Chapter title: None

‌Chapter title: None‌

25 July 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8007255 ShortTitle: GWIND25 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[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up.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.]

Arunachalam is a sacred mountain. In the South no other place has so much sanctity. For centuries many people have become enlightened on Arunachalam, and one of the last and greatest was Maharishi Raman.

Wherever an enlightened person lives, the very space, the very earth becomes suffused with something of the known, of the mysterious. It carries the vibe for thousands of years.

Bliss is also a peak, a great peak of consciousness, it is a mountain. And it is an uphill task. We have made many sacred places on the mountains for the simple reason that people can know that bliss is a mountainous journey, it is a climbing towards the heights. And it needs tremendous courage, the courage to risk.

Going downhill needs no courage, no intelligence. Going uphill needs both courage and intelligence, and a constant effort. There is nothing higher than bliss; bliss represents the ultimate experience of god.

Sannyas is the uphill journey.

Make every effort, put your total energy into it, only then is the miracle possible.

It certainly happens and every human being is capable of achieving it, but it needs constant effort. It needs not a wavering mind

-- unwavering. With great trust, with great hope one goes on dropping the known territory for the unknown, dropping the familiar for the un-familiar -- because god is the most unknown phenomenon.

Even those who have known him cannot claim that they have known him, because in knowing him the claimer disappears; one becomes utterly silent.

Those who say they have achieved are either deluding themselves or others. Those who have achieved can at the most smile -- because it is not an achievement in the ordinary sense, it is a realisation. It is not something added to you, it is something that blooms, blossoms within you. In a sense it was already there; 1/08/07

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in a sense now you have come to know it so now you have realised it.

Life is dull without love; it becomes bright with love. Life is dark without love; with love it becomes full of light. Love is the name of your inner light. That flame is already there but surrounded by much smoke. And the smoke consists of memories, imagination, thoughts, desire. The whole mind creates a long list, a thick wall around the flame, a thick wall of smoke.

The only way to reach your of flame is to disperse this smoke. And that's what sannyas is all about: getting rid of the smoke, getting rid of thoughts and desires and becoming so silent and desireless, as if there is nothing to be achieved, nowhere to go. In that relaxed state the smoke starts dispersing of its own accord because we are no co-operating with it. It is through our co-operation that it lives, gets food and nourishment, is nurtured.

Once there is a disconnection, once you are no more feeding it, it is bound to disperse. And as it starts dispersing, clarity arises, brightness arises, intelligence arises, and life becomes full of meaning and significance.

Life is life only when love is burning bright inside you, when the flame of love is so bright that it starts radiating around you, that it starts reaching others, that people can feel it, that your love becomes almost so tangible that people can touch it. Then it is not only a blessing to you, it is a blessing to everybody else too.

A real man is always an enrichment to the world, to existence; he contributes much. And unless you contribute something you will never feel blissful. It is through contributing something to existence that you participate in the work of the creator, because you yourself become a creator. To be a creator is to be part of god -- there is no other way.

Avalokita is one of the names of Gautam the Buddha. We have given many names to Buddha; each name shows one aspect of his multi-dimensional being. No single express his reality. Avalokita is one of his aspects. Literally it means one who is capable of seeing, observing, of detached observation, being neither for nor against, with no liking, no disliking -- a choiceless awareness, simply seeing whatsoever is the case without imposing any idea, any interpretation, allowing the mind to come and start spinning and manufacturing thoughts about it.

Once you say 'This is good,' the mind has come in; you say 'This is bad,' the mind has come in. If you don't say anything, if you don't make any statement but you simply go on seeing... If you see a rose flower and you say 'It is beautiful,' the mind has come in; now you are no more a pure seer, you are distracted in fact. The moment the mind says 'It is beautiful,' you have started thinking about beauty, you have lost track of the reality of the rose. A word, 'beautiful', has come in; now the word 'beautiful' will have its own associations.

You will remember the man you love, the woman you love, you will remember the dog that you loved when you were a child. Now the mind can go on and on; you have forgotten about the rose flower. And the moment you say it is beautiful you have remembered other rose flowers, Now this rose flower is far away; between this rose flower and you there is a long queue of roses which are no more. And they will contaminate your seeing, they will not allow you to see this rose flower which is unique, which is incomparable because no other rose flower has ever been like this and will never be like this again. This moment is unique but the mind is always a distracting factor.

