16 | Osho - The complete works of Osho

‌CHAPTER 16

19 June 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[Osho initiates a two-week old baby with the name Anand Ruho – the spirit of bliss, and addresses the parents.]

And that’s my message, the whole message.

The man without bliss is without any soul. He is just a mechanism; the soul is not yet born. He is functioning just as any other machine can function, and he may be functioning very efficiently, but efficiency does not prove the existence of the soul. Computers are very efficient, more efficient than man, and soon machines are going to defeat man in every possible way, in every possible direction and dimension. Efficiency cannot prove that the soul exists, nor the capacity to calculate, rationalize, because computers are more rational than human beings, better calculators.

Only one thing can prove the existence of the soul: the blissfulness overflowing. No machine can be blissful, no machine can celebrate. Machines are neither sad nor happy; they cannot be either. They simply exist, they don’t live. To live means to live all the dark nights of the soul and the sunlit peaks of love, of meditation, of silence, of bliss, of celebration.

The spirit is born out of bliss. Bliss is the spirit, the true spirit and the true birth.…

And help her to attain to a spiritual flavor. I can only call it flavor, I cannot call it spirituality, because it is not a very defined thing. It is not a thing at all; it is only a taste, a perfume. You cannot catch hold of it; it is very elusive and very mysterious. No way to understand it, no way to explain it, but one can experience it, one can live it. One can only live it if one consciously seeks and searches for it.

And that’s what you have to do for the child: help her to move consciously from the very beginning towards a spiritual existence, towards a blissful existence.

Anand Bill. Anand means bliss; Bill is a form of William. William comes from the root will – resolve, resolution, a very determined resolution, unshakeable. It means commitment, total commitment. It means risking all. It means never looking back. Once the target is set, then it is set forever. Then do or die, there is no other alternative. And bliss is attained only by such a resolution.

Sadness is very cheap. In fact you need not seek it, it goes on coming on its own. It is so cheap, it asks nothing in return; just your readiness to be sad is enough. It is so plentifully available that open any window of your house, any door on any side, and it rushes in. It is all over the place, because the whole world is in misery.

But bliss requires a very determined search. It requires that one should start moving in a particular direction without going astray... because life is short, time is not really enough. And much has to be done and one has to go far. Unless one moves in a straight line, unless one finds the shortest possible route – without going zigzag, without going astray, without having many objects in the mind – unless one has only one object in life, bliss cannot be attained. It needs one-pointedness.

But just in being one-pointed you are transformed. You are no more the same person at all; a new person is born. You will be surprised at yourself. You will not be able to believe that you had existed for so long in such a hotch-potch way, in such a wishy-washy way; that for such a long time you have been just a crowd, a mad crowd, not an individual.

Bliss requires that you become an individual – literally an individual. Literally it means indivisible – one-pointed, indivisible, committed, ready to risk all. Then the goal is not far away; then it may be just around the corner. It is!

[The new sannyasin says: I’m really glad to be here but I have a problem: there are times when I have difficulty accepting compliments.]

It needs really a very humble person to accept compliments. It is the ego! You may be thinking just the opposite – it is not so! Life’s ways are very subtle and very illogical. It is the ego that feels uncomfortable in accepting compliments, because no compliment feels to be enough. If you look deep down, every compliment falls short of the idea of your own image. Your own image is so high that all compliments fall short. You may not say so, you will not say so! On the contrary you will pretend that “I am so humble that I cannot accept compliments.” This is the trick of the mind, a strategy to protect the egoistic trip. Otherwise a humble person simply accepts the truth. If somebody says, “You are intelligent,” you say, “Yes.”

The humble person does not mean that he goes on putting himself down. The humble person is one who accepts the truth. If he is not intelligent he will say so, that “I am not intelligent. Please, don’t say such a thing.” But it is not that he is not accepting the compliment; he is simply stating the truth. He will thank for the compliment, but he will make it clear that it is not so; it is a misunderstanding. But if he is intelligent he will say “Perfectly right, you are right!”

But our society teaches us very cunning ways. It says, “If you want to be humble you have to show your humbleness. When somebody says ‘You are intelligent,’ you have to say ‘I am nothing! I am just the dust of your feet!’” And then look: he will praise you more! That is the secret search – to be praised more.

You are just yourself; whatsoever it is, A, B, C, it makes no difference. The compliments cannot make any difference, neither criticisms can make any difference. You remain yourself. Hence the real man of understanding is neither worried by compliments nor worried by criticism; he simply goes on his way.

We have a saying in India – you cannot have that kind of saying in the West because the elephant does not exist there. We have a saying in India that the elephant goes on and the dogs go on barking. He never pays any attention. Whether they are praising by their barking or criticizing is irrelevant; he simply goes on his way. It does not make any difference.

So neither be concerned with criticism nor with compliments. And if you start meditating, this capacity will evolve.

Prem Michaela. Prem means love; Michaela means godly, divine, godlike. Love is the only experience in life which is godly, which is godlike. No other thing can be compared to God except love. Hence Jesus says: God is love.

We know something about love; we know nothing about God. The only way to experience something about God can only be through love. Love is the language we understand a little bit; God is the language we don’t understand at all. Hence all the Buddhas, all the Christs, all the Krishnas, all those people who have become awakened, speak the language of love. That is translating God into an earthly dimension. “God” in itself remains a meaningless word. When somebody says “God” no bell rings in the heart, but when somebody says “love” many bells ring in the heart.

The very word “love” creates a melody inside. The heart starts pulsating, starts beating faster. Even the word stirs something in the depths of our soul. But “God” is almost meaningless. We have never tasted anything of God – how can we understand the word? The word is understandable only if some experience is there to explain it. No word has meaning unless it has been experienced.

