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CHAPTER 27
Love is the bridge between the human and the divine
29 June 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
Keshava.… It is Krishna’s name and literally it means ‘the long-haired one’. He has many names, each name to indicate just one of his qualities.
He is called ‘the long-haired one’ because he was one of the greatest incarnations of the feminine spirit, of yin. That’s why you don’t see the beard and you don’t see the moustache – just the long hairs. Not that he had no beard, he was not suffering from any hormonal deficiency, but it is not depicted to show that the spirit is feminine, that the man is passive, that even in his action he is deeply in inaction... what the Chinese call ‘wu wei’: action through inaction. He is doing but he is not a doer.
And Hindus have called him the greatest avatara, the most perfect, because when a man is a man perfection is not possible. One can be perfect only when one is in rest, passive. One is perfect only when one is not – so much in rest that one is not. There is no tension: even the tension of the ego, even the feeling that ‘I am’, has disappeared. Everything has relaxed... only in that relaxation can god come and bloom in his totality. If you are still there, then in the same proportion that you are, god will not be expressed through you.
So Rama is called a partial incarnation of god, Krishna is called the total incarnation... and the meaning is significant. He is the incarnation of the feminine spirit. He is a very very feminine man, very beautiful, very soft, very round – hence ‘the long-haired one’, to show his softness, to show his feminine beauty.
Mm? you must have seen: even his clothes are very feminine. He wears ornaments too and his clothes are very fancy – not as a male ordinarily wears clothes; all the clothes that he uses are feminine. His dance, his song, are all feminine... he is the most feminine of men.
But a question can be asked – has been asked many times down the ages – that if god wanted to reincarnate, to come down to earth, and if only in passivity it can be allowed totally, then why didn’t he choose a woman? There is some reason in it.
Action has not to be discarded; action has to be absorbed in inaction. Action has to be there but has to come out of the inner nothingness. So god can come only when the duality is there and yet transcended. Hence krishna is a man yet feminine – paradoxical and yet transcendental, combining both. If you want a parallel from the woman’s side, then you will have to find someone like Joan of Arc: a woman, but very male. If she had been in india she would have been thought of as an incarnation of god. The West missed; the woman was of tremendous value.
It was the same synthesis from the other side: she was feminine but she absorbed the whole male qualities. She became a warrior, lived like a man: she dressed like a man, she walked like a man, she behaved like a man. You will be surprised that not a single man had fallen in love with her, she was so manly. To think of her as a woman was difficult.
To me, Krishna and Joan of Arc are the polar opposites. Krishna is a man and full of the femininity, overflowing with it; that is the meaning of the name keshava.
‘Kesh’ means hairs and ‘keshava’ means the long-haired one: Krishna the feminine one. A good name... a beautiful name. Create that synthesis in you, fulfill your name. Become more and more passive, become more and more soft, and create softer qualities: love, compassion, sympathy, empathy. Create more grace.
[The sannyasin is unable to speak.]
You have said it without saying and I have heard it. Mm? just get in tune with things here. Eat as much as you can of me and drink as much as you can of me – let that be your sadhana here. Many things are going to happen.…
Ananda means bliss and anuloka means a small world – a small world of bliss... and that’s what everybody is meant to become. It depends totally on you; the energy is available. You can make a small world of misery or you can make a small world of bliss out of it... and both are made of the same energy, the same stuff; it is the same brick.
Rightly put those bricks make bliss; wrongly put they create a mess. And if a man knows how to put things rightly even poison becomes nectar... and vice versa. So nobody is really poor – everybody is born rich – but a few people never put their energies in a right way. They have a beautiful instrument but they only create noise – they never learn how to play it.
Life has to be understood like a very subtle musical instrument – and meditation is the way to play upon it.
Would you like to say something to me?
[The new sannyasin says: I came here because I love a girl who took sannyas last night.]
Mm mm, very good. That’s very good! Your love affair has brought you to a greater love affair! Each stone becomes a step and you go higher.
Just be here, mm? Just be in love with me and soon you will see that your love will change: it will have a different depth and quality.
[A sannyasin who is leaving says she feels very scattered, that she doesn’t feel ready to surrender: I run myself in circles... I’m always running.]
Nothing is wrong in it!
