< Previous | Contents | Next >
CHAPTER 2
I declare you a god, a goddess
2 January 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
[To a new initiate Osho gives the name Ma Prem Kalpa]
Prem means love and kalpa means imagination – love imagination. And you have to work on it. Imagination is going to be your path. You have the capacity to visualise, to imagine – you have a poet’s heart – and images will come very easily to you. So, imagine yourself as more and more loving.
There are two ways to change a man: one is the way of the will and another is the way of imagination. With the will you have to force things on yourself; it is the path of struggle, conflict. With imagination you need not force; you simply persuade. And imagination works so simply and so easily that there is never any anxiety and conflict around it.
So just imagine yourself as loving more and more. Walk, but feel you are surrounded by love energy. And soon you will find that it is there. Your imagination will create the path for it, and then it will start flowing.
Be friendly, compassionate. Even with things, be compassionate. Create more and more love energy through imagination, and soon you will become a broadcasting station of love. Many songs are going to be born.…
Veet means beyond, and vishada means anxiety. And that is your goal: drop anxiety. Anxiety is the only barrier. When we are in deep anxiety we are never herenow. anxiety means of the future or of the past. Anxiety is never in the present... anxiety cannot be of the present. It is impossible to create anxiety right now. In this very moment it is impossible
Either you look back – somebody insulted you, something went wrong, and you did something you never wanted to do, and now you are crying and weeping over spilt milk.… It is foolish because nothing can be done about it. The past is past, and you cannot undo it. So don’t waste a single moment for it – enough!
The future is not yet6, and nothing can be done about it because it exists not. Something is possible only when something is. Planning, trying to become this and that – achieving, ambition, desire... they are projections in the future. They create anxiety: Will it be possible to succeed or not? Will you be able to succeed? There are a thousand and one hazards. One trembles, fear arises... anxiety is felt.
All anxiety is either of the past or of the future – and both are not. So a man who lives in anxiety lives in non-existence. His life is a shadow life. It is a ghost life. He does not really live. His being is not authentic, because there is only one thing that is authentic and that is this moment. So start living in the moment more and more.
Old tendencies, old habits, will force you to go into the future and into the past. The moment you remember, relax – relax in the now. Laugh at the ridiculousness of the old habits. I’m not saying to fight with them. If you fight you will create anxiety. I am saying to simply laugh. Whenever you catch hold of yourself red-handed – again in the future and again in the past – there is nothing to be done. Slip out of it – just as a snake slips out of the old skin. No need to fight. Fight never solves anything. It can create more complexities.
So I am not saying to fight – I am saying to simply understand. Tomorrow will take its course on its own. When it comes you will be there to face it. And it never comes as tomorrow; it always comes as today. So learn to be herenow.
And that is the meaning of veet vishada – beyond anxiety. Live like trees, rocks, animals. Live like god!
Only man alone on the earth lives in anxiety. Below man is nature. It lives in the moment – unaware, unconscious, but it lives in the moment. It is not conscious enough to think about the past or to think about the future.
Then there are buddhas, christs, krishnas – gods who have become so conscious that because of their consciousness they cannot move to the past and to the future. They are anchored in the present... their consciousness is centred in the present.
And man is just between these two. He is neither as unconscious as the animals and the trees, nor is he as conscious as a buddha. So he goes on, split: one part moving towards the past one part moving towards the future – pulled, tom apart. Hence there is anguish, anxiety, pain suffering.
One just has to understand and become more and more aware. Ananda means bliss, and devika means goddess – goddess of bliss.
... And the goal is not very far away – it is very close by. Just remembrance is needed – nothing else. We have only to remember that we belong to god. Just remembrance – it is not a question of
doing anything else. We have forgotten. We have become oblivious to the obvious. And it always happens – that which is obvious, we tend to forget.
When a person is healthy he tends to forget health. When he becomes ill, then he remembers. When you don’t have a headache you don’t remember at all that you have a head. When the headache is there, then the memory is too.
The human mind remembers only something which is missed. God is never missed – that is the problem. He is always there – whether we remember him or not. He is always there... he is always showering. Whether we welcome him or not, it doesn’t matter – he goes on showering on saints, on sinners, on good, on bad. On religious, irreligious, theists, atheists, he goes on showering.
His love is unconditional. There is no condition that we should do something and then he will be loving towards us. His love is unconditional, because he is love and nothing else. Hence we tend to forget. He is so available – like the air... all around.
Just like the fish in the ocean.The fish never remembers the ocean – cannot remember. Unless
she is thrown out of the ocean on the bank, on the beach, then suddenly she remembers – she has missed the home. Then there is anguish, trembling, an urge to go back to the ocean.
But a fish can be taken out of the ocean – we cannot be taken out of god. So the problem becomes very difficult. If there were any possibility to take human consciousness o t of god, then everybody would have become religious immediately, because then we would have suffered tremendously, we would have missed. But there is no possibility – all is god. Wherever we are, we are in him. We are born in him, live in him, die in him. We breathe in him.we breathe him!
He is so close that it is difficult to remember. Because it is so simple, that’s why it has become so difficult.
God is not far away – god is very close by.
And that is the meaning of the name. Henceforward, I declare you a god, a goddess. Now you have to just make it a constant remembrance. Be more and more alert about it.
I don’t say become god, because you are god.I say start behaving like a god, that’s all.
< Previous | Contents | Next >