Being choiceless means not allowing the mind to say anything, putting the mind aside, just looking at a thing without any barrier of words, so that you can have a contact, a direct contact with reality. That's one of Buddha's fundamental teachings, choiceless awareness; hence one of his names is Avalokita. And he says, and says truly, that if you can become a detached observer of existence, your life will be full of bliss.

It is bound to be so, it is inevitable: ais dhammo sanantano -- he says this is the ultimate law of existence, that bliss happens only to those whose consciousness is absolutely pure of thoughts, whose consciousness is just like a pure mirror, crystal clear, with no idea, with no a priori conclusion. And then a miracle happens: you start seeing everything in its true reality -- and that's what god is.

If you can see a rose flower in its true reality you have seen one of the faces of god. If you can look into the eyes of a child without any word, thought, coming in between you and those innocent eyes, you have looked into the eyes of god. And slowly one becomes aware that the whole existence is full of god, that god is not a person, that god is the reality of everything, the underlying reality of everything.

He is in that which you are observing and he is in you who are the observer. Knowing it the observer and the observed become one -- and that is the ultimate realisation of oneness.

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Mind divides, it creates a duality; the observer and the observed become two. When there is no mind they start coming closer, closer, closer, melting and merging into each other. Then it is not that you are seeing the rose flower, you are the rose flower. It is as if the rose flower is seeing itself. There is no distinction, no separation. That is union with reality or it is better to call it reunion, because once we were in that union, before we were born. But we have lost track of it. That is, we have been in the paradise, we have lost it -- we have to regain it, and this is the way.

So let your name remind you that this is going to be your path: awareness, watchfulness, observation, choicelessness.

[Osho gives sannyas to an Italian, Fabio, adding the prefix anand, which means bliss, he explains, then continues:]

Fabio is avery dangerous name. Yes -- it means a bean-grower! I am reminded of an Italian joke: Italians like to eat beans every Saturday evening to have a bubble-bath every Sunday morning!

You get the idea or not?

So please stop bean-growing!

We will make your name a little different, I will give you a new meaning; there is just a little difference: being grower. Forget the Italian meaning completely!

Let your being grow. And for bubble-baths there are other things!

One has to work for bliss but still, ultimately, it is a gift of God. This looks paradoxical; it is not logical.

Logic will say either you have to work for it -- then you are the achiever, then it is the achievement of your work. Or if it is a gift of God, then you need not work because whenever God feels like giving you the gift, he will. But life does not go according to logic.

Many people follow the logical line. For centuries they have done that and they have missed. The person who thinks it can be achieved through effort will never achieve it. Through effort he will become more and more egoistic.

There are religions that believe that it can be achieved only through effort. For example, Jainism in India believes that it can be achieved only through effort, there is no other way -- no grace of God because there is no God and no grace. You have to work hard and you have to achieve it. Naturally they say it takes many many lives, only then can you achieve it.

In fact it is because of this idea that the idea of many lives arose in India, because one life does not seem to be enough to achieve bliss. Half of life is lost in getting educated, getting married, getting settled; one third is lost in sleep, in

eating, in talking, in fighting, in playing cards and chess and looking at the movies and a thousand and one things.

If one simply calculates, then out of seventy years, which is the normal span of life, you will not have even seven minutes left for yourself. And seven minutes meditation is not going to help; hence you will need many many lives. Indians believe millions of lives, eighty-four million lives, then one becomes enlightened. The very idea is such that one will fall flat and forget all about it. Such a long time -- who is going to wait? This is one of the logical standpoints.

The other logical standpoint has also been followed. There have been many religions which believe that you have simply to pray to God because everything happens according to his will. So all that you need is to pray. Go on begging and go on praising the Lord -- as if he believes in bribery and praise and all that nonsense, as if you can persuade him to give you the ultimate gift. Both are wrong. Both will miss because both are taking only half of reality.

My attitude is that one needs an effortless effort. There are reasons for thinking effort is needed and there are reasons, perfectly valid reasons, for concluding that the ultimate thing always happens through the grace of God. It can be understood only in this way, that efforts are needed to prepare you to receive the gift.

Ordinarily you are not ready even to receive -- your doors are closed, your heart is closed. Even if God shouts you won't listen. And God goes on knocking on your doors, but you never open the doors; in fact you don't think that there are any doors. You go on living your ordinary, mechanical, unconscious life. Efforts are needed to make you conscious, but efforts can only make you conscious, they cannot give you bliss.