The word “God” to us is almost like the word “light” to a blind man. He hears it, he knows the word, he knows the literal meaning, but still he knows nothing of light. The word remains empty, with no content.

Love has to be the beginning, love has to be the door. And slowly slowly as love gathers intensity, as love becomes more and more prayerful, more and more refined, more and more passionate, one starts having first glimpses of the divine, of the God. Love is the only proof of God.

The atheist is to be pitied. People get angry at atheists – that is foolish. Those people simply prove that they don’t know what God is. Their being angry at the atheists simply shows their own ignorance; otherwise they will feel great compassion. The atheist is simply saying that he has not known anything of love yet. He may be talking about God, he may be saying that there is no God, but what really is the case is that he has not experienced love yet – because if you experience love you

cannot deny God. It is impossible! Hence atheism is not a philosophical attitude; it is a pathology. It is illness, it is a psychological state of disease.

To know love is to know God. Of course in the beginning it is very vague, surrounded by great mist. In the beginning it is just like twilight, neither day nor night. The night is gone, the sun has not risen yet – that is the state of love. But the sun is not far away; it is just on the horizon. The horizon is getting red, the East is becoming colorful.

For sannyas in the East we have chosen the color orange because it is the color of the dawn. The night is over, the day has not yet come, but the horizon in the East is becoming orange. It is the first message that the sun is not far away. It is just coming up, it is just on the way... it has arrived! The color that spreads in the east is the first indication that “Rejoice, the day has come!”

Anand Michael. Anand means rejoice; Michael means godlike – rejoice because you are godlike. There can be no other greater benediction, there can be no other greater gift.

We are made in the image of God. We may have fallen, we may have gone astray, we may have turned our back towards God, but that doesn’t make any difference as far as our essential being is concerned. All our wrongs are only accidental, trivial, but our essential core remains untouched by them. Our essential core remains absolutely above them. The essential core of a sinner or a saint is not different, it is exactly the same. The accidental character is different: the sinner is a sinner and the saint is a saint. The saint has cultivated certain qualities which society thinks and believes are good. Hence in different societies different people are thought to be saints.

For example, a Christian saint may not be thought by Hindus to be a saint, and the Hindu saint may not be thought by the Christians to be a saint, because different societies in different climates, in different historical evolutions, have evolved different ideas of what is good and what is not good.

For example, a Jain cannot believe that a saint can drink wine; but Jesus drinks. That is enough for a Jain to reject Jesus totally. Not only that he is not a saint, he is a sinner! To drink wine is impossible to conceive for a Jain. He cannot drink even water in the night, water also only in the day. He cannot eat in the night. His saint eats only once a day. And Jesus used to love eating, drinking. Late in the night the parties will continue! And all kinds of people used to gather – the gamblers, the drunkards, the prostitutes! Now, no Jain can think that this man is a saint, what to say that he is a Christ? No question of his being a Christ – he is not even a saint, not even a gentleman! And that’s what Jews thought about him, otherwise they would not have crucified him.

Socrates is not thought to be a saint by the people who poisoned him. In fact he came at least twenty-five centuries ahead of his time. He would have been needed today. He would have been loved, respected. He would have been thought a great saint. But at that time the court decided that not only that he is immoral, he makes other young people immoral. He is dangerous to the society; he has to be removed. He cannot be allowed to exist, he will poison the whole society. And the only wrong thing that he was doing was that he was creating suspicions and doubt in people’s minds about long-cherished beliefs, superstitions.

He would have been loved now. Nobody would have been worried by him, because those beliefs are already discarded; nobody believes in them. People would have listened to him more lovingly.

Times change, values change. Different societies, different ideas of good and bad – but those are all accidental. Accidentally Christ is different from Buddha, but essentially not; and my insistence is on the essence.

Rejoice; essentially you are God, essentially everyone is divine. And don’t be too much concerned with the accidental. Good if it is good, but nothing is much wrong if it is not good. Good if you can adjust with the society surrounding you, but if you cannot, no need to bother. Of course then you have to be ready to sacrifice, you have to be ready to suffer, but sometimes suffering is better than compromising. But each has to decide on his own.

My emphasis is on the essential. I have to provoke the essential in you. And I am not concerned about the accidental: whether you drink, or you eat late in the night, or what you eat; that you have to decide, that is your life. And it is so insignificant that one has to just look to one’s own needs and the society in which one exists and see how one can live more conveniently without creating too much fuss about small things, this way or that.

That’s why I don’t give any character to my sannyasins: I give them only consciousness.

Anand Manu. Anand means bliss. Manu, in Indian mythology, is the first man, just as in Hebrew Adam is the first man. But the word “Adam” is not very beautiful; it simply means dust. God made man out of dust, then he breathed into him life. Adam means mud, dust, earth. The English word “human” also means the same – humus, dust, earth. It emphasizes the material part of man.

Manu means consciousness. The English word “man” comes from manu. It emphasizes the other part, the more important part, the more essential part, the very core. The body is only a temple; residing in it is a deity. Manu emphasizes the deity within you, the God within you, the consciousness within you.

The body can be created, but consciousness cannot be created, so it is perfectly a right, significant story that God created man out of the earth; the body can be created.

But he never created his consciousness. He has to breathe his own consciousness into man, he has to pour his own being into man. That cannot be created. So real man remains uncreated, only the superficial part of man is a created part.

And if God could create it, sooner or later scientists are going to create it; they have almost succeeded. But by creating a human body if they think they have created human soul they will be utterly wrong. Whether the body is created naturally in a mother’s womb or is created artificially in a test tube makes no difference: it is always God who breathes life into it. Life enters from the beyond.

Manu emphasizes the beyond. So your name will mean blissful consciousness, blissful beyond.

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