20

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‌CHAPTER 20

20 June 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva means divine, sarlo means simplicity divine simplicity. And simplicity is one of those things which cannot be cultivated. If cultivated then it is simplicity no more; it is already complex. If cultivated, it is already calculated. If cultivated, it is projection of the mind. Simplicity is something that cannot be manufactured by the mind. The mind has to be put aside... and it is there! It is not a mind thing.

And whatsoever you practise remains a mind thing; that’s why I say that religion cannot be practised. Religion can be lived but not practised, and it is because of practice that humanity has become hypocritical. If you practise, you will create something plastic which looks like the real but is not. And that is the greatest thing to be remembered on the path: love is not in any danger from hate; love is in danger from false love. There is no danger from hate – hate has not been able to destroy it, hate cannot destroy it, hate is impotent to destroy it. Love goes on living through hate, it survives hate. But when it comes across false love then it is impossible.

The real problem is the false, the inauthentic, not the opposite. So simplicity is in no danger from complexity; the danger comes from pseudo-simplicity. A complex man can become simple, will have to become simple, because the complexity will drive him mad. Sooner or later he will have to realise ‘I am unnecessarily getting into riddles, confusion, puzzles, and torturing myself.’ The day the nightmare is absolute, one is bound to awake.

But the problem is with pseudo-simplicity. It consoles, it gives you a false appearance, a false face. And the whole society respects the false, so your ego is satisfied. They say ‘How simple you are, how saintly’... and you know you are not, but now you have to pretend. Now your whole prestige is at risk; you have to go on pretending. And if you go on pretending long enough, you not only deceive others, you deceive yourself finally. That is the state when a person becomes really mad. He has deceived himself – now he lives in a very very pseudo world which has no roots anywhere in reality.

So remember: all that is beautiful is spontaneous. It comes out of understanding, not out of practice. It comes out of awareness, not out of effort. Whatsoever comes out of effort remains superficial, imposed, and the imposed creates a split inside you.

So the simplicity that I mean is the simplicity that comes not through the mind but by putting the mind aside. And suddenly you are simple. Everybody is simple; complexity is a learned thing. And you need not learn simplicity now, because a learned thing will remain complex. All that is needed is to allow your nature to come on top. Learning should be slowly, slowly, dropped and the unlearned heart should be allowed expression.

[A sannyasin says about a group he has done: I didn’t appreciate it at the time but I’ve gained many insights since then.]

Many times it will happen that while you are in the process it becomes difficult, hard. [The sannyasin answers: Or even boring.]

Boring too! Mm, boring too it can become. But if one can go into it in spite of all these things, finally one comes out with a deeper insight into oneself and a clarity. So always remember: the process itself may not be according to your liking sometimes, but your liking should not be the decisive phenomenon – because if you always listen to your liking, you will remain the old. Your liking comes from the old, the past mind. And we don’t really know what is what; we have learned only words.

For example, something can be boring and immensely satisfying and immense possibilities can open out of a boring state. In fact, all meditations, particularly the ancient meditations, are boring. Not only are the meditations boring, but in the old days the whole atmosphere for the meditator was deliberately created to be boring. In a Zen monastery everything is boring. The whole routine, for twenty-four hours, is exactly the same every day. At three o’clock in the early morning you get up, you do this, you do that, exactly the same. At nine o’clock in the night you go to bed... so many meditations, so many walking meditations, so many sitting meditations. It is almost mechanical – for a certain reason, because only if your mechanicalness is brought to its extreme will you awake, otherwise not.

Those little enjoyments that you go on having by the side keep your mechanicalness alive, keep your mechanicalness interesting to you. You have to be really bored with it. If you become utterly bored with the way you are living – the breakthrough.

