoid the untrue, the true happens. But before the true happens the untrue moment comes many times.

The mind tries to deceive to the very last. It tries in every way possible. When it feels that there is no way, the final, the last and the ultimate deception is that it starts pretending that you are enlightened, you have come to know, you have seen God. Remember: God cannot be seen because you cannot be a subject and God an object, duality is not possible there. That’s what Jesus means when he says ‘I and my father are one.’ You cannot see, you are no more separate to see. When one is dissolved into total existence, just like a drop of water disappearing into the ocean, it is utter annihilation from the individual’s side.

Jesus says that unless you are born again on a totally different plane, in a totally different conciousness, where no ‘I’ exists, you will not enter the Kingdom of God.

‘Satbodhi’ means: true enlightenment. In short, true enlightenment is when there is nobody who is enlightened... when there is only enlightenment and nobody enlightened by it.

[A sannyasin has been diagnosed as having Hodgkin’s Disease, a cancer of the lymph gland which is usually terminal. She said she had been taking heavy drugs, but stopped taking these.]

Death knocking on the door is one of the greatest opportunities of life – the greatest, the suprememost opportunity. There is only one thing that can compete with it a little, that is love. But it can compete with it only a little.

When death knocks at the door, it depends on how you react to it. If you can react in a friendly way, in a receptive mood, death can be transformed into eternal life. If you cling to life, you are possessed by it; then you missed one opportunity more.

Death is going to happen to everybody – what excuse it takes is irrelevant, Hodgkin’s or hiccups, it doesn’t matter; those are just excuses. Death comes and death comes absolutely. Excuse or no excuse, it comes. In fact it enters our system the very moment we are born. Since that time we start dying. And it is good that it comes like shock, because many people die slowly, slowly. They never become aware and they cannot use the opportunity. People die in their beds; slowly, slowly they disappear in parts.

Mm? you will be dying wholesale. You can use the opportunity because it is there and now you know it. And you can transcend it too. The very shock can be a turnabout, a mutation. Use this shock. And I am all there to help you. Just use this shock joyously: dance and sing and continue to meditate. If you can die meditatively, lovingly, rejoicingly, hallelujah in your heart!... Then let all those poisons be there.…

First: rejoice. Enjoy it – the very idea is beautiful. Fantasise about it, let it be- come your meditation, don’t be afraid of it. And nobody can fight with death, we

canonlyfightfortime.Nobodycanfightwithdeath, wecanonlypostponeitalittle.Sopostponingisnotbad.A

poison.Thatisalsopoison.Itisjustasifyouhaveathorninyourfoot.Y oucantakeitoutwithanotherthorn;th

You have to relax with the doctors. That too has to be accepted.

[She replies: These doctors tell me ‘Go to the Himalayas and look for a decent guru. You’re intelligent – why do you go and see Rajneesh?’... It’s so difficult to trust them.]

No, don’t be worried... don t be worried about them. What they say about me is not the point, mm? You just take the medicine; about that they are right. Don’t be worried about what they say, because what do they know about me or the Himalayas? But about medicine they know. So tell them ‘About medicine I will listen to you.’ You take the medicine. Just because they are against me don’t get angry.

They are bound to be against me – this country is so orthodox. That they are allowing me to be alive here is a miracle. They can kill me any time. They try in every way to disrupt my work. But that is not the point to be considered. They don’t know me so whatsoever they say about me is not...

Just ask them ‘Have you ever heard him ? Have you ever been there? The Himalayas are far away but have you ever been to the ashram, to Koregaon Park?’ They have not been here so how can they go to the Himalayas ? And who is there in the Himalayas?

But don’t bother about that. Just take the medicine. Take the medicine and try to convert them towards me – that work you continue! So it will be a give and take, mm?...

But there is no need to be afraid. If it comes, it comes. If it can be postponed a little bit, nothing wrong; you can be a little more with me. If it comes, nothing to be worried about: you can be born into one of my sannyasins’ wombs soon!...

