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‌CHAPTER 26

26 June 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

It means ‘only consciousness’. Nothing else exists but consciousness, and all else that appears to exist is only appearance.

Just one hundred years ago Friedrich Nietzsche declared ‘God is dead.’ Those were the days of great enthusiasm for materialists. Science was evolving, exploding, and man was full of great hope that now he had come to the solution of all problems, god was no more needed, man had come of age. God was a childish idea, a hang-up from childhood, a primitive concept. It was no more needed, it could easily be discarded. But within these hundred years just the opposite has happened: god has not died, god has become more and more important. On the contrary, matter is dead and materialism means nothing today. It is absolutely absurd, because the deeper physics has gone into matter, the more the revelation appeals that there is nothing like matter; matter is only an appearance.

But this has been the finding of the mystics since the Vedas, the ancientmost findings of the mystics, that matter is illusory, just appearance. Because we cannot see deep enough, we become deluded by it. If we go deeper into reality, even into the reality of matter, matter starts dissolving. Modern physics says it is all energy, not matter at all. That is a great step. Mystics have taken one further step also: they say that if you go deeper into energy you will find energy also does not exist. Then what is left is consciousness.

These are the three things: matter, energy, consciousness. Consciousness is the centre, the innermost core of reality; matter, the outermost circumference, and energy the in-between bridge. Just one hundred years ago scientists were denying any reality to energy; their whole emphasis was on matter. Now that emphasis has completely changed – matter has absolutely disappeared: not god, but matter. Now to be a materialist nowadays is simply to show your stupidity. It means that one is not aware of what has happened in the world of science.

But this is not the end – one step more, because ultimately one has to come to know ‘Who is this seeker? Who is the observer? Who is the witness?’ We can understand all that is outside, but one day finally we have to understand the one who understands.

Science can explain everything except the scientist; but that will remain the problem. Science cannot explain the scientist himself, who is the source of all science. And the moment you start moving into the scientist’s inner world, you are bound to stumble upon consciousness.

So this is the declaration of all the mystics of the world Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan, Jain, Buddhist chinmathro: only consciousness is.

Let your journey into sannyas begin with this declaration. Prem means love, swastika means well-being.

Love is a benediction, it is well-being. Without love the soul remains hungry. Without love the soul remains without roots and one starts withering. With love there is a subtle nourishment; it is food for the soul. And the difference has to be understood: when the body needs food you have to take food into you, and when the soul needs food, you have to give love. It is by giving that the soul is nourished; it is by getting that the body is nourished. Their language is different, diametrically opposite.

So people who become too body-oriented, start forgetting the language of the soul. They become hoarders; and then they don’t know how to love, because love means overflowing. If it means anything, it simply means giving yourself away, sharing, just like a cloud shares its water with the earth or a flower shares its fragrance with the winds.

Love grows by giving – that’s its fundamental secret. Everybody wants love, but without understanding the fundamental secret everybody remains loveless. And the problem arises because we go on using the body language for the soul language. The body lives by taking in; the soul lives by giving out. The body is a beggar; the soul is an emperor.

You may have heard the word swastika because Adolf Hitler chose it as his symbol, but he simply destroyed the whole beauty of the symbol. The symbol is of immense creativity – he used it in the service of destruction; but he learned the symbol from the East. It is the oldest symbol in the world and of immense value.

It means your life energy has to well up and flow. When you become an overflowing source of energy, only then can one know who one is. Then only does one know that god is, because only that overflowing energy can meet with the overflowing energy of god.

To see god, to feel god, we have to be a little bit like him. He is the creator; we have to be creators. He is the giver of all; we have to be givers. He gives without any conditions; we have also to learn to give without conditions. His only joy is sharing; that has to be our joy too.

And this I call prayer: not the prayer that is done in the temples and the churches, but the prayer that a loving heart grows in its being.

[A sannyasin is going to the West and says she doesn’t know exactly what will happen.]

Something good is bound to happen! Always wait for something good and it happens, because whatsoever happens, we create. In fact we create it; we sow the seeds. That is the meaning of your name, Beeja – it means the seed. Whatsoever happens, we are the sowers of the seeds, but we sow the seeds unconsciously, that’s why we think that some accident has happened.

