27

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‌CHAPTER 27

27 April 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva means divine, Arpana means surrender – divine surrender. There is a surrender which one can manage; that is a human surrender. It is surrender only for the name’s sake because the door remains the human mind and anything that is done by the human mind cannot be surrender. Deeply hidden behind, the controller is still existing and if at any moment the mind decides it wants to, the surrender will disappear, it can be taken back.

And a surrender that can be taken back is not worth much. A surrender is surrender only when there is no way of going back, because who can take it back? There is nobody left behind to claim it again. In the surrender, the ego has disappeared. Now there is no way to fall back on, there is no place to fall back to, there is nobody to fall back. That surrender cannot be human, that surrender is divine. It happens only through the first surrender of course; you have to be willing.

The first surrender creates willingness – a receptivity on your part – and then one day the second surrender arises. You are possessed by God, suddenly you are no more. You look this side and that, within and without and you cannot find yourself. You have disappeared like dewdrops in the morning sun. That is true surrender, total, but the first helps; it clears the ground, prepares the ground. One has to begin with the first but the first is not the last word; that has to be remembered. One has to begin with it but not to end with it.

One has to go on praying, hoping, waiting for the divine surrender to happen. One should not become smug that one has done it – now there is no more to it. That closes the door. Any doing on the part of the human mind is only so-so, it is lukewarm. It is never total, cannot be total. The ego goes on hiding itself in some way or other. It can even pretend surrender.

Remember the second – your name will remind you again and again. It happens only to those who wait for it with great longing, with patience, with love, with trust.…

Dolma is a Tibetan name – it means ‘the white goddess’... a name for a mother goddess. There are two types of deities in Tibet, the black and the white. The black are concerned with the negative part of the mind and the white are concerned with the positive part of the mind; both are significant.

But Dolma is concerned with the white part of the mind, and that is going to be your work on yourself. Just totally shift your mind from the negative to the positive. Forget that there exists the word no. Let your whole energy become a constant song of yes. Let yes be your mantra: say yes to life, to love, to whatsoever happens. Even when there is pain and suffering, say yes to it and see the miracle: if you can say yes to pain, it starts disappearing. Because pain cannot exist with the yes-saying consciousness; pain can exist only with a no-saying consciousness. Deep down, it is the no that creates pain. Pain is nothing but our clinging with the negative. Suffering is a by-product because we cannot let go of the negative.

Just the other day I was reading a storyA cowboy is being dragged by a running steer because

he is holding the steer’s tail. He is being dragged along rough ground, thorny bushes, stones and rocks. The other cowboys are becoming afraid because he is bruised, battered, and blood is coming out. They are afraid that he will be killed, so they shout ‘Let go! Let go!’ But the boy who is holding the tail of the steer yells back ‘Let go? – nothing! I am doing my best to hold on!’

That’s what everybody is doing – people are doing their best to hold on to the negative, to the suicidal. People are not really willing to let go. Pain and misery, hell – they are trying in every way to hold onto them. They think it is a treasure; if it is lost, then all is lost. Even if they are destroyed in holding onto it they are ready to sacrifice themselves, but how can they leave the treasure? Hence pain.

Pain is holding onto the negative and pleasure is let-go. When you stop holding onto the negative, when you open your fist and you allow all that is negative to fall from your being, suddenly pleasure arises – great pleasure, great sensuousness, sensitivity, great awareness. A new quality of life starts happening: one becomes affirmative. And to be affirmative is to be religious. To be able to say yes is the quality of a religious person.

That is the symbol that Dolma stands for: a white goddess – as if there is no darkness at all. When darkness is accepted in totality, it turns into whiteness. And vice versa is also true: when you deny, reject the white, it turns into blackness. It depends on you. We all live in the same world but a few live in hell, a few live in heaven. And it is the same world, there is no other world. If one learns the ways of saying no, one lives in hell.

So let your sannyas become a beginning of saying yes, of becoming white, moving from the negative to the positive. And we all have been trained to say no. We have been brought up to say no. We have learned all the tricks of being miserable. And unless one takes a drastic step to get out of this vicious circleIt is not easy, it is not going to happen on its own; one has to jump out of it.

My work here consists in this simple phenomenon: of trying to help you to jump out of the vicious circle of the negative. A single glimpse of the positive and the whole of life starts changing.

It means: a worshipper. And worship is the key for you. Worship does not mean any ritual. Ritual kills worship. Worship is a spontaneous phenomenon. You cannot rehearse it, you cannot get ready

for it, you cannot cultivate it. If you are ready for it, you have missed already. If you have rehearsed it, it is phony. If you are just doing it out of habit, it is meaningless. If you are doing it just out of your memories then you are repeating, and there is never truth in repetition. Worship is a spontaneous outpouring of the heart towards the divine. And any excuse is a good excuse.