It is all good, whatsoever happens. But just relax – take the medicine and relax. Meditate and dance and don’t be worried at all.…

[She tells him that she mistreated the box Osho gave her.]

No, nothing to be worried about – you can mistreat it sometimes. In love that is accepted. My sannyasins mistreat me too. That is part of their love. They don’t know better love than that, so sometimes it is okay. The box will not be angry with you.

[A sannyasin says: I’ve gone through so many different moods and oscillations in my feelings towards you... can help me to understand what games I’m playing towards you or why?... ]

No, you are slowly, slowly coming to understand them yourself. The understanding is coming slowly, slowly. And it comes only through experience in those games and seeing the futility of them all. But the mind takes time. Moods change just as the climate changes. Unless you go beyond the mind, it is a continuous change. Only beyond the mind is there no change. Then one lives in a timeless moment. Then there is only one taste always, no oscillation, no fluctuation. With the mind you cannot have that.

The mind lives in movement, it is movement, change – it cannot exist without change. Even if it stops for a single moment you will slip out of it, so it can’t stop; it has to continue its game. You are finished with one game, it immediately creates another. In fact, before you are finished with one game it has already prepared another. Before the stage is vacated it has prepared other actors to come on the stage and engage you again. Behind the stage is constant preparation – that’s what goes on in the unconscious. The conscious mind is just a lighted stage. The unconscious is the green room where other actors are getting ready.

Slowly, slowly you will see it more clearly and the more clearly you see it, the less important it will be. You will be less and less affected by it. One day the perception comes so loud, so utterly transparent, that in that very moment you have taken the jump, you have gone beyond the mind. You are standing on a hilltop and now every game is there in the valley – you are beyond it. It doesn’t matter that much.

No understanding is going to help, only transcendence helps. No explanation is of any value. Millions of explanations have been given and tried. For the moment it may satisfy you but sooner or later again you see that the explanation is there but the game continues, so what is the point? Then you become fed up with one explanation and you search for another. Then that too becomes a game: one game is continuing and another game of explanations, of philosophies starts side by side, parallel to it. One can go on and on in this way: one game behind another behind another behind another. You can make a queue and it becomes more complicated.

This is my observation, that people who know much become incapable of transcending. They know all explanations, they know all kinds of psychoanalysis so they think they know... and they know nothing. So it is not a question of getting explanations. Just go on watching, only watching helps. Slowly, slowly, watching deepens, the witness arises, and one day suddenly you are cut off. The mind is there and you are there but there is no bridge: the thing has happened. In the Upanishads they have a metaphor...

Two birds are sitting on a tree, one at the top of the tree, unmoving, sitting silently like a buddha; another bird, on the lower branches, jumping from this branch to that, desiring this fruit and that, trying to follow this idea and that, worried, puzzled, anxious, restlessThe Upanishads say that

these two birds are in everybody; life is a tree and these two birds are in everybody. The lower is the mind, the higher is the witness; the witness is still sitting there at the top. When the lower will get tired, really tired, it will look up. In that very looking up, it disappears into the higher bird and becomes one with it. Then there is only one bird, then all restlessness is gone.

Just wait, go on watching.…

[A sannyasin says he would like to bring his sannyas wife and her son here but she is not ready to come forever.]

You just wait, when we have moved to the new commune.… Don’t talk about ‘forever’, mm? – just bring her. Talk about two, three months, and then even if you want to go she will not go. Once we have moved into the new place, nobody is going back!

Even here everybody is in trouble but nobody wants to go. No facilities are here, mm? – I am continuously concerned about my sannyasins. They live in small rooms, crowded, with no facility and just because of my love, because of me, they go on accepting everything. But in the new community there will be no problem. And we are going to make a small world of our own.

So don’t you talk about forever – the word forever creates fear, mm? – one feels as if one is caged forever or there is going to be a promise and a contract. Just bring her for three monthsand she

will never go!

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