12

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‌CHAPTER 12

12 June 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A ten-year-old sannyasin says: I always feel that this is a dream, life is a dream.]

It is a dream, and your feeling is perfectly right. Don’t forget it! It is a dream, and every child knows it in the beginning. Slowly slowly one forgets it and starts thinking it is very real...

All these people are a dream. If you can remember this always you will become enlightened soon!

Deva means divine; tada is a Japanese word, one of the most significant – it means either only or just. The full name will mean: only god, or just god. The word is a Zen word; it means while walking, just walk; let walking be all and all. While sleeping, just sleep, only sleep; don’t do a thousand and one other things. While listening, just listen. While loving, just love.

If we can be in each moment with our totality, that is tada. It is an immense experience. If this moment is all – all in all, as if the whole time has stopped, there is no future anymore, no past anymore; all memory has been put aside and all dreaming renounced – then this moment arises as a great flame. There is great beauty in it. To live that moment totally is tada, and if one can live moment to moment in tada, in totality, then nothing else is needed. Then you need not search for god; god will search for you. Then you need not go anywhere else; in being herenow, all starts coming to you. That is the miracle of tada, the magic.

The East has learned only one thing about life – that is tada. The whole experience of Buddha, Lao Tzu, Krishna, and thousands of others can be reduced to only these words ‘just this’, this is it...

[A cuckoo sings out in the garden.]

... this calling of the cuckooWhen out of your silence ‘tada’ arises, it is the music of the moment.

It is meditation. Meditation is nothing but the experience of this moment – and we go on missing this moment.

This moment is a small moment, very very small, atomic. Just a little unawareness and it is gone. One has to be very very alert to catch hold of it, otherwise it will slip by. The whole of life only consists of such atomic moments. If this moment it is slipping by, then other moments will also slip by. You will be continuously desiring and dreaming and never arriving anywhere. This is the situation of the majority, this is the state of ignorance. Everybody wants to be blissful, but bliss is a consequence of being in the moment. Misery is the consequence of being somewhere else, tada is bliss.

So this is not just going to be your name – this is going to be your sadhana, your work, your search, your discipline.

Now forget the old name completely. Disconnect yourself from it, and start getting into the feel of the new name – it is more a feel. And start experiencing it, start living it, so it really becomes your name.

A name should not remain just a label. It should become your definition. It should say something about you. It should not only be a utilitarian thing – because everybody needs a name and it will be too difficult if people are without names so we have to label and any name will do. I have given you a name that has to become your very being. It is not just for others to use; it is for you to live and be.

Prem means love; sandhya has many meanings and all are significant, but the root meaning is the interval, the gap. Between two states there is always a small gap. When you pass through one state to another – for example, when you move from waking to sleeping – there is a gap. In that gap one can know all that is worth knowing, because in that gap you are no more identified with any state. You are no more identified with the waking, nor yet identified with the sleep; you are just in the middle between the two. You are yourself. Soon you will enter another state and you will think ‘I am asleep’; you will gather another identity.

When one thought moves in your mind, you become that. Anger is there, so you become anger. When anger has gone and compassion has arisen, you become compassion. But there is a gap between the two. In that gap you are neither anger nor compassion – in that gap you are simply you. And that gap has to be searched for, that interval has to be found. It comes many times; whenever one state changes into another, the gap comes. When the adolescent becomes a youth, the gap happens; when a young man starts becoming old, that gap happens again. That gap comes in many forms. It has to be looked for everywhere, and slowly slowly you learn the knack of how to look into the interval. Because in the interval you are closest to your purity. The mirror is simply a mirror in the gap; it is not mirroring anything.

This is one of the meanings, the deepest root meaning. Because of this root meaning, another meaning has arisen out of it: that is evening or morning. Because the night changes into day, the day changes into night, so that interval is called sandhya; that is a secondary meaning to the first. And a third meaning has arisen out of it; it is prayer. For centuries Hindus have prayed only in the interval: when the day is changing into night they will pray. When the morning has come and the night is changing into day again they will pray. Because they have always been praying in those intervals, sandhya became synonymous with prayer. And all these three meanings are beautiful.