Just enjoy it; that’s the way you are! Trying to do something against it will simply create a conflict and anguish... and through conflict, one starts doing violence to one’s own natural flow.
That’s the way you are; nothing is wrong in it! You have energy, you are overflowing too much with it, so you go here, there and you go on running... but nothing is wrong. Running is a spiritual activity!
You have to learn to accept it; that will be your surrender. Surrender is not something that is against you. How can the surrender be against you7 You are thinking as if by surrender it is meant that you have to change your natural way totally; that is riot right. Surrender means to be totally natural.
If you surrender to me, that simply means I will tell you to be totally relaxed with your being. If it takes you to the north, go to the north; if it takes you to the south. go to the south. Let it have its joy and one day you will be finished with it, but that will not be by force. That will come through more awareness, experience... and that has nothing to do with fighting.
Run as much as you want: just remain alert and don’t create any fight with yourself. I am against all fight. Fight creates split and a split inevitably leads towards schizophrenia, madness. Be together... and by being together I don’t mean that you have to put all your fragments together.
If this is the way, that your fragments are scattered, then be scattered and accept the fact of scatteredness, and in that very acceptance you will see something like a unity arising. It will not be a forced unity, it will not be like one thing; it will be more like an orchestra: many instruments playing but in deep rhythm, in a togetherness.
If unity is not like an orchestra it is going to be very dull. There are people who are not scattered but they are very dull people, stupid people. The day you feel that a kind of transcendence has arisen, all your fragments are still there but they move in a certain rhythm together; they have all fallen in one wavelength. They have not become one; now they simply sing together – a chorus has arisen. The singers are scattered but they are singing a chorus, together. In the song they are together, otherwise they are all separate.
That sound cannot come by effort, by discipline. It comes only through deep rest, relaxation with your being. The way you are, accept it. And you have all the blessings: you go as much as you want to go and come as much as you want to come. Soon it will disappear, but don’t force it otherwise it will linger; it will continue in your unconscious.
The desire is there so let it be finished. Every desire has to be lived to its extreme. Desire is the way towards desirelessness. So if you go half-heartedly this desire will continue for a longer period.
[She answers: Not only do I go with my energy but I often stop half way with it. I have so much confusion!]
Yes, I understand; it is there.
It is with everybody! It is just that when there is a low-energy type person it is not so prominent – it is there; but when there is a high-energy person it is very prominent. Mm? you are a high-energy person. Feel grateful to god that you have enough energy to rush all over the world. So rush! – nothing to worry about!
[Osho explains the meaning of prem anudharma. Prem means love and anudharma means religion – religion of love. That’s my religion... and my sannyasin has to be an incarnation of love in all dimensions of life. That is the quality I would like you to grow. By becoming loving you will become my sannyasin.]
I don’t ask you to be prayerful – prayer comes on its own when one is loving; and I don’t ask you to go into a temple, because those are just outer things. The inner temple consists of love. And I don’t ask you to think of a god. Only contemplate love and by and by you will see that god is becoming more and more visible to you. It is through love that we reach god; there is no other way.
The english word ‘religion’ is not as good as ‘dharma’, because religion gives the feel of a doctrine, a dogma, scripture, theology. Dharma exactly means ‘the way’; it does not give the idea of a dogma. Religion means christianity, islam, hinduism; dharma does not mean, cannot mean, islam, cannot mean christianity, cannot mean hinduism. Dharma means the essential of all religions, the very essence of religion.just the fragrance of all the religions, the core of it.
And if you want to know the core of religion, there is no other way to know it except through love. Love is the bridge between the human and the divine. The moment you are totally in love you are no more here. You are no more part of the world of things – you are raised high; you move into another dimension, you are transported. When you fall from love you are again in the world of things. When you rise in love you are in the world of persons; that is the revolution.
When you are in this world without love you live among things; even persons are like things then. Your wife is a thing, your friend is a thing; you use them. But when you rise in love even things are no more things. Even the chair has a personality, even the pillar is no more just a thing. You cannot neglect it, you cannot ignore it.
Then the whole existence is full of personality... throbbing with it. Everything has a soul because everything deep down exists in god, everything participates in god. How can it be otherwise? Everything partakes of god. In that very partaking it becomes a person.
So that is the meaning of your name. Let this be the meaning of your life too. It needs only a little alertness and things start changing.
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