So the twenty-four hours’ routine is boring – the same mantras, the same roshi, the same master and you have to go and you have to pass through the same ritual every day, year in, year out. The food is the same – the same rice, the same vegetable soup, the tea. Nothing is allowed you that can make your life interesting. You are not allowed to go outside; you have to live in the sameAnd

even the Zen garden, particularly the rock garden, is boring, a very boring phenomenon.just rocks

and sand. You sit there and you watch and there is nothing to watch. Slowly slowly the boredom seeps in, sinks in.…

A moment comes when either you commit suicide or you become enlightened! (laughter) That moment is precious, and that’s where the master is needed, otherwise people will commit suicide.

Prem means love, samto means equanimity, equilibrium, balance, centering, rootedness; all that is implied in that one word. Love brings balance. When there is no love in life, life remains without a centre, just a periphery – hence it is meaningless, mundane. There is nothing sacred in it – just an empty temple where the deity is missing, a dead body, a corpse. Life has left it or has not entered yet.

Love is the very soul, the principle of life. Once love enters into life, many things come of their own accord. One becomes very balanced, one is no more lopsided. And one starts having a centre, so things don’t disturb any more. Even if on the periphery there is a storm, at the centre all remains calm and quiet.

When there is love, a great rootedness happens. Then one is not a stranger to this earth; one is rooted in this earth as trees are rooted in this earth. Then there is one’s home. Then wherever one is, one is always at home because this whole existence is our home, but only love can make it clear to us. If there is no love, one is not at home even when one is at home. One misses roots.

Love is the invisible root into existence. It nourishes, it strengthens, it goes on vitalising. And when there is love, there is compassion. Then you can understand how much people are suffering. And when there is love there is no ego; they can’t exist together.

Samto also means equal eye. When there is love, one does not compare. One does not say ‘I am higher than you or lower than you.’ Then all is equal. Then one attains to the vision where there is no comparison possible; everybody is incomparably unique. And great reverence arises for life, for existence, in all its forms.

So let love become your very essence. It is only a question of becoming a little more alert and one can become as loving as one decides to be. Infinite sources are available. Man does not come as a beggar. If he becomes one, it is his decision. Man is born as a king, is destined to become a king. He may become one, he may not – that is his choice. But reality gives you all that is needed to become a king. You cannot complain against reality.

So just start flowing in love. Love people, love animals, love the earth and the sky. Simply love, pulsate in love, and slowly slowly you will see all these things arising in you that are meant by samto they will come as a consequence.

Anand means bliss, ananto means infinite – infinite bliss. And one cannot be satisfied with less than that; hence the dissatisfaction that continues. You can have as much money as possible and the discontent remains just as it was before... not even a bit less. You can have power and prestige and fame, but deep down you know that you have been a failure.

Less than that, which I call ‘bliss infinite’, is not going to satisfy anybody. That is what is called god: a bliss that has no end, that comes but never goes. Once attained, it is attained forever, because one disappears in it and becomes one with it. That is our search – everybody is seeking and searching and groping for it – but the search is unconscious.

By becoming a sannyasin you are moving from the unconscious search into a conscious search, and when the search is conscious, the possibility of transformation is there. Unconscious groping is

not going to help because people go on moving in a rut; again and again they go on doing the same thing, they go on moving in a vicious circle. When they become conscious, there is a possibility to jump out of this rut and start a new way of living. That’s what sannyas is: a conscious search for bliss, a deliberate search for bliss, and a deep understanding that nothing finite is going to satisfy, so one should not waste time with the finite. With the same energy, the infinite is possible... and maybe even with less energy.

Sometimes people go on putting their energy into such silly things.

Once I was addressing a conference of oriental scholars and I was talking about Buddha. A scholar stood up and he asked ‘I have been working for thirty years on Buddha and Mahavira. A few problems are still there and I have not been able to solve them.’ I asked ‘What are those problems?’ He said ‘First, who was older?’ They were contemporaries ‘Who was older?’

