19

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‌CHAPTER 19

19 June 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Anand means bliss, sahajia means one who believes in spontaneity. The full name will mean: one who trusts in spontaneity and bliss. And they always go together; they are two aspects of the same coin. Bliss is always spontaneous – it is never manufactured, there is no way to put it on the assembly line. You cannot plan for it, you cannot prepare for it. You cannot do anything positively to gain it. All that one can do is to be in a receptive mood, but that is not much of a doing; that is more of a non-doing than doing. All that is needed is to be utterly silent, quiet, passive, feminine, and it starts happening.

It is already happening – it is just that we are so much in turmoil that we cannot hear that still small voice. The fragrance of bliss is very subtle and we have become so involved with ugly smells. Our familiarity is with the noisy and god is absolutely silent. Silence is his only language; he understands no other.

So the first thing to be understood: bliss and spontaneity are aspects of one energy. If you are blissful, you will suddenly find yourself spontaneous; if you are spontaneous, you will suddenly find yourself blissful. It works either way, but they are never separate.

And our whole culture prepares us not to be spontaneous. It makes us ready to do things but it makes us impotent and incapable of allowing things to happen. It is a male culture – the feminine part of our being is denied. It is not only that the woman outside is disrespected; when you disrespect the outside woman, naturally, its inner counterpart is: you disrespect all that is feminine in you. If you cannot accept the woman as equal to man, how can you accept your inner woman as equal to you? So what we have been doing to women on the outside we have also been doing to the woman inside. And we have that soft side, just as every woman has the male side.

Now the pendulum is turning to the other extreme: the lib women are becoming antagonistic to man. The reasons are obvious. But they will fall into the same trap: if they become antagonistic to the

man outside, they will become antagonistic to the man inside... and that’s an essential part. Then the personality will remain, again, lopsided. One has to live totally; only then does one live. And the totality contains the polar opposites. Man has become ugly because he has denied the feminine part; women will become ugly if they deny the male part in them. Nothing has to be denied, all has to be accepted... even if it looks contradictory. So what? We cannot do anything – this is how we are: man, woman, together.

Spontaneity happens only when you allow your feminine part to function – the passive being, that which waits, that which is just a womb, that which receives, welcomes, but never goes into any aggression. It never goes in any search. It simply waits in immense trust. So become a sahajia – one who trusts with spontaneity – and allow your feminine part to be liberated from the exploitation of so many centuries. Let this part function again.

And I am not saying to deny the male part – it is needed, it has its own use. When you are working, planning, manufacturing a thing in a factory, in the lab, if you are a scientist or an engineer, naturally you have to use your male part; there, the feminine part won’t do. But that is not all. Not only is that not all, it is not even the very essential, because the essential life consists of joy, of bliss, of dance, of love. And that essential is possible only if the feminine is allowed. Doubt is male, trust is feminine; war is male, peace is feminine; extroversion is male, introversion is feminine. And a man has to be capable of both, just as a woman has to be capable of both.

When one is capable of both, without denying and repressing any part, one becomes a circle, a completion. That completion has grace.…

Deva means divine, nishabdo means wordlessness, silence, absolute, utter silence divine wordlessness, divine soundlessness, divine silence.

The word is the trouble, the word is the barrier... and our being is full of words. We have completely forgotten how to turn off this constant chattering. It goes on and on; it never leaves you alone. Whether you are awake or asleep, it continues it has become a constant substratum, a continuum. The only problem is how to become capable of sometimes putting a stop to it, how to be a master of the process so that when you want it, when it is needed – and it is needed – then you can turn it on, and when it is not needed you can turn it off.

Meditation teaches nothing else – just the knack of turning this constant chattering off sometimes. Then suddenly there is great silence. The noise is not outside; the noise is within. And when the within is without noise, the noise outside does not distract at all; it can’t distract you. When you are listening silently, utterly silent, then all noise outside – becomes music – it has immense beauty. Yes, even the traffic noise, this train passing by[there is the sound of a train hooting in the distance.]

All that is needed to transform this outside noise is a quality of inner silence. And that can be done. The mind is a mechanism, and it need not be on for twenty-four hours. I am not saying that it is not needed. It is a must, it has to be used, but it has to be used and one has not to be used by it; it has to be a slave. It is just as when you are sitting, you don’t go on moving your legs; when you walk you move them. When you go to sleep, you close your eyes; then you don’t see. When your stomach is full, you stop eating; you don’t go on eating.

