11

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‌CHAPTER 11

11 August 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Prem Rahim. Prem means love, rahim means compassion. Love for those whom you can love.… And I don’t demand the impossible: I don’t say to love all because theat will not be possible. Love is something you cannot manage. Sometimes it clicks and you feel love arising for a person; sometimes it doesn’t click. So love for those you can love and for the remaining, compassion.…

If you cannot love a person, at least you can be compassionate. That’s possible, that is not demanding the impossible. and if you can be compassionate towards a person, sooner or later love will arise. Compassion creates the situation. If you love a person, compassion arises automatically; if you are compassionate towards a person love will arise one day. So it is only a question of from where to begin.

With a certain person you feel in tune, suddenly things fit together. You see the face of the person and you are in love – not that you have thought about it, calculated it. There has been no calculation, no thought... just the vibe. The person just passes by and you know somehow deep down in your heart that you love this person. The love has happened; it happens like a sudden lightning. It is not in the head, it happens in the heart. That’s why the head goes on saying that love is blind, because the head has nothing to do with it. The head thinks, ‘Only I have eyes.’

So I don’t say to love all. When Jesus says, ‘Love your enemies’, he is demanding the impossible, the super-human; it is too much to ask. People don’t love even their friends. What to say about friends? People don’t love even their lovers. What to say about lovers? People don’t even love themselves. Jesus says, ‘Love your enemy as you love yourself,’ but people don’t love themselves! It is a perfect maxim but will not be practical.

I say love your friends and be compassionate to your enemies, and if you are compassionate, enmity will disappear. How can enmity exist in compassion? And when enmity disappears and compassion

has arisen, love will be coming some day; suddenly one day it will be there! So if it happens, good. If it doesn’t happen, you can create the way for it: compassion is the way for it.

Compassion simply means you are a human being and other human beings are just like you – with all the limitations that you have, with all the imperfections that you have, with all the stupidities that you have; they are just like you.

Compassion means you understand yourself; don’t be to hard with people. When a person understands himself his hardness starts disappearing. If somebody is angry and you demand that he not be angry, you say that to be angry is bad, that simply shows that you have not understood your own anger yet. If somebody is full of sexuality and you are hard on him, you cannot forgive him, that simply shows that you have repressed your sexuality; you have not understood it. If you have really understood your sexuality you will be able to accept everybody’s sexuality . . . even those forms which are thought to be perverted. If you have understood your sexuality you will see that those perversions are also human. They exist in your dreams too; they have a certain grip on your unconscious also.

If somebody is too much against homosexuality that simply shows that somewhere deep down he is afraid of being a homosexual, otherwise there is no need to be against it. He will have compassion, he will understand. And somebody who has really gone beyond sex will have immense compassion... even for abnormalities, perversions, because they too are human, they happen. Man is helpless and when they happen, they happen; you cannot just condemn them outright.

This condemnatory attitude has done much wrong to humanity. It has created the saints and the sinners: the condemnors have become saints and the condemned have become sinners. In reality, one who condemns is the greatest sinner. A saint cannot be a condemnator. He will understand, he will forgive, he will have compassion. He will weep with you, he will cry with you, because he will know you; he has known himself. Because he has gone beyond, his understanding is more total He has the vantage point from where he can see the whole human being.

So love those for whom love happens spontaneously, and be compassionate to those for whom love is not happening.…

I was talking about the sufi allegory of Majnu and Laila this morning... It is a sufi story. The seeker is Majnu the lover and Laila is god, the beloved. So Laila is the name for god. Literally it means the night; that too is very significant. God is more like the night than like the day, although many people have been thinking of god as light, as day.

In fact the word ‘day’ comes from the same root as divine, but sufis say god is more like the night because god is a rest, the ultimate rest. God is not action, god is absolute inactivity, passivity. It is silence, not sound: everything goes into deep sleep, into utter rest.

And the night is more infinite than the day. The light always has a boundary, the darkness has no boundaries; it is infinite. The light is temporary, the darkness is eternal; it has always been. To exist the light needs some support, it depends on something. You have to fill the oil in the lamp: when the oil is finished, the light is gone. And so is the case even with the sun. Scientists say sooner or later the fuel will be finished and the sun will be gone. One day the sun will become dark, a dark hole.

Light is limited in time, darkness is timelessness. So literally the word laila means night, and I would like you to get more and more in tune with the night.…

Anand means blissful, and laila means night – blissful night. So get more and more in tune with darkness: whenever you have the opportunity put the lights off, be with darkness. Enjoy it, cherish it, sing it, celebrate it, dance with it. Let night be your meditation... and that is going to lead you very very deep.

[To a new sannyasin, Osho says: You have belonged to me for many lives. This is not the first meeting!]

Nija means self, ananda means bliss. The self is bliss. There is no need to look for it outside, and those who look for it outside, look in vain. Their whole life becomes just a long series of frustrations, because that which we are seeking is hidden inside our own being; that treasure is not somewhere else.