I looked at the poor man and I said ‘Thirty years wasted! How does it matter? And what are you going to gain out of it? I was thinking that you would be interested in what Buddha did in his inner world so that he jumped out of the wheel of life and death. Or that you might be interested in what happened to Mahavira in his inner sky – how he became so blissful. And you come with this silly question: who was older? Even if it is decisively decided that one was older than the other, how is it going to help in any way? Why did you waste thirty years? Because in six years Buddha became enlightened, in twelve years Mahavira became enlightened. In thirty years you would have become doubly enlightened!’ (laughter)

But people are interested in very silly things, and very seriously interested; he was very serious. He became very angry when I said it. He never forgave me – for his whole life he remained against me.

Remember not to put your energy into small things. It is good to fulfill your necessary needs but then the whole energy has to move towards god.

Prem means love, Amido is a Japanese name of Buddha. Buddha’s Sanskrit name is Amitabh. It means: infinite light; from Amitabh it became Amida in Japan. Now I am making it Amido. The full name will mean: a loving buddha – which is very rare. Lovers ordinarily don’t become buddhas and buddhas are not very loving... but this has to be done this time! (much laughter) Become a loving buddha. Love and awareness should be like two wings.

In the past, the people who followed the path of awareness neglected the path of love. They became greatly enlightened but they also became dry. Their enlightenment was beautiful but the beauty was that of a desert, the expanse of the desert and the silence... but it was of the desert. Nothing blooms, no bird ever sings a song. The silence remains undisturbed. It is kind of dull, stale, because without sound, silence becomes dull. Without the polar opposite, everything becomes dull: if there is no woman, the man becomes dull; if there is no man the woman becomes dull. The other, the polar opposite, keeps challenging, keeps life moving. The polar opposite keeps life a dynamic process. When the opposite disappears, you relapse, you regress, you become closed.

The desert has its beauty – no doubt about it – but it is a desert all the same. So the people who followed only the path of awareness and did not allow any love to grow in their hearts became enlightened, but their enlightenment could not become a song. It could not explode into a thousand

lotuses. It was empty – beautiful but empty, a beautiful emptiness, a very silent zero. And the people who followed the path of love sang much, danced much, but in their song and in their dance awareness was missing. They had much noise but silence was missing. The noise can be beautiful, it can be very musical, but still, without silence it is tiring; sooner or later it exhausts one. This has happened in the past.

My sannyas has to become a new kind of synthesisa synthesis between love and awareness, a synthesis between Zen and Sufi. And then you have both the wings: the silence of the desert and the songs of a garden, the vastness of the desert and the beauty of the flowers.

[A sannyasin says he doesn’t feel friendly with himself.]

It is one of the greatest problems: to love oneself, to be friends with oneself, to accept oneself in one’s totality. Because the whole society conditions us in such a way that it becomes almost impossible to be friendly with yourself – years and years of conditioning that you are wrong, that as you are you are worthless, that you have to become something else, then only will you be accepted by others. And this starts so early in childhood that when you become a little alert about it, it has already become your foundation.

You can’t remember the day now when you were not rejecting yourself. All along you have been rejecting yourself because parents rejected you, the society rejected you. They were always forcing you to be according to them; nobody has ever allowed you to be yourself. It was not in their interests, it was not according to their investment in you. You have been used as a means, as everybody has been. That means that everybody has been humiliated, badly wounded. The greatest wound is the idea that has soaked in that one is worthless.

And whatsoever you do is never to the point – it never satisfies the people around you. The more you act according to them, the more their demands grow. And those demands are almost neurotic; they cannot be fulfilled, so one is always falling short.

And because your own nature is repressed, you cannot do anything totally – just a part of you goes on doing things, so you don’t enjoy them either. And when you don’t enjoy, your life becomes a drag. Then one starts hating it; one starts thinking ‘For what am I existing? What is the point of it all? Life seems to be meaningless.’

Life is not meaningless. If you are yourself, life has immense meaning. But that has to be learned again. What the society has not done is the work of sannyas – in fact that is the work of real religion: to undo what the society has done, and to do what the society has not done, to allow you to be yourself, to help you to accept yourself.

Once you accept yourself, you start coming closer to your body. When the acceptance is deep you are one with your body. Many diseases simply disappear when you are totally accepting of your body and your being. And man need -not be neurotic. No animal is neurotic except man, because no animal is brought up according to a certain pattern; every animal is allowed freedom. Man needs the same kind of freedom.