Accidents never happen, nothing is ever accidental. It is a cosmos, it is not a chaos. Everything is absolutely based on a fundamental ultimate law: nothing ever goes wrong. Yes, sometimes it looks to us as if it has gone wrong, because we were expecting something else. That is one of the problems of the human mind to be solved: we do one thing – we sow one seed and we expect something else. We sow the seeds of one kind of flower and we expect some other kind of flower, so when the flowers come we are frustrated. But flowers come through the seeds, not our wishes.

So always remember it: we constantly create our world. There are people who are constantly afraid that something wrong is going to happen – then it happens! And when it happens, they are proved right. But in fact they have made it happen. It is not vice versa: that it has happened and they are proved right. Because they were thinking, constantly thinking, constantly creating the pulsation of it, the seed of it, it has happened. People who are afraid will always find situations in which fear grips them. People who are loving will always find situations where love blooms. Because this existence goes on giving you that which you project.

Life is man’s project. We are our life’s creators. God has created man, but as freedom. So there is an essential freedom inside; now it is up to you to choose what you would like to happen to you in life and then you will see that it starts happening. One thing is linked with another, one thing leads to another, and slowly slowly you have taken a certain route; then all other alternatives are dropped.

When a child is born, all the alternatives are open; he is utterly free. He can be a musician, he can be a poet, he can be a wrestler, he can be a politician – he can be anything... an Adolf Hitler, a Gautam Buddha; anything is possible. But sooner or later choices start coming and he starts moving in a certain direction. Then that direction remains his world.

So always remember: whatsoever has happened to you, you have been the cause of it. Sometimes it hurts that you are the cause of all the misery that has happened to you; you feel sad. But there is no need to feel sad, because through it you come to an understanding, and then things need not happen the same way again to you. You can change, you can manage your life in a different way. You can live in a different way, you can be a different person, a totally different person!

And the second thing to be remembered: for whatsoever happens whether it hurts, gives pain, or whether it makes you happy – always feel thankful, because sometimes pain is needed for growth and pleasure is not needed. So whatsoever happens, make it an opportunity to grow. Use that opportunity as a jumping board for something higher.

A friend dies – there is pain, there is anguish and misery, but use that opportunity. Meditate on death. Everybody is going to die. So remember that death is always there; don’t forget it. Your friend’s death has reminded you of a very very significant phenomenon that death is there. Don’t arrange your life without taking note of death – that is the reminder in it. Maybe god has given you a

message to get ready: the friend is gone, you will be gone one day, so prepare for death! One has to learn from death as much or even more than one has to learn from life, because life is small, death is vast. Life is a small affair, a seventy-year affair in which one-third will be gone in sleep, another one-third will be gone in earning bread and butter, another one-third in other stupiditiesNothing

much is left! It is not a big thing – it is a very small phenomenon; compared to death it is nothing. Death is eternity.

And we prepare for life – we send the children to the school and the college and the university – for twenty-five years. If they are going to live to seventy-five, we give one-third for preparation. What preparation do we make for death? And we are going on such a long journey. What provisions are there? How are we ready for it?

So when a friend dies, it is a reminder to now become aware – death is there, you cannot just forget it. And by forgetting, nothing is helped – it is bound to come! Don’t be like the ostrich. You can hide yourself from death but death is going to come; whether you hide or not makes no difference. In fact, if you don’t hide yourself you may be better able to face it, to live it. And those who have lived death have attained to the immortal, because the immortal can be known only through death. It is only in death that one comes to see that there is something inside which never dies.

So when a friend dies, meditate over death. Think about your own life, think about the priorities again – how you have been wasting your life. Rearrange it, give it a new style and a new shape in which death becomes a prominent thing. Let it be arranged around death, and then you have used the opportunity.

So even if sometimes you feel that things are not as they should be, use that opportunity. This is what I call the creative way of the sannyasin: using all kinds of possibilities and transforming their quality.

[A sannyasin says:: I haven’t been doing the meditation you gave meIt just makes me feel really

very tense.]

But it will be of immense help. And if you go into it, only in the beginning for a few days will it create much tension. It will stir up all the tensions that you are holding in your stomach. You have repressed many many things... so they are there in the stomach. That is the only empty space where we go on stuffing. So when you do the meditation your whole body will shake, because those repressed emotions will start coming up. It will be like an earthquake.

Do you know how a certain Christian sect started being called the ‘Quakers’? – because of this energy. There were two famous groups – one is not so alive now, but both were because of this energy: Quakers and Shakers.