First remember the intervals, wherever you can find them. And they are always there: one thought passes, another comes, and there is an interval. It is very minute, fast-moving, but it is there.

Morning, evening, also remember it, because great changes happen when the sun sets. Life is no more the same on the earth; it falls into a deep lethargy, almost a mini-death. In the morning again, it is a resurrection; life arises again out of death. Trees become alive and birds start singing and animals open their eyes – a great interval. So use that meaning too.

And the third meaning is also beautiful. In these intervals one has to be just prayerful, very loving, grateful to god. Prayer is gratefulness.

Prem means love, sandhya means interval. The message is: fill all your intervals with love and they become the rainbow bridge. If you can fill your intervals with love, with prayer, with gratitude, you have found the door to the temple. l-here is no other way to find god.

[A sannyasin tells Osho of a block in her stomach.]

It will disappear; you just have to do a small experiment. Every night before you go to sleep, just put your hands on your stomach. Be in a sitting posture and bow down – the hands remain on the stomach and the head bows down. This is called ‘the womb posture’. This is the way the child remains in the womb. Then whatsoever happens, allow, but keep that posture. Your breathing will change, your body will start shaking and trembling, you may start crying and weeping. Allow it for ten minutes and then go to sleep. Within three to six weeks the fear will disappear.

It has something to do with your birth. It has remained there since birth. You became very much afraid when you were passing through the birth canal of the mother, so it is like a very sore wound. You have to consciously go into it. This will take you back into the memory and within three to six weeks the memory will be released. Once the memory is lived consciously, you are free of it.

[Another sanyasin says: I’m also a little bit tired of ‘enlightenment’... ]

How can you be tired of enlightenment? You are not yet enlightened! One can be tired of something if one is in it. I can be tired of it, but you can’t be...(laughter) but I’m not! Because enlightenment is when you disappear, so who is there to be tired? There is nobody to be tired. This is the ego that is continuously tired, bored, exhausted, worried. it lives in anguish; it can only live in anguish. Enlightenment is nothing but the disappearance of the ego.

Don’t get too obsessed by the word. We have to use some word, so we use it. The simple thing is that the ego disappears and then there is nobody to be bored, nobody to be tired, nobody to die, nobody to live. Then all is very simple because there is nobody to complicate things.

How can one be tired of enlightenment? You must be getting tired of it because you have made it a goal – you want to achieve it and it is not happening. You are not tired of enlightenment, you are only tired of the goal. And that’s what I am saying continuously:‘Don’t make it a goal – it is not a goal at all.’ Get tired of goals – perfectly good. Drop them! But I don’t think you are really tired. You say you are tired. You are not even tired of your problems, otherwise who is telling you to carry on with them?

Somebody says ‘I am tired of the burden,’ and goes on carrying it on his head – he not only goes on carrying it but goes on adding to it, and he goes on saying ‘I am tired of it.’ Then who is forcing

you? If you are really tired..-. the day one is really tired, one is finished with the world. But I think you are too young yet to be absolutely tired, mm? It takes a little time, it takes a little experience. People, when they are seventy and eighty, even then they are not tired! Then they still want to live and chase the old things that they have been chasing for their whole lives.

You can’t be tired yet – it is too early. Rather than condemning your problems, go into them. Each problem has a message to deliver. A problem does not exist without roots. No problem is irrelevant. Howsoever silly and absurd it appears it has some roots in your being; otherwise it wouldn’t be there. How can it be there? There must be some cause behind it.