In exactly the same way, when the need arises, use the word. It is useful as far as communicating about the ordinary mundane things of life, this is the only medium. In the market-place this is the only medium. But when you are not in the market-place – when you are sitting silently in your room, doing nothing – then there is no need for it. Then it is a kind of neurosis. If somebody sits and goes on moving his legs, we will think he is mad! If somebody tries to sleep with open eyes, we will think he is mad.

Man has to be capable of turning off all mechanisms inside when they are not needed. And that is good for the mechanism too, because it gives it a rest – every machine needs rest. Because we go on using the mind continuously, it becomes mediocre, stupid.

My own observation is that every child is born a genius; but this constant use of the mind for no purpose at all destroys intelligence. One is constantly tired there, in the mind. A genius needs to be a freshness. And if we can turn off the mind it can rest, go into deep sleep, and then when it is revived again it will be rejuvenated. So a real meditator is not against the mind but he is against the slavery of the mind; he claims to be the master.

From this moment start working on it. It will take a little time. An old habit that you have been feeding for so long will not go easily – but it goes. That much I can guarantee: it goes! The day it goes is the day of great celebration, and after that day you are free from this turmoil. Then life has a beauty; a totally different flavour arises. Then there is gratitude, because each moment is so delicious. Just to be here in this existence is so sweet, it’s so infinitely valuable.

The mind drives people neurotic, life becomes ugly; at the most one tolerates it. People start waiting for death to come and finish this whole nonsense, or the few who cannot even wait, who are very impatient, start committing suicide. How can they be grateful and how can they be religious? because there is no religion without gratefulness. Gratitude is a must for religion to arise.

So when you are capable of entering into a wordless state of mind, you start feeling the celebration that is going on all around. This whole existence is a dance of infinite energies – you become part of it. Suddenly you are no more confined to your body. The stars start moving within you; you become cosmic. Once the mind is chattering no more, you are the cosmos, you are no more an individual. You are not confined in any limitation; suddenly you are the whole space... and the freedom that arises out of it.

Jesus says ‘Truth liberates’; I say to you ‘Silence liberates,’ because without silence there is no truth. Truth certainly liberates, but truth cannot happen to you unless you are silent. Silence opens the door for the truth to enter. Truth liberates, but without silence there is no truth, no possibility. We need not think about truth; our whole concern should be silence.

Mariam, a large, plump lady, is gently vibrated by her energy as she sits waiting, eyes closed. A moment later, the energy has subsided and she is still.…

Deva means divine, dhiraja means patience divine patience... and that’s all that you need. All is going to happen of its own accord. You need not work for it; you have to learn how to wait for it.

Very few people know how to wait. Everybody knows how to work, because when you are working, your ego is in control. The ego can exist only when it is in control. It exists through control, by

control, so the ego tries to control others, tries to control itself too. Its whole project depends on controlling. If it can control others it becomes political. If it cannot control others it becomes religious. It starts controlling itself, disciplining itself, cultivating, practising this and that, but deep down there is mistrust. It can’t wait, it can’t trust existence. It can’t say to existence ‘I will wait – when the time is ripe it is going to happen’

And it is not going to happen before its time, so all hurry is futile, a sheer wastage of energy. It never happens before its time, remember. Whether you work or not it makes no difference. But the mind that is constantly trying to manage, manipulate, do things, thinks ‘If I do, then it will happen, it will happen sooner. Whatsoever it is, it will happen sooner.’ And that is true about the worldly things: if you don’t work you will not become rich, if you don’t work you will not become famous, if you don’t work you will not be respectable; that is true. As far as outer things are concerned it is true: work is the only way there; waiting is utterly meaningless.

For the inner, just the opposite is the case: work is meaningless, waiting is relevant... because the directions are opposite, so a reversal of procedures is needed. But people go on doing the same for the inner: they start grabbing, snatching, holding, hoarding. They go on rushing in the same way as they used to do outside; they miss the whole point. The inner needs only a silent, still space to happen.

Be so absent that it can happen, so there is no hindrance from your side. That is the meaning of patience. It is trust – trust that all is good and that all is going to happen whenever it is needed and whenever the time is ripe. Then one relaxes, efforts disappear. And in that effortlessness there is beauty, tremendous beauty – the beauty of the flowers, the lilies in the field, the beauty in the stars... the same beauty, the beauty of a child. The sage has the same beauty as the beauty of the child.

