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Chapter title: None
24 December 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
Archive code: 7912245 ShortTitle: SCRIPT35 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[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up.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.]
The so-called religious people have been very inimical towards the lower phenomena of life energies.
And being inimical to your own lower self is destructive because you will not find the staircase, the ladder, to go to the higher. And if you are inimical to the lower, the lower becomes inimical to you, and unnecessary conflict, struggle is a wastage of energy.
1/08/07
Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994
Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished
Query:-
Befriend the lower. Take all the help that the lower is capable of giving. Use it -- it is a great gift of god
-- but remember that one has to go beyond it. Sex has to be transformed into
prayer.
This whole process I call sannyas: from sex to superconsciousness. This whole journey I call sannyas.
God is always available for help but we never ask. Jesus says: Knock and the doors shall be opened unto you, ask and it shall be given. But we never ask, we never knock on the doors, and we go on missing immense powers which can be ours just for the asking.
God is always standing close by, just like our shadow, but we go on searching for money, power, prestige, and we never look to the subtle presence of life that surrounds us. We never look within where it burns like a flame, we never look into others' eyes; we avoid it.
There is a subtle contract amongst human beings all over the world to never look into each other's eyes for more than three seconds. It is strange that this is so' all over the world, in all the cultures, to look more than that is thought to be uncivilised, rude, unless you are very intimate, unless you are in love. But even when people are in love they do not look into each other's eyes as windows for the divine; they are looking into each other's eyes just for bodily, sexual energies. Eyes express everything: your body, your physiology, and your psychology, and also your spirituality. Eyes are windows: you can look through them to the deepest core.
Look into a flower and you will find god. Look deeply anywhere and you will find god. God simply means the depth of things. And whenever you are in contact with the depth of things immense powers become available to you. You are not poor, nobody is; everybody is as rich as one can ever imagine oneself to be, in fact, more than you can ever imagine. The whole kingdom of god is ours just for the asking, why don't people ask? -- the ego prevents them.
The ego says 'Don't ask -- conquer. And you cannot conquer god, you cannot conquer the whole. How can the part conquer the whole? -- it is absurd. We can only surrender to the whole.
But in that very surrender is victory. Rejoice because god has heard.
In fact you start seeking god only when god has already started seeking you. You move towards god only when god has stirred in the deepest core of your being. We are so unaware that's why we think that it is our desire to seek the truth, to know the truth. We are so small that we can't have that great a desire. We are small, our desires are bound to be small. Our egos are tiny and their desires are trivia.
To desire god, to long for god is sannyas. It is going into an unknown territory to search for truth, to search for meaning in life. It is possible only if god has already heard, if god has already called you. And one can succeed only if he is interested, otherwise it is impossible. One cannot succeed alone, god's hand is needed.
This is my observation: people start seeking god only when god starts seeking them, although they think that they are seeking. Only finally, at the highest stage of meditation, do they become aware of the phenomenon that their whole idea has been foolish. It was god seeking them, hence they started seeking god. But god is always the one who takes the initiative.
Bliss is never old, it is always young, because bliss is never in the past and never in the future; it is always in the present. Bliss simply means to be in the present, to be totally herenow. Then one's heart starts dancing and singing and great celebration arises in one's being: each cell dancing, each fibre of one's being singing hallelujah!
But because it is always of the present, it is always young: as fresh as dewdrops in the early morning sun, as fresh as a newly opening rose flower. It never grows old and one never grows tired of it, one is never bored by it.
Bertrand Russell says somewhere that he does not want to go to paradise, for the simple reason that he will get bored with bliss, because there will be only bliss and bliss and bliss and nothing else -- no misery, no tension, no anxiety. He will be dead-bored. He does not understand what bliss is; he is simply playing with the word.
Bliss is that with which you can never be bored, because it is never old, it is always new, it is never repetitive. It is so fresh every moment, how can you be bored? Hence all the religions of the world say that the angels go on singing on their harps, all that they do is sing, for the simple reason that singing represents
joy: they rejoice! That state is not somewhere above in the sky, that state is within you. Whenever you are in 1/08/07
Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994
Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished
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contact with the present you are in paradise. Now is another name for paradise.
Existence is always new; it is only mind that grows old and becomes rotten. It is only mind that accumulates memories, and because of memories it has a past. Existence has no memories, is accumulates nothing. It always remains a clean slate, a tabula rasa; nothing is written on it. And that's the way for us to be also. That is called the state of no-mind.
Mind is old, no-mind is new. Mind is thought, no-mind is meditation. Meditation simply means effacing all the memories, not getting involved with the past, becoming detached from the past, so much so that you don't think of it as your past. One slips out of it like a snake slips out of its old skin.
That is the whole art of sannyas: to slip out of the past and to avoid entering the future. Then you are just herenow. And that absolute newness brings great ecstasy.