The society goes on repressing. In fact the real function of a temple is to provide a place where you can go and cathart, where you can throw all the rubbish that the society has forced on you. And society has to force things because it has to think of so many things. It cannot pay attention to each individual singly – it has to look to the collectivity. And when you live with many people you cannot be absolutely free, so many things are bound to be inhibited. Those inhibited things drive people crazy. But if they can be allowed, soon you will feel such relaxation coming to you as you have never felt before.

And I can understand: you become afraid too, because the shaking comes so violently that one starts feeling afraid of whether one is going crazy or what, and whether one will be able to come back if one goes into it too much. It will hurt your body too because the whole musculature will have to change. That energy will knock on the old musculature. The doors have remained closed; it will try to open the lid. And it will be tiring for the body, but only for a few days. Once the lid has opened and the vapour is released, you will start feeling so light, as if you can fly...

But you have to continue, mm? Make it a point to do it. And I think for six weeks you should persist and then it will be gone; then you will be really free from an inner bondage.

This is the phenomenon which in the past people used to think of as being possessed by a ghost or something. It is nothing – just your own suppressed energy.

[A sannyasin says: A couple of weeks ago you gave me a gibberish meditation to open up my throat and things started to happen.]

It can become almost a psychedelic trip.…

It can release the natural psychedelics in you! It is one of the most ecstatic meditations ever. As you go into it, get more and more ecstatic with it. If your body starts moving, your hands start moving, gestures happen and you feel like standing up or jumping or dancing, allow it. Let your whole body and being say it. And get deeper and deeper into it – be possessed by it. Within just twenty to thirty minutes you will be totally in a different world – the mind will stop.

This is the only way to stop the constant gibberish of the mind. It is as if a child is very restless and you say to him ‘Sit down, sit quietly’ and he cannot. But the best way is to tell him to go around the block seven times, and then he comes back panting and breathing hard. You say to him ‘One round more’ and he says ‘No, I am tired’ and he sits silently. That’s what happens.

Give the mind a chance to go into gibberish deliberately. That’s what it is continuously doing, but very slowly, subtly and subterranean, like an underground current. When you give it a chance to go full speed, within thirty minutes it is emptied out, and that emptying is a great experience. Those few moments that follow will be of meditation.

[Another sannyasin and her partner are returning to the West. She has tension in her throat, so Osho suggests that gibberish will be helpful for her too.]

It simply means that you have not said things that you always wanted to say, that you have been repressing your thoughts, your expressions, that you have not been true, that you have been polite, sophisticated, that you have not been natural.

This will help you. So start gibberish, do it for twenty minutes. And after gibberish, just lie down on the floor as if you are lying down with stretched hands on your mother’s breast, facing the earth; lie down and relax. You will suddenly feel a great energy movement in the throat.

Many many people are suffering from that, because very few people gather courage to say what they want to say – it is so risky. And women particularly suffer very much because they have been

taught to say this and not to say that, and always to be in such a way, to behave in such a way... They have been taught to remain angels, so the real animal inside feels very suffocated. Give it a chance and the throat will relax. If the throat relaxes you will find many things changing in you.

Once the energy moves from the throat it reaches to the third eye centre, and that is the place where it should reach. But if it is stuck at the throat it will not reach to the third eye. And when it reaches to the third eye, great experiences of light and jubilation and visions arrive... when the energy reaches to the third eye. And beyond the third there is only one more centre; this is the fifth centre. In a way this is good, because there are many people who are hanging around the first centre. Their whole life is moving around the sex centre and nowhere else; for twenty-four hours they are thinking of sex and nothing else.

It is good that the energy is in the throat, but if it doesn’t move up, it can start moving down; it becomes a short-circuit.

How do you feel when you make love? Do you know whether the tension disappears?... But you don’t have an orgasm? Or is it difficult?

[She answers: Yes.]

That will be the reason. Then the energies cannot move either this way or that way; it is simply stuck there. Gibberish will help in both ways: it will make the energy move through the whole span – from the first to the sixth at least – and that very movement gives a new feel of being. One feels more rooted and centred.

Start doing it. It will look a little crazy, but only for a few days, and after that it gives such joy that one doesn’t care.

[A sannyasin says: Many times when I’m in situations or with people, I cannot see the beauty in it, you know. I always see the dirt, the bad in it, and I just cannot see any more the flower, just the dirt. If I get a lot of energy, a lot of fun in life I just kill it... I can’t see. In parties I just see the ‘blah, blah’ and I can’t enjoy it.]