What is the beauty of the child? The child trusts – that is his beauty; he trusts the mother, he trusts the father, he trusts everything. The day the child starts losing trust, he is no more a child. The day he starts suspecting and doubting the mother – maybe she is right, maybe she is not – the day he starts doubting the father – maybe he knows, maybe he knows not.And sooner or later that

day comes, because the father has limitations, the mother has limitations. Then he starts learning doubt; he starts learning how to say no. The ego is born. The same ego hinders the inner growth.

One day one has to drop that ego. One day one has to learn how to say yes again.and a total yes,

with no conditions. That’s what patience is, and this is going to be your path. Wait and miracles will happen. They are bound to happen – they have always happened to people who have trusted.

Deva means divine, digambara means nakedness – divine nakedness. And that’s the only way to encounter god: in utter nudity, with nothing to hide, just like a small child, with no shame, with no guilt, with no condemnation of anything – just as Adam was before he ate the fruit from the tree of knowledge. The first thing that happened to him after he ate the fruit was that he became aware of his nudity. He felt ashamed; he started hiding his nudity. Self-consciousness was born. Consciousness is beautiful; self-consciousness is ugly. Just a moment before, he was utterly at ease with nature, with god. There was no guilt, nothing was wrong – all was accepted as it was. He was open.

Knowledge makes one self-conscious Self-consciousness closes one. Then one starts hiding, one starts keeping many things inside, one has secretsand then there is trouble. One is divided and

one is constantly afraid and frightened that one may be caught, because one is deceiving, one is Lying. And when one is Lying and deceiving, how can one be at ease? There is no possibility of being at ease. The people who are very guilty cannot even sleep totally. They are afraid – they may say something in their sleep, they may be caught. They cannot drink too much – they may become unconscious and the truth may come up. They are constantly safeguarding themselves, armouring themselves.

Nudity means an unarmoured being, with no armour. It is going back to the original state of Adam. And that is how one reaches god, knows truth: one has to drop all beliefs, all scriptures. They are clothes. Behind the Bible and the Vedas and the Koran we are hiding; we are hiding our ignorance. We are like parrots who go on repeating the Vedas, the Koran, the Bible... and we think that we know. These are the fruits of the tree of knowledge. One has to drop all that. One has to clean one’s heart completely of all words, all theories, philosophies – good and bad, religious, irreligious, eastern, western.

When you are completely nude, when there is no concept around you, truth comes. In that innocence, truth comes. Only that innocence can contain truth.

Anand means bliss, subodhi means enlightenment – bliss enlightenment. Man is in darkness because of unconsciousness and man is in misery too because of unconsciousness. Misery and darkness exist together. Bliss and light exist together. We have to change our inner being from darkness to bliss, and the only way is to bring light there. And no ordinary light will do, because you cannot take it in. Only one light is possible, and that is the light of being more and more conscious, more and more alert, aware.

We have it, but in a very small quantity. Ninety-nine percent we are unaware, only one percent aware. That one percent of awareness can’t help much. It has to be helped to grow slowly slowly, so that major part of the energy of our being becomes full of light. And whenever a corner of one’s being becomes full of light, great changes happen in life immediately, because that corner affects you and many things start changing. Not that you change: you simply see they are changing. And that is true transformation. When you change something it remains superficial; when it comes out of some inner radical transformation, then it is not superficial, and it stays!

My whole approach is not to change the character but to change the consciousness. And once the consciousness changes, the character automatically follows, because the character is a by-product of consciousness. The West has believed in character for a long time. In fact, in Christianity, in Judaism, meditation has completely disappeared for centuries. Meditation is nothing but an effort to make oneself more and more conscious and alert. And we know: in ordinary life also there are moments when you are more present, and there are moments when you are not so present but absent. Sometimes you are reading and you know that you are present, there is awareness. And sometimes you go on reading many pages and suddenly you recognise that you have not read a single word. Your eyes were reading but you were not there. You were unconscious, you were almost in sleep. So we know in ordinary experiences also that the quantity of consciousness can be less or more.

This has to be worked out deliberately. And once you have found the key – which is not far away, very close by; it is just that we have never searched for it – doors upon doors start opening. And

as you become more and more unlocked and more and more light becomes available, life becomes more and more blissful. Blissfulness is a shadow of light.