Just co-operate with me – it is going to happen. My whole teaching is simply this: accept yourself, love yourself, respect yourself, worship yourself, celebrate yourself. That is the only way to pray to

god. When you bloom in joy, that is prayer; there is no other prayer. This is not selfishness and this is not immoral. In fact, all that is great and good arises out of this self-centering.

Just move through a few groups and go on reminding me. We will undo it! It is hanging around your shoulders very heavily – it has to be dropped.…

[A sannyasin says she was experiencing a wild crazy exuberance for a month; afterwards she felt a low energy which she did not want to accept.]

It has been of great help – it has cleansed you, it has purified you. Your face has a different quality; a different grace has happened. It was real catharsis, and went very deep and much rubbish has been thrown out. And after one throws so much rubbish, one almost always falls ill. It is tiring. It is like going through an operation. That rubbish had almost become part of your being. Mm, it is like peeling your skin. It is not just like undressing – it is like peeling skin. It was part of you, and it had become joined, welded, so it was hard, painful. And when it was all dropped, you suddenly felt empty.

It was not low energy. It is just as when you have fever you feel great energy. When the fever goes, you feel low energy. It was not low energy – that fever was not great energy; it was just a feverish state. That was a kind of inner purification. You went through a fire and you have come out of it very safe. So don’t feel that it is low energy. You will have to learn to live on this level. That was a feverish state.

And no need to start acting out again and doing those things... no need. You may enjoy it but that will become a habit. There is no need – your energy is perfect now. Do something else instead.

Every night before you go to sleep, thirty minutes of gibberish will be good. Sit silently first for two, three minutes, then start. Allow it if any sound comes, any nonsense words pop up. Go on saying them... and enjoy it. And not at a feverish pitch but as if you are singing a lullaby or a song. Don’t make it feverish; let it be a deep deep, comforting energy, nourishing, sing-song. Enjoy, sway; if you feel like dancing, dance. But everything has to be very graceful – that you have to remember. It has not to become cathartic. Dance a very very graceful dance, sing a song. And if the gibberish comes, that too has to be very musical, melodious. Soon, within two, three days, you will get into it. Now catharsis is not needed.

This will help... this will be a kind of vitamin. So what you are feeling – a little empty and a little low energy – will disappear. But you did well. It is a difficult task – what I had given to you was difficult, people can become very frightened – but you went in and in. You kept your courage and you kept your trust in me. Because these are the moments when the trust is tested. If you lose trust, you can go mad, because then trust is your only support. That is the only thread that keeps you sane. If that is broken, then there is nothing to hold onto.

But you did really well – I am happy. Now, from tonight, start this: very very graceful energy expression, mm?

[Osho gives a sannyasin an energy darshan and then asks her: What are you doing nowadays? She replies: I’m just here.]

That’s very good – that’s all that is needed. If you are just here much is going to happen – just by being here. Be totally here! Forget everything else as if the world does not exist at all. Let this become your whole world so that the mind is no more distracted anywhere. And the more you become present to my presence, the more and more life will start moving into unknown dimensions.

Those unknown dimensions are not very far away. They run parallel to the known, just like a railroad track: the rails run together, very close although never meeting. You can jump from one rail to the other but you can go on following one rail for your whole life and you will never meet the other, because that remains parallel. So is the case.…

The known world is one rail; the unknown world is just by the side. One step and you can be in another kind of reality, a separate reality. But you can go on following this same track forever and ever – you will never meet the other. And it was never far away; it was parallel, but very close.

So the more you are here – not only physically, but spiritually – and the more you feel my presence, you are taking a jump from one track to another track. Once you have entered into the other track, suddenly the whole life changes its colour. It is a different world – the same world – and the trees are greener and the roses are rosier. God is not something else. God is the same world looked at from a different vision. The world is really psychedelic, very colourful.

Just go on falling more and more into this presence, into this. This – this is it!

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