It is just that you have a very very intelligent mind, and with intelligent people that is the problem: they cannot enjoy; everything seems below them. Mm? everything is dirt and useless. Intelligent people become very very clever in condemning things; they cannot appreciate anything. If you tell them ‘Look at the moon’, they will say ‘So what? What is there?’ And they have destroyed it! It is very easy to criticise, and there is no way to prove that the moon has beauty. If you are not willing to see it, there is simply no way to prove that there is any beauty. Just those two words ‘So what?’ are enough to destroy the whole beauty. All the poets are cancelled just those two words ‘So what?’ You have cancelled so easily all the great efforts that man has made. To create is very difficult, to criticise is very simple. Even to write two lines of poetry is difficult. But one can see Shakespeare or Milton or Tennyson and can say ‘What is that? What is there? I don’t see any poetry.’ And there is no way to show it. This has to be understood.

You can stand by the side of a lotus pond and you can say ‘I don’t see anything much. It is all mud and water and the lotus is also nothing but a growth of mud!’ And there is no way, nobody can prove

that there is anything there. But you will be at a loss. The lotus is not at a loss if you call it mud; the lotus doesn’t care. But your life will become muddy – you will be surrounded with mud, and your condemnations and your criticisms, and you will live in hell. A critic lives in hell. And those who know how to praise live in heaven.

It is said in all the religious books of the world that the only work done in heaven by the angels is praising god: hallelujah! They go on praising god.… For twenty-four hours? No other work? Many people have raised questions about it, but my feeling is that it is a very significant fact told in those stories – that angels do nothing else. They dance, they sing on their harps and they praise god!

In fact, this is just a way of saying... What exactly is said is that those who pray and praise for twenty-four hours live in heaven, they live with god. Seeing a rose flower, you praise god, seeing the sun rise, you praise god, seeing a bird on the wing, you praise god, seeing a beautiful woman pass, you praise god, the giggle of a child and you praise god. Then you are full of praise and flowers start blooming all around and it is always spring, all the year round!

[A sannyasin says: Many times I feel so empty because of all the things just leaving... Sometimes when I do Kundalini I come out of it and everything has such a deep and brilliant colour.]

It has! We have just lost the eyes to see those brilliant colours. Everything is brilliant because it is so full of god. But we don’t see – we are almost blind. Scientists say we see only two percent; ninety-eight percent we are blind. Our sensitivity is almost nil. We hear just a little bit, we see just a little bit; we touch, taste, smell just a little bit. It is the minimum, and life becomes ecstasy only at the maximum. Then trees are so green; you have never seen such greenery, a luminous green. And everything is really brilliant. Even small pebbles are not pebbles but diamonds. They have to be, because the existence is full of god.

Something beautiful is happening – just allow it. Don’t try to control it in any way, let it happen. But continue Kundalini, make it a regular phenomenon. And whenever is possible, also do the music group in the night. Just dance, sing; nothing else to be worried about. And that block is disappearing – it will disappear. It is just a very thin layer now. And enjoy!

Many times you will forget who you are, so don’t be worried about that. Whenever it is needed, you will remember; whatsoever is needed will be remembered. When the children need you, you will remember you are a mother. And when they don’t need you, what is the point of being a mother? A mother is just a function; it is not your identity.

People become so identified with their functions. Somebody becomes an engineer, somebody becomes a doctor, somebody becomes a mother, somebody a father, a husband – but these are all functions. How can one be a husband twenty-four hours a day? When he makes love to his woman he is a husband. When you take care of the children you are a mother. It is all momentary and fluid. And one should remain available to change from one thing to another in these fluid moments.

A man is a thousand things! When you are talking to a friend you are not a mother. When you are working in the office you are not a friend. A man has to be a thousand and one things. But people become very identified with one thing; then they become tethered, and that creates trouble. There are women who become so much mothers that even with their husbands they are no more wives;

they go on mothering the husbands. Or they become so much wives that even with their children they are coquettish. These are subtle currents that go on.

One should be able to come out of functions as fast as possible so that one can fulfill another function and is available and free.

[A Supreme Court Judge tells Osho: the driving force which perhaps brought me here, which has brought me to many places, is the total collapse of my spirit, and my life becoming empty since my wife passed over three years ago... And if life and death are two compartments, could there be communication between these two?]