[A sannyasin asks about the kriya energy she has been experiencing. Osho asks her to raise her arms and to allow her energy its movement, to go into kriya. Her movements become more and more vigorous so her whole body is flung back and forth. Finally, she is thrown back so that she lies prostrate.]

Perfectly good! You have to allow them – they will be of immense help. Many blocks will disappear through the kriya. It is part of inner growth. And when the work is done they will disappear on their own, so you are not to destroy them. You have to go into them as totally as possible.

[She asks: Even when in meditation, sometimes sitting silently...?]

No, then don’t do it, because here the meditations are such that you are allowed enough time to do it. There are many active parts of the meditations, mm? Go into them, into those active parts, as deeply as you can, but not in the silent parts. That much consciousness has to be kept; otherwise sometimes kriyas can become almost a kind of insanity. They are good, but you are not to be overpowered by them. You have always to remain in control finally. Not constantly interfering but being able to stop whenever you want; that much control has to be there. Otherwise sometimes things can go into a very mad state and that is unnecessary.

One can remain in control always; there is no need to practice control. Just do one thing: whenever you feel that you want to stop them, take the locket in your hand and immediately the kriya will stop. So in the active part go into kriya; whenever you are sitting silently and there is nothing to do, you can go into it. But always remember that whenever you want to stop, you can stop it. It should not become a kind of possession, mm? otherwise one starts becoming a victim of some unknown energy.

This happened to many people who have been in the movement called Subud – the Indonesian movement. Many people went crazy and the reason was only this, that nobody was teaching them one very essential part – that you are always in control. And you have to always be in control. That is not a disturbance in the kriya. The kriya continues – you remain aloof, you remain watchful. You are there, non-interfering, just standing by, a spectator, a witness, and the kriya is taking shape, it is going on. Just as others are watching, you are also watching it. You are not possessed by it. It is an energy phenomenon dancing around you but you are there, at the centre, the centre of the cyclone. So whenever you want, you can say ‘Stop’ and it stops. That much you have to remember.

They are beautiful and they will disappear when their work is fulfilled.

[A sannyasin comes for energy darshan. Osho suggests she close her eyes and express herself through her hands.]

Something is happening inside. And if you are conscious of it, it will be good. The man and the woman inside are meeting – that’s what the hands have said. The energies are coming to a point where they can disappear into each other, and if you are alert you can help the process. If you are not alert you can hinder the process, because it feels frightening. You have a certain identity and that identity will melt. You will start losing the idea of who you are... and that is scary.

But if you are alert that is good. A new identity will be born soon. That will be more whole, more circular. The identity as a woman or a man is only half. Hence, the other half remains suffocated and tries in every way to surface – resists, rebels, protests, fights – and it creates a thousand and one troubles for the part that is in power, nags it. And this nagging is a great wastage of energy. But now that meeting can happen. Your unconscious has said it through the hands – that the polarities are meeting.

One hand represents man, the other hand represents woman; the right hand represents the man, the left hand the woman. That meeting will happen any day. Don’t be afraid. When it happens, for a few days you will lose all idea of who you are. You have to accept it, you have to relax into that melting. Out of that melting, a new idea, a new identity will arise which will be absolutely new, a resurrection. Just remember that.

[A sannyasin says: Osho... you’ve filled my life with love and I rest on that love and on nothing else... And you’ve created some beautiful games for me.]

That’s right. If one keeps remembering that all are games, they are always beautiful. The moment you forget that a game is a game and you become serious about it, it starts becoming ugly. To remember that a game is a game, to remain playful... one is involved and yet not involved, one is in it and yet out of it, and that’s the beauty of it. The whole of life is a game. And one has to learn how to be always playful – in success, in failure, in richness and poverty, in joy, in sadness. If one can remain playful, then nothing ever hurts, even hurts don’t hurt, and even out of wounds beautiful flowers bloom.

That’s the whole alchemy of turning the baser metal into higher metal, into gold, of transforming thorns into flowers and of turning poison into medicine. The whole secret is one single word, and that is playfulness, ‘leela’.

And there is no need for anything other than love to be your boat. It is enough to take you to the other shore. Every other boat is going to be drowned somewhere in the middle. No other boat reaches the shore called god – only love. Love is the bridge between this and that.