That’s what Jesus means when he goes on saying again and again, ‘The kingdom of god is within you.’ Nijananda means the kingdom of god is within you. There is no need to go anywhere, there is no need to seek anywhere. All that is needed has been provided for already, all that is needed has been already given; it is a gift from god. The day he sends anybody into the world he provides for the whole journey; nothing is lacking.

But we don’t open our inner chest, we don’t look there. We start running outside with speed from here and there, and the more we run, the more we miss. The more we miss, the faster we go, because we think time is short and time is slipping out and we have not arrived yet. Are we going to make it or not?... More tension and more anxiety, and naturally one thinks only one thing – that maybe your speed is not enough so increase it. That has been the way of the worldly: to go on increasing the speed. But it is not a question of speed: it is a question of direction.

One has to be absolutely certain where the treasure is. If it is inside then going outside with all the speed is meaningless. In fact, the more speed you have, the farther away you will be moving from the treasure and it may become very very difficult to come back.

So let this be the declaration from this moment – that there is nowhere to go, no need to seek. One has just to close one’s eyes and dive within.…

The word ‘nija’ has many meanings: one is self, another is individual.When a person is just his own self, when a person has an individuality – when a person lives his way, in his own way, lives his life in his own way, when a person doesn’t try to fit with any mould, with any pattern provided by others, when a person has freedom – then he has individuality. And God loves individuals. God does not love the mass-product at all; he has no joy from people who are carbon copies of others. He wants the original and he has given everybody an original face. He never repeats, he never creates two individuals alike... not even two pebbles alike, not even two leaves alike.

Unique is his love, so those who want to be loved by god should become unique. There is no other prayer: just be unique and your prayer is heard. Just be unique and you need not go to god, god comes to you. By being unique, one earns, one becomes worthy; that too is the meaning of ‘nija’.

Sanskrit words are very liquid words: they have many meanings, meaning within meaning. It is a very poetic language, very fluid, flowing. Only when you are an individual are you blissful. The misery is always because we have not been able to assert our being.We have sold it for small things: respectability, ego, prestige, power, money, or security, comfort, convenience. For small things, for trivia, we have sold our individuality – and once individuality is gone, the soul is gone; then man is a mechanism.

My whole approach is individualistic. And my message to my sannyasins is: be unique, be individuals. Live your life the way you feel to live it... be rebels! There is no need to be too ready to fit into any mould. If you choose and if it is your joy it is perfectly good, otherwise there is no need... For no other reason, for no other motive should one fit into anything. If one feels this is the thing that one would like to be, then it’s okay. Then it is no more a slavery; it is freedom.

If you choose even hell out of freedom, you will be happy there, and if you are forced into heaven without your choice, without your will, then you will be unhappy there. So hell and heaven are not places; they are certain spaces within. When one accepts something, welcomes something of one’s own accord, heaven arises. One may remain a beggar, but if one has chosen that, then there is joy. One may become a millionaire and if one has not chosen it of one’s own accord, has been pulled, forced, manipulated, pushed... the parents, the wife, the children; the society, the priests, the politicians – a thousand and one manipulators are there... if one has been pulled like a puppet, one can have all the riches the world can give and one will be unhappy, one will be in hell.

So from this moment assert your uniqueness, your individuality, your bliss. Nothing is lacking, all is already there. Good!

[A sannyasin says that he gets very depressed and withdrawn sometimes.]

I don’t feel that those are depressions; I think you have a wrong interpretation of your states. That’s just a need for meditation – just a need to be alone, left alone, within yourself. You are a very introverted person and you are trying too much to be extrovert; that creates the trouble. Those are not depressions at all. You have a great need to be with yourself sometimes, just to be alone within yourself. If you don’t fulfill that need you will feel depression. You will be hungry for it but you pull yourself out of it – and it is a basic need for you.

It is just as if an extroverted person is told to sit in the room and do zazen. He will feel very depressed. He will feel he is almost going mad. He will say ‘What is happening? I want to relate and go to the club and to the restaurant and talk to people, and to the movie and this and that. A thousand and one things have to be done; what am I doing here just sitting silently? How can one sit silently?’

He needs activity; he wants to relate, he wants to move. He will be very much in difficulty: he will have to keep himself repressed, only then can he be there. Exactly the same happens to an introverted person if he is continuously trying to relate and talk and see people and do things.…

You are not an extrovert. Once you understand who you are then things become easier. So it is good: when you can relate, good, but don’t force. It is perfectly okay if you don’t want to look at people, it is perfectly okay. That’s what this commune is for: we have to allow everybody his being. It is perfectly okay... tell [your girlfriend] also.

And enjoy it. Nothing is wrong in it. What is wrong in being with oneself? What is wrong in being with closed eyes ? All the great meditators come from such people; you can become a great meditator!

Your interpretation is wrong – drop it. Start enjoying it, and after one month tell me again, mm? Good!

[A sannyasin says that two days ago he had said something to Osho and later felt uncomfortable about it. He feels there is something unconscious hanging around him.]

Then there is no need; forget about it!...

There is no need – you can say anything to me and you can change it! No need to be worried about it. In the first place I always forget what you say so you can change! I keep no accounts, no notes – nothing! And whatsoever you say I will believe that that is what you must have told me before. Don’t be worried about it, mm?

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