Bliss is possible only to those who can trust, who can drop doubt. And remember: trust does not mean believing in a certain dogma, ideology, philosophy; trust means trusting life, existence, not believing in the Bible and the Koran and the Gita but believing in this whole cosmos.
We are part of it, just waves in this great ocean of life. Trusting means that the wave has no doubts about the ocean. It knows that it belongs to the ocean. It is born out of the ocean and soon it will disappear in the ocean again. Both are good: for the moment dancing in the sun, and then, resting in deep peace. Then life is not yours, nor is death yours. Life is not the beginning and death is not the end. You were before you were born, of course not as a wave, but as part of the ocean. And you will be after death, not as a wave, but as part of the ocean. And even when you are as a wave you are nothing but a part of the ocean. To know this is trust. And it is trust that brings bliss. It is trust that becomes a light and
dispels all darkness.
Trust is religion, not belief; belief is always in concepts. Trust is not even faith, faith is in persons: one has faith in Jesus, one has faith in Buddha. Trust is the highest thing. It has nothing to do with concepts: Christian, Buddhist, Hindu. It has nothing to do with Christ, Buddha, Krishna. Trust simply means that one is at home with existence, one has no antagonism, one is in tune with existence. And to be in tune with existence is bliss.
Bliss can happen only if we fulfil one condition -- that of being a peaceful heart. And it is not difficult to fulfil. The heart is really peaceful but we are not there; we live in the head, which is never peaceful. And we try the impossible -- to make the head peaceful, which cannot be done in the very nature of things. The head is not meant for that. The head is always bound to remain with thoughts, desires, imagination, memory; the constant traffic of all these things will be there. That's its natural function, nothing is wrong with it. And it is always rush hour, twenty-four hours a day; day in, day out, the crowd of desires is passing.
If you try to make it silent you will get into more trouble you will become very frustrated. That's what happens to people who don't know what right meditation is. Then they start learning some tricks to hypnotise their heads. And there are tricks available: repeat a certain mantra, chant a certain name, constantly repeat certain words. Any words will do; there are no sacred words, all words are the same.
The great English poet Tennyson has reported that in his life he used to repeat his own name,
"Tennyson, Tennyson, Tennyson..." and great peace would descend on him. Whenever he is in any anxiety he would repeat the name, his own -- not any mantra given by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, just his own name, not any funny- sounding Sanskrit mantra -- and that would do the trick!
It is not meditation. Constant repetition of a name simply creates a state of deep sleep in the head: you fall asleep. It is good, nothing is wrong in Good sleep -- but it is not meditation and it is not going to transform you. The real transformation happens when your energy moves from the head to the heart.
The heart is always peaceful. It is like the ocean: on the surface all is turmoil -- waves, great waves arising -- but in the depth there is not a single wave; all is
utterly silent. The head is our circumference and the heart is our centre.
My whole effort here is to help you to move towards the heart. Hence so much emphasis on singing, music, dance, love; these are the ways in which you can be persuaded back to the heart. Once you are there, once you have tasted the peace of the heart you will be surprised: the head is left far behind, it is none of your concern. It is as if it no longer belongs to you, it may be somebody else's head. It is so far away, so distant that you don't even hear the noise. The heart is so deep that the head becomes infinitely distant.
Those are the moments when you feel for the first time what bliss is; otherwise it is only a word.
Very rarely have people felt the real taste of bliss. People use the word and they think they understand it 1/08/07
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Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished
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too. They don't understand, they can't understand; it needs some existential experience to understand, because bliss is synonymous with god. Bliss is the ultimate meaning of life.
To feel that one is a nobody is of tremendous significance, because that cuts the very root of the ego.
The ego lives through the idea of superiority. And sometimes the ego stands on its head too, it does a sirshasan, a headstand, then it lives through inferiority. But a person, one who knows that he is nobody, is neither superior nor inferior, he is simply not. And in those moments of non-being, bliss descends. Without ego you cannot be miserable. Nobody has succeeded up to now, and I don't think that anybody can ever succeed. Without the ego it is impossible to be miserable, just as with the ego it is impossible to be blissful.
When there is no ego only bliss is left.
And the Greek meaning of Paul is also of great significance: rest. When there is
no ego there is rest. It is ego that keeps you restless, keeps you occupied: "Do this, do that, be this, be that" -- It goes on giving you new projects. It never leaves you alone, it goads you. You have to become somebody, you have to be the president of the country or the prime minister, you have to be famous, you have to earn so much money.…
And it goes on goading till it either drives you mad or drives you to the point of suicide -- or drives you to a man like me for sannyas!
Dropping it, great rest happens. Then there is no need to try any relaxation method, one is simply relaxed, there is nothing to be tense about. That natural, spontaneous relaxation brings bliss as a flood; one is overwhelmed. And bliss never comes in small measures. When it comes, it comes like a flood; when it comes, it drowns you totally.