So I am teaching these two things: be playful when you are on this shore and prepare for the boat of love so that some day you can be on that shore. Being playful will keep you unentangled on this shore. While you are here you can make sandcastles and you can enjoy, and you collect pebbles on the seashore and you enjoy and it is beautiful. But meanwhile you are preparing the boat to go to the other shore, and that boat is love.

So become more and more playful and become more and more full of love. Soon they become one phenomenon, because love is the only activity when man is playful now. All other activities have become very serious.

[The sannyasin answers: My love feels to me... I feel as though there is an obsessional quality... as though underneath the surface there is an anguish.]

That is there, but you need not fight with the anguish. That is the beginning. You have to go on moving more and more into love and soon the energy that is involved in anguish will be released into love. On the path of love it is always anguish in the beginning.

Love has many modes and many stages and many steps. The first step is to always need; hence the obsessive quality. You cannot live without it. You cling to it. It is the whole meaning of your life. You are always afraid it will be lost; that is the only treasure that you have. And you are afraid of being alone. Love keeps you occupied. You cannot help it. In the beginning it is always so, because the first love of the child in the world is between the child and the mother. Because of that, the experience of first love persists for long.

The child is dependent on the mother. If the mother is gone the child is simply helpless. If the mother threatens ‘I will die if you don’t listen to me’, the child trembles with fear, with great fear; great dread, anguish arises. Without the mother he cannot live. She is his life, and he depends on her in every way – for nourishment, for care, for warmth. She is the shelter, and if she is not there he is unprotected in a very strange world. That is the first experience of love, so that persists.

Even if you become grown-up that love experience will remain there. Whenever you are in love with anybody, again the first love arises. And it creates anxiety, anguish: if the woman leaves you, then what? You will again be left alone. But that is the beginning. If you remain playful, and if you go on being more and more loving, slowly, slowly, the quality changes. The child only gets and gives nothing. The day the child starts giving, he is no more a child; he is becoming grown-up, he is becoming mature. And many mature people are also not mature; they only get.

So this is the secret of changing the love into a higher love – not the love of need but the love of joy. Give more. Rather than thinking in terms of getting more, give more – give whole-heartedly and soon you will see the change has happened: you are no more clinging, you are no more dependent. When you give, freedom arises. And love takes on a new form, a new colour. It is an overflowing energy. It is not a need any more, but a luxury. And when love is a luxury it has beauty. Then it is fun.

When it is a need, it is one thing. Then you are poor, starved. It is just as a hungry man needs bread and water. If you give him great music to listen to, he will go mad. He will be enraged with you, he will kill you – he will say ‘You are humiliating me, you are insulting me. This is not the time to listen to Mozart – I need bread!’ That is a need. Music is a luxury.

Love has these two qualities. The first quality is that of bread, obviously, because from the mother the child was getting food, milk, warmth, love, altogether; it is all mixed up. That milk remains an undercurrent. The mother was the food also, and the love also, so finally they become very associated. It was a need for the child to survive, it was a survival measure, the first form of love.

The first has to become the base and you have to take the jump from this, that has become a jumping board, and the second love is more like music, poetry, dance.

So nothing is wrong in the first but one should not remain in the first forever. If one remains in the first, one has not known the full sky; one remains confined to a very small space. It is just like a bird in the egg: the eggshell has broken but the bird still goes on sitting inside the eggshell, is still afraid. He thinks that he will not be able to live outside it, because he only knows how to live inside it. He never spreads his wings, never goes to the sky.

If somebody remains with the first kind of love, he has remained in the eggshell. It was good in its own time – it nourished you, it prepared you – but the whole meaning is in the second.

That will also be coming. Mm? you are moving steadily towards something greater. Just keep alert, watchful, and always ready to get out of the old pattern, ready to move into something new. Whenever something new challenges yoU, accept the challenge and go into it; that’s the way of growth, the way of life. Much more is going to happen this time.

[Another sannyasin says she has been having attacks of fear, she tells you, that just come out of the blue.]

Good! There is nothing to be worried about; it is nothing wrong inside – just energy taking new jumps and new leaps in your being. It is good, it is beneficial; allow it. Don’t think that something is wrong, otherwise you will hinder the process. Just allow – it will disappear within three, four weeks. But while it is there don’t be in any way afraid of it. Respect the process and help it. It is beneficial. It will leave you in a new space.…

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