Seeing a tree dancing in the wind, suddenly something arises in you and you are on your knees with the dancing tree dancing in a subtle way... one with the tree. And just as the tree is outpouring its joy to the sky, you are outpouring; the tree has triggered something in you. Then the tree is God. Or listening to the ocean and the waves, the rhythm of the waves, you fall in tune with that rhythm and then something starts singing in you... unmanipulated, unmanaged, it just bubbles up and you enjoy it. That is worship. The sea has become your temple.

And the temple is everywhere. One just needs the heart to feel it. Then every day you will find thousands of opportunities to worship. Sometimes silently, sometimes with open eyes and sometimes with closed... sometimes through action and sometimes through inaction, sometimes through words, sometimes without words; but there is no way to determine it beforehand. It can happen in the mosque, in the church, in the temple – it can happen anywhere; the whole earth is yours. It can happen even reading the Bhagavadgita or the Bible or the Koran. Just a word strikes you and you have wings. Just seeing the statue of Buddha something pierces you and you are transported into another world. call this worship... this availability to be transported to other realms, to other dimensions, to other realities. This availability I call worship.

[A sannyasin says: Sometimes there have been moments when I was sitting alone and some sounds arose. They changed into words which I didn’t understand.

Osho checks his energy.]

Don’t become concerned about it and don’t try to understand it intellectually. It is your own unconscious speaking to you, it is your own inner voice trying to get through to you. There is some message – slowly, slowly it will be revealed but there is no hurry. And if you become too worried about it the whole process will stop, because the conscious mind cannot do anything, the conscious mind is just the receiver. The message is coming from the unconscious. You cannot bring it out, it is not within your power. It will come only when the unconscious feels that the time is right to reveal it.

In the beginning it will be very vague – words, sounds, laughter, crying – and you will be puzzled about what is happening; who is directing you? from where is it coming? One thing: it is coming from you, not from anywhere else. It is your own voice that you have not heard since your childhood. You have repressed it deep down. Now it is getting a little freer and you are allowing it to reach you a little.

Slowly, slowly things will become clear. Slowly, slowly instead of words, sentences will start happening and sometimes they may not have any grammar. So you will be puzzled, but there is no need to worry. If you start hearing clear voices, words, sentences – half, incomplete – just note them down and forget all about them. Just keep a notebook. Date the entry and note it down, whatsoever it is – relevant, irrelevant, meaningful, meaningless. Note it down and forget about it.

You are on the receiving end so you can at the most note it down, that’s all. But noting it down will be helpful: things will start taking shape and form. I think within two, three months you will be

hearing complete sentences. Then whole passages will be floating up to you. This is your inner guide awakening. Right now it will be just like mumbling... but don’t try to figure it out, not at all.

[A sannyasin asks if she should continue homeopathic studies. She’s been into it for a year and it will take two more to complete. She enjoys it.]

Two years more? If you are enjoying it, continue. Anything that one enjoys is good – put your whole energy into it. Because when you enjoy something, it can become meditation. It can only become a meditation if you enjoy it. Doing something that you enjoy... whether it brings much money or not, power and prestige or not, is not the point. The joy that it brings is enough reward. Always look to the intrinsic value of a thing, never be bothered about the extrinsic value. Homeopathy will not make you very rich but it will give you a richness of being if you are enjoying it.

And remember: that richness of being will not come through homeopathy, it will come because you are enjoying it. Somebody else may be learning homeopathy because his parents have forced him to. There will be no meditativeness in it; he will simply drag through it. He will almost become dull through it. He will have to become dull. Otherwise it will be difficult to prolong three years’ studies – if you are not dull, if you are sensitive you would like to escape from it.

That’s why so many people in the world have become dull: they are doing things they never wanted to do. Somebody else has decided – the parents have decided or the society has decided, or ulterior motives – that more money will come. They have decided, or maybe this is more prestigiousBut

there is no intrinsic value, so they go on doing it, they go on dragging. And if you drag on in a thing too long, naturally it kills.

So I am not saying anything about homeopathy, remember. But if you enjoy it, that’s the thing to do. Whatsoever is enjoyed is beautiful. And life should be judged by its quality of enjoyment. If a man lives enjoying everything, by the time he dies he will be fulfilled. He has seen all that was worth seeing and he has tasted all that was worth tasting. He has lived his day, he is ripe. And he will welcome death. He will not go crying – there is nothing to cry about. But a person who accumulated money, became an engineer because money is in it and who always wanted to become a dancer and never became a dancer, will die unfulfilled, crying, weeping. His whole life has been a wastage.

And remember: you cannot carry the money with you when you die, but you can carry your joy; that’s the beauty. If he had been a dancer, he would have carried his joy. He would have danced into death, unto death. But he was an engineer and for his whole life he suffered and dreamt about dancing. Now life has disappeared, death has come and he is empty – he has nothing to offer to death. Always think of death. When you decide what to do, always think about your death. If doing this you will be ready to die happy, fulfilled, then this is the right thing to do. If you feel afraid of dying then think twice, thrice, because that is the deciding factor.