So go into the problem. Don’t condemn it by calling it names and saying that you are tired of it. Rather than condemning it, go into it. Slowly slowly, unearth it and you will find great treasures hidden behind the problems. A problem is simply a map; if you can follow the map and go deep into it, you will come to a great treasure. Each problem carries a solution within itself. You have not gone into the problems so they go on piling up. Then you are tired, because so many problems – how can they be solved? You have not even gone into a single problem.

My own observation is that if you can solve a single problem you have solved all, because then you will know the key to how to solve them all. And the key is the same; it is a master key. It opens all the locks. Solve one problem, choose any one.

George Gurdjieff used to say to his disciples ‘Choose a single characteristic in your being and just solve that. Don’t be worried about so many things – if you can solve one problem you have solved all, because to solve one you will have to create that key and that key is a master. It works on all problems.’

And don’t be an escapist. You cannot escape from problems; they will follow you and they will go on increasing. And the more you neglect them, the more you will be crowded by them. Don’t neglect them. They have to be faced, encountered, lived. And you will never be at a loss if you live them. They are challenges of life: facing them you will gather integrity. Facing them you will be becoming more and more intelligent. You will have a sharper intelligence by facing them; otherwise if you avoid those problems you will be dull. You will become dull and dim, and that is not the way to live one’s life.

Challenges have to be accepted, welcomed. They have to be accepted so lovingly that one can feel grateful that god has given these problems to you to solve. In solving them you will be growing in consciousness, integrity, unity. In solving them you will arrive at your being.

[Another sannyasin asks: For one year I have had a lot of shaking inside my chest and my muscles jump all the time when I relax. It disturbs my sleep sometimes – I awake from it.

It is nothing to be worried about. But you have been repressing it, you have been trying to control it; you have been trying to hold it somehow, and that is creating the trouble. It is something beautiful – it has to be allowed. If you repress it then it will come in your sleep, mm? because if you repress it then it has to come up somewhere. If you don’t repress it, it will disappear from sleep. Whenever something appears in sleep, that is an indication that in the daytime you have repressed it; so it has to come in from the backdoor.

Make it a point for at least one hour every day to go into it and allow shaking, trembling. Stand in the middle of your room, close the room, be nude; if the climate allows, be nude and close the door. Just stand in the middle and shake, tremble, dance, and let the energy possess you. Be possessed for just twenty, thirty minutes; that will exhaust you. Fall on the floor and remain still for twenty, thirty minutes. So it is a one-hour process.

For thirty minutes be possessed by a great dynamo; for thirty minutes be absolutely still, just like a heap of mud. You can choose any posture, but just remain in that posture for thirty minutes – any comfortable posture you want, but then remain just like that. So two polarities: one of dynamic action – the whole body is thrilled; every fibre dancing, every cell in a dance – and then thirty minutes utter rest. And the whole problem will disappear.

The energy is beautiful. It has to be used, you have to ride on it; it is something beneficial. It is not something bad that you have to get rid of; you have to use it. It is very creative, but you have been repressing it a little up to now, holding it back. You are feeling a little embarrassed about it and that’s not good...

If you allow it one hour in the morning every day, you will not find it for twenty-three hours at all. Because you are not allowing it, it comes whenever it can.

[A sannyasin has an energy darshan.]

Everything is going perfectly. Just enjoy the energy that is happening. And don’t become too concerned with small problems. Always think of something bigger than yourself; never think of small things, because whatsoever we think, we become. And small problems always remain in life, life consists of them. One has to learn to walk without being too concerned with them.

In India they say ‘Just like an elephant who passes – dogs bark, but he doesn’t pay any attention to the barking dogs.’ These small problems are just barking dogs: they will remain while you go on paying attention to them. They will disappear the day you withdraw your attention because then there is no point in their being there; they can’t remain there, they lose their roots. And your energy is going so beautifully. This is the time to think of higher things, of greater things!

Look more at the sky and less and less at the earth. Look upwards. And always remember: upwards is synonymous with inwards; downwards is synonymous with the without, the outwards. And the energy is really good – ride on this tidal wave!

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