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attained bliss have felt that "our efforts have cleaned our hearts, opened our

doors, removed all the barriers."

And then one day, suddenly, something starts pouring from the beyond, from some unknown source. And when you look back then you can see that your efforts were very tiny. You cannot say this tremendous ecstasy is an outcome of your tiny efforts, but still they were needed, they were essentially needed, they cannot be avoided.

So one has to meditate, one has to pray, one has to purify one's being. One has to bring clarity to one's mind and love to one's heart just as a preparation so that one is capable of receiving the gift when God is ready to give. And in fact, God is always ready to give, it is just that we are not ready to receive!

We are in search of a home. Everybody -- consciously or unconsciously, knowingly or unknowingly --

we are all groping for a home. Somewhere deep within our being there is a remembrance that we had a home. It is very vague, not clear-cut; but you have not forgotten it completely, nobody ever forgets it completely. It goes on surrounding you like a shadow, like a nostalgia. It is like some far away country, sometime when you were happy, blissful, joyous, when there was no anxiety, no anguish, no responsibility, when life was pure bliss, when life was just a dance, a song.

Deep down somewhere that desire still lurks, still goes on goading you to find it again. All religions are born because of that longing, otherwise there is no reason for religions, they don't fulfil any practical purpose. That's why for a practical- minded man religion seems to be absolutely absurd. Science seems to be perfectly okay -- it serves many practical purposes. What is the practical purpose of religion? There seems to be no utility, it is a sheer wastage of time. You could have produced something and you are meditating, just sitting silently, doing nothing.

For the practical man it seems a wastage. But even if the practical man looks just a little deeply inside himself he will find hidden somewhere the desire, and he will find somewhere the feeling 'I am homeless.

This is not the place where I belong. This is not life; this cannot be all, something more must be there.'

Of course we don't know exactly what that more is, but a persistent feeling, an intuitive force goes on working inside. Sooner or later one has to listen to it, and the sooner one listens, the bettor, because one never knows when life will be finished. Any moment it may be. If a man becomes really committed and interested in religion while he is young, then there is a possibility that he finds the real home. Sannyas is a very scientific process to find it.

My effort here is to bring a synthesis between the scientific approach and religious values. On the surface they look very contrary, but only on the surface. Deep down there is something which makes them complementary, not contradictory. Their fields are different. Science works in the objective world and religion in the subjective, but the approach is the same. Science is trying to know the truth about reality outside, and religion is trying to know the same truth about reality inside. And of course religion is working on a higher plane because the scientist may know many things about objects, matter, electricity, this and that, but will be completely unaware of himself. The scientist knows nothing about the scientist himself but he knows everything about everything else.

This situation is very lopsided. Science will become perfect only when it accepts religion as the ultimate goal. And religion alone is not perfect either, because you cannot just live on the inside; you need bread and you need clothes and you need all kinds of things which can only be provided by science.

There have been only two kinds of people up to now: the people who believe that science is enough --

and they are wrong, they have created the whole mess in the West -- and there have been people in the East who believe religion is enough; they have created the mess in the East. The East is starving because it has never worked for scientific growth, and the West is going insane because it has no home. Houses, it has big houses, but no home.

My effort is to help East and West disappear into each other, to create a meeting. And that meeting is happening, very slowly, without any deliberate effort; almost spontaneously it is happening And this is the beauty of it, that my sannyasins are very deeply neither of the East nor of the West; they belong to the whole world and the whole world belongs to them. They can herald a new man on earth.

Bliss is music, music that arises when all your parts -- your body, your mind, your heart and your being

-- are functioning in deep harmony; then your life becomes an orchestra!

Ordinarily there is only noise, no music. The body goes on shouting out its own desires; they ask for their fulfilment, not taking any care of other needs. The mind goes on insisting on its own ambitions, desires, not bothering at all about the heart, always ready to sacrifice everything for its own fulfilment. The 1/08/07

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heart goes on hankering for its own feelings, emotions, love. And the being is an absolutely neglected part; we have completely forgotten about it. It goes on whispering in a still, small voice within you, but nobody listens because the body is very loud and the mind is very articulate, and the heart is very persistent.

Although the mind goes on saying that the heart is a fool, an idiot, mad and not to bother about it, the heart does not take any note of the mind; it goes on doing its things in spite of the mind. It will fall in love and it will do a thousand and one things about which the mind was saying 'Don't do it.' And the body goes on in its own way.

So we are almost a crowd; not one person, not a unity, not an organic unity. And that's what is missing.