Everybody has to come to that point sooner or later. One has to see that all is empty, that all was a beautiful dream – the wife and the husband and all the travellings – a beautiful dream, but it has to end. No dream can continue forever.

And one has to understand this emptiness that inevitably comes. The sooner it comes, the better, because only this emptiness will take you inwards. The real search starts only when one begins feeling that life is meaningless. If there is meaning, who bothers? If there is a kind of contentment and things are going and flowing perfectly well and one is succeeding in life and life is full of occupation and ambition, who bothers about truth and god? Only this emptiness makes man seek and search for truth – truth that will abide even beyond death.

This has been a great experience you have passed through, but you are still hankering...

And that’s why you are trying to find out ‘Is there some way to communicate with the people who have gone beyond – some astral way, some subtle communication? Is it possible?’ That means you are still trying to somehow avoid this emptiness. This cannot be avoided, and should not be avoided. One has to go into it rather than avoiding it.

Now, you can get into things like astral travels and ESP and parapsychology; there is a lot of rubbish. You can fill yourself with that and you can again create a little comfort. You can go to mediums and you can have little talks with your wife, but these will be just games. When the real wife could not last, it is absolutely meaningless to base your life again on these games; I call them games.

The moment has come when you have to look into your inner self, and then the going of the wife will not be felt as a curse – it will be felt as a blessing, because if she was there you would have still remained in the same way. Maybe this is a godsent opportunity. It can become a breakthrough.

If you start moving into this emptiness, this will become meditation. Meditation is nothing but entering into emptiness. And if you can enter the very core of your being, all problems will be solved and there will be no more hankering for your wife or for anybody. One simply comes to know one’s eternity. And in that eternity everybody becomes eternal.

You will not find your wife as a separate entity again, because the separate entity exists only with the body and the brain system. The wife is there; but it is as if you break a bulb: the light is still there but you cannot see it because the medium through which it was becoming manifest is no more there. The body is burned, the brain cells gone. Now it is pure consciousness. The wave has disappeared into the ocean.

Rather than thinking of that wave and dreaming about it and going into memories and nostalgia, which is wasting time, because your death will be coming soon... before that you have to prepare.

[The Judge answers: Death has no fear now.]

It is still there. And when your death comes, you will feel afraid. You are consoling yourself; you don’t know. You are believing that there is no death – you want to believe; but this is not your knowing, this is a consolation. We live in consolations. We don’t want to believe that the wife has simply died and there is nothing left, mm? That is too much to bear – it will shake us too much. Just the idea that she is, that the soul is eternal.…

And I am not saying that those ideas are wrong. I am simply saying that those ideas are just ideas for you; they are not yet your experiences. If they are not your experiences, when death comes you will be shaken, because ideas cannot be of any help...

Until you experience them – only then are they valid. Otherwise everybody believes but everybody cries and weeps when somebody dies. Everybody knows, everybody thinks that he knows, but very rarely does a man come to know. Because to know is arduous, to know needs a persistent effort to enter into your own being, which is a dark journey, and one in which one is all alone. And the deeper you go, the more alone you become, because nobody can go with you. Not even the master can go with the disciple. At the ultimate stage you are left alone – pure consciousness – but then you have known, and with that knowing, life becomes a play, a drama. Whether life remains or goes makes no difference; it is immaterial.

But that has not happened. That you can manage to happen, but if you go on believing in these consolations it will not happen. These consolations are dangerous and these consolations are what so-called saints go on giving to people; these are make-believes.

If you are really interested in going into it, then come – come for a longer period. Every possibility is there, because everybody has the potential to know it. But belief is not knowledge; that has to be absolutely understood. Belief is not knowledge. Belief is just belief – borrowed. And yes, it consoles, it keeps one moving. Otherwise life will become so much anguish that one may start thinking of committing suicide or one may go mad; it may be unbearable. These beliefs are like buffers: they protect you. From the too harsh facts of life they protect, they surround you.

[The Judge says: Sort of escapism?]

Sort of escapism. But the truth is there, and the truth is aflame in everybody’s being, and the entry is possible and everybody is capable of going into it. One just has to take the decision and have the courage; one has to start working a little bit.

If you can just give one or two hours every day for meditations, soon you will not need beliefs. And when one knows that one is standing on solid ground, then there is no fear of death, because there is no death. How can there be fear when there is no death?

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