So if you are enjoying, just go on enjoying and become a homeopath – help people! And all kinds of ‘pathies’ help. If the doctor enjoys his work, is thrilled by his work, is enthusiastic about it, his enthusiasm cures people. That is therapeutic, medicine is secondary. Allopathy or Ayurveda or Homeopathy or Naturopathy – they are secondary. The first thing is the thrill of the doctor, the joy of the doctor, the confidence, the trust of the doctor. When the patient comes to the doctor and sees him so enthusiastic, half the disease is already gone. If he can see the doctor humming a tune while

he is prescribing, if he can see the radiance on his face, the medicine has not yet been given to him but it has started working. He is cured!

Those few days that he will take to be cured are nothing but his taking time to absorb. He was cured at the first moment when he saw the doctor and when the doctor was so full of joy and happiness and juice and life. He was cured that moment but he is just a coward – he cannot accept the cure so fast. He will take three, four, five days, seven days to accept the phenomenon, otherwise he was cured. If he was intelligent enough, courageous enough at that very moment he would have thanked the doctor, paid the fee and would have thrown the medicine – there was no need for it! But he will have to take the medicine because he cannot trust so much. But ninety-nine percent of the work has happened.

Therapy is a function of joy, love, enthusiasm. You continue – become a good homeopath!

[A sannyasin, who cleans group rooms, says: I can just never feel completely surrendered to the work I’m doing. It’s always a sort of grinding, sort of dragging... ]

You go on trying! It is very easy to do something which you like because it does not create any challenges. But something that you don’t like creates challenges and if you can make it worship, you will grow immensely out of it. You don’t like the thing that doesn’t fit with you – the reason may not be in the work itself; the reason may be somewhere else. For example, cleaning: cleaning seems to be a third-rate thing. Mm? in the world that is what it is thought to be. It may be hurting your ego that [these group leaders are therapists]... and you are just a cleaner!

It may not be exactly cleaning that you dislike; it may be the hurt that comes to the ego.

You have to see that, because you are living in a commune where every opportunity to grow has to be used. Look into it; what is it that hurts? How can cleaning hurt you? Cleaning is such a clean job – how can it hurt you?

[The sannyasin answers: I don’t really feel it’s hurting but... I don’t know, it’s an effort to keep on doing it. Every day it’s such a struggle.]

It is always so, mm? – it is always, because everybody is doing the same thing every day. Why carry the memory that yesterday you did the same thing? Drop the yesterdays! Then you are doing it for the first time.

That’s how I go on doing things. I’ve forgotten about the yesterdays, otherwise how can I go on doing the same thing? It is the same thing: every day the same people, the same problems. Faces change but problems don’t change. But I don’t remember the yesterday so I am thrilled again. I am really ecstatic whenever I am talking to anybody... as if I have never heard about this problem! I am intrigued!

Just forget the yesterdays! And who knows? Tomorrow may not come and this may be the last darshan, tomorrow I may not be here. So why not enjoy it? Tomorrow you may not be there in the world at all, so clean it as deeply as you can! This may be your last work, your testament so let it be total and final and ultimate. It is not a question of the work really, mm? Deep down it is a question of psychology.

I am putting you into things and sometimes I would like you to be in a thing which you don’t like really, because only that will create the friction necessary to create energy. And when I am saying something to one person never think that it is being said to you; otherwise you will be confused. What I was saying to the other sannyasin – that she is going to become a homeopath – was said absolutely to her, to nobody else is it applicable. And what I am saying to you is said to you, to nobody else is it applicable. It is immensely personal. My approach is personal I look into you and each device has to be used for you.

You continue! I will change your work only when I see that you are enjoying it so much that now it has to be changed... not before that. When I become afraid that now [you are] going to become enlightened if I don’t change him from that work then I will change it.

[A sannyasin, who has just completed Primal therapy, says that he has long had the desire to marry, settle down and have children. The idea returned with renewed strength during the therapy. He has been with the same woman for seven years but not married.]

Mm mm! A dangerous idea has come up!...

Do you want to destroy a good relationship? If it has been so good for so many years, why destroy it?

She is also a sannyasin or not? (he shakes his head) First make her a sannyasin; otherwise it will be troublesome. First help her to become a sannyasin, then get married and then start a family. But first let her become a sannyasin. Then it will be something different, not an ordinary family.

Ordinary families are not needed any more. Enough! They have made the earth almost a hell. Help her, bring her once before you think of creating a home. Let her also be acquainted with me, let her also go into meditations. And if still you both feel to, then get married, and good – start a family.

But first let her come here. The idea is not bad, but wait!

[To a sannyasin who had received a hit in discourse about his poker playing, Osho asks if it still continues and he replies yes.]

Yes, start it again because I heard you have stopped it!... I was thinking to come some day!

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