Veet means surpassing, going beyond, maxine means the greatest. It is an old title, Maximus; a Latin title of honour: the greatest, or full of honour.
Go beyond it. The very idea is dangerous, it has to be dropped, because the moment you think of yourself as great you start thinking of others as inferior; it is based in comparison. And to compare yourself with anybody is harmful -- for the other and for you too -- because everybody is unique. Nobody is great and nobody is not great, nobody is big and nobody is small. All are unique, incomparably unique.
This is the religious understanding. When one becomes awakened, this is how one looks at people. They are not alike, at the innermost core they are the same, but on the circumference they are unique personalities. A rose is a rose, a lotus is a lotus: neither is the lotus great nor is the rose great. Both have blossomed, both have expressed god in their own ways.
So from this moment drop that whole idea. Our society lives with that idea: we teach children to be great, to be famous, to be somebody big, and we also give them names just to implant this idea in their minds. But this idea can be carried only by stupid people: people like Muhammad Ali -- the Greatest. Only that type of person, with no intelligence at all can carry this idea. If you have intelligence, how can you be a Muhammad Ali would be impossible. If you have intelligence you would be a Buddha. And intelligence says: Don't compare. See that this whole idea disappears from your being.
Look at people with great love, not with comparison. You are neither superior nor are you inferior, they are neither superior, nor are they inferior. Everybody is suffering from either a superiority complex or an inferiority complex. And both complexes are created by a wrong upbringing, by giving the child the idea of ego
-- that you have to be somebody special. You have not to be somebody special, you are already special, as everybody else is. God never creates anybody ordinary, he creates everybody extraordinary. But remember everybody is the greatest. Then there is no problem. Then even the grass leaf is as great as the greatest star.
That understanding will become a great insight into the truth of life, of being, of existence, and will be of tremendous help. It will cleanse the heart of all the rubbish that ego collects. And once that rubbish is gone, you are ready to become a host to the ultimate guest -- god!
The greatest worship is to be creative. God is creativity. When we are creative we participate in god's being, when we are creative we are closest to god. When we are totally immersed in creativity we are no more there, only god is. When god pulsates through us then we become simply mediums, vehicles, passages. Then we are like a bamboo flute, hollow; and he sings his song. It is his song and we are grateful that he has chosen us to be his vehicles.
Remember it: the greatest meditation, the greatest prayer, the greatest worship in life is to be creative.
Be more and more creative. Creation for creation's sake -- that should be the motto of all the sannyasins.
1/08/07
Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994
Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished
Query:-
Archano means prayer, worship -- prayer not as a ritual, but prayer as the spontaneous pouring out of your heart in gratitude.
People go to the church or to the temple to pray; they repeat certain phrases
which have been taught to them, but it is not of their heart. Those phrases are only on their lips, it is lip-service. They are like gramophone records, repeating whatsoever the society has conditioned them for. That is not true prayer.
True prayer is spontaneous, sudden, informal. Sitting in the garden, suddenly a deep desire arises to bow down to the earth, for no reason at all. Don't resist it, don't think that people will think that it is insane, foolish, berserk. Let them think whatever they want to think about it; that is their problem. Bow down to the earth. Or suddenly a desire arises to have a little dialogue with the tree or the rose bush. Don't be disturbed about what others will think. Say hello to the rose, talk to the rose or to the stars.
This is true prayer, because God is everywhere: in the stars, in the rose, in the earth. And God comes in sudden moments. He may decide not to come to the church every Sunday. I think every Sunday he will avoid it, it is so crowded. He can go on other days when it is really beautiful because it is quiet and silent and there is nobody there.
Learn how to be prayerful without any ritual: Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan. Let your prayer grow out of you. It has to be yours, authentically yours. Say things that you want to say to God or don't say anything if you want to just be in silent communion. There is no need to speak; it is not necessary that something be said. It is far better to listen to him, to what he has to say to you.
Virago means absolute non-attachment, absolute non-possessiveness, absolute non-identification.
Don't be identified with the body, don't be identified with your mind, your country, your race, your religion. Simply don't be identified with anything. Don't say "I am this" or "I am that." Remember, neither this nor that. That is one of the secret teachings of the mystics: neti-neti, neither this nor that. Avoid this, avoid that too. And if you can avoid both polarities -- neither day nor night, neither life nor death, neither body nor mind -- slowly slowly a third energy arises in you, a third force arises in you. That is consciousness. That's your reality. That is freedom: freedom from fear, freedom from anxiety, freedom from misery, freedom from the whole world, freedom from the wheel of life and death. Then you are simply a witness, watching, neither getting identified with this nor with that, just a spectator, a mirror reflecting but not getting caught by any reflection.
Scriptures in Silence and Sermons in Stones
Chapter #36
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