His life can become a harmony. All these parts which are playing solo can become part of an orchestra.

You just need a guide which can bring all these four elements together, can help them understand each other, can help them to help each other. That's what happens through meditation, through awareness.

Awareness becomes the guide and slowly slowly it persuades every different section of your being to come into closer harmony.

So put all your energies into awareness. Only one thing I teach my sannyasins: be meditative. Out of meditation there is great music, and that music is bliss. Once you have heard your inner music everything else pales down. There is nothing which can be compared to its beauty and its benediction.

A man lives in defeat if he has not found bliss. His whole life is nothing but frustration and failure, writ large. And you can see it on peoples' faces: as they grow older, they grow sadder; as they grow older they start becoming very angry, angry at life, because it has shattered all their dreams. It has not fulfilled any of their desires. And the fault is not life's, they themselves are responsible for it. They were trying to achieve things which are meaningless: money, power, prestige.

If you don't achieve them you are frustrated, if you achieve them you are more frustrated. In fact the non-achiever is in a better situation because he can still hope. At least the hope is there that one day you will achieve these things and then everything will be put right.

The achiever is really in an absolute gloom because now there is no hope. He has staked everything on these stupid things and now they are there; his whole life has gone into achieving all this junk and now it is there -- and he is as unfulfilled as before.

By becoming a sannyasin one starts searching for bliss inside. You forget all other ambitions which lead you into the outside world because bliss is something inner, absolutely individual, personal; you can find it within yourself -- nobody else is needed for it. And once it is found you are victorious. Then life has a great splendour around it. Then the whole sky of your being is full of stars.

One knows that one has not lived in vain. And when one knows that one has not lived in vain then even death is beautiful. Then one does not die reluctantly, one dies absolutely blissfully. Then death is just a rest.

One has blossomed, one has released one's fragrance; now the time has come to rest, to disappear in the whole.

A sannyasin lives beautifully and dies beautifully. His life is a celebration and his death the ultimate in celebration.

It is one of the greatest mysteries of life that we are born with perfect bliss in our

being and we remain beggars because we never look into our selves. We take it for granted, as if we already know all that is within. That is a great idiotic idea, but it prevails all over the world. We are ready to go to the moon to seek and search for bliss, but we are not ready to go inside ourselves for the simple reason that we already think without ever going in, 'What is there inside?'

We somehow go on carrying this notion, that we know ourselves. We don't know ourselves at all.

Socrates is right when he says: Know thyself. In those two words the whole wisdom of all the sages is condensed, because in knowing thyself all is known and all is fulfilled and all is achieved.

We are not to become perfect, we are born perfect. And we are not to invent bliss, we have only to discover it. Hence it is not such a difficult matter as people think; it is a very simple process of relaxing, resting, and slowly slowly getting centred.

The day you stumble upon your centre, suddenly there is all light; you have found the switch. It is just like groping in a dark room: you go on groping and then you find the switch and it is all light. But one can sit in darkness for the whole night, crying and weeping just underneath the switch. And that's actually the situation; we are unnecessarily crying and weeping.

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also great laughter because they can see the stupidity -- that you have already got it but you are running hither and thither for no reason at all. And because of your running you go on missing. And they have great compassion also because you are suffering -- that is true, although your suffering is simply foolish. It is like a man who has seen a rope as a snake and now is running away and falls on a banana skin, and breaks a few bones and may be hospital. You know that he was simply a fool -- there was no snake at all! He may have even died from a heart

attack... And without any snake; just a rope did the whole trick. This is the rope trick!

And that is the situation of man.

Initiation means that you have to change the situation. This absurd, ridiculous life pattern has to be changed completely. Look within, and if you cannot find anything there, then look outside. But I say categorically that nobody who has looked within has ever missed it, so there is no reason for your to miss it.

Nobody is an exception, it is an absolute law: one who goes within, finds it -- finds the kingdom of god, the perfect bliss, the absolute truth. And with it comes freedom and great fragrance. Life becomes a dance, a poetry, a constant ecstasy; moment-to-moment it goes on growing.

One is bewildered at how much ecstasy is possible, and 'Can I contain any more?' But one can contain infinite ecstasy. And it goes on becoming more and more. Unbelievable it is, because you think 'Now this is the limit, more is not possible,' but next day you discover that there is still more possible, and you go on discovering. It never comes to an end. There is a beginning in this journey but no end.

The Golden Wind

Chapter #26

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