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CHAPTER 4
4 August 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
[Osho explains the meaning of deva maneeshi, divine wisdom, explaining the difference between the western and eastern ideas of a wise man.]
Wisdom has nothing to do with thinking or knowledge. In fact just the contrary is the case: when thinking disappears there is wisdom. It is not the ultimate in thinking but the absencewhen the
knower is no more, when the self cannot be found, when suddenly there is a state of no-self and the mind is spinning no more, no more weaving its old patterns. All has become utterly silent, still; there is no noise of any kind. of course there is no knowledge and no not-knowing; it is really utter silence. that utter silence we call maneesha.that utter silence is wisdom.
Man is like an onion: you can go on peeling layer upon layer, layer upon layer, and finally nothing is left. That nothing is god, and to come to that nothing is maneesha.
[The new sannyasin says:... my being is here to absorb from you and that hopefully my ego will refrain from questioning you.]
First: don’t make an effort to do that – the very effort will be self-defeating. If you try not to question you start repressing questions. the more you repress, the more they become vital; the more you repress, the deeper they go in you. Where are you going to repress them? Repression is very suicidal. When you repress something you start sitting upon it, you put your whole weight on it. You force it deep into the unconscious and then it becomes more dangerous.
Yes, it is good to get rid of it but the way is not to deny it; the way is to accept it.…
Accept it, go through it. If some truth is here then your doubts will disappear. I don’t demand trust; it comes! A demanded trust is a false trust. It creates at the most, belief. Belief means that deep
down the doubt exists. Because you wanted to believe you believe... but it is not trust. Trust is when even if you don ’t want to believe, you have to believe. Trust is when you cannot do anything about it except believe it.
You believe in god because you don’t know. Belief is out of ignorance and it creates a kind of knowledge. It gives you a feeling as if you know because you believe!
I don’t require any belief; in fact I am against all belief systems. So you are not to believe in me and you are not to disbelieve in me either. Remain open. That’s what the meaning of being a sannyasin is: to remain open.
Belief is belief, so is disbelief. Disbelief is anti-belief, a negative belief, a belief from the other extreme, but it is a belief. When somebody says ‘I believe in god’, he believes in god and when somebody says ‘I don’t believe in god’, he believes, he still believes; he believes in the non-existential god. a communist is as much a believer as a catholic.
Once a man came to Sri Aurobindo and asked him, ‘Do you believe in god?’ And aurobindo said a flat ‘no’. He said ‘I don’t believe in god!’
The man was puzzled. He had come from far away, thinking that this man was a man of god – and he said he didn’t even believe in god. For a moment he was shocked and then he said, ‘I cannot believe my ears! What are you saying? – you don’t believe in god? I have come in search for a man of god, I have been waiting and been thirsting for you for so long.’
And aurobindo said, ‘Yes, I don’t believe in god because I know that god is... but that is not my belief! I cannot believe... because god is!’
Nobody believes in the sun, in the moon, because they are. People believe in god and angels and devils and this and that, because they are not. You are simply creating belief systems to cling to.
So my whole approach is very very scientific. And I know that one has to go beyond science but one has to go through it. My approach is absolutely logical: although I lead people towards the illogical, it is through the logic; it is not against logic. The illogical is not against the logical, it is not anti-logic. It is beyond the logical, it is super-logical. But logic has to be used, has to be used very very artfully.
So one has not to believe in me. There is no need to believe, no need to disbelieve. Simply remain open, simply be available to me, that’s all. And availability does not require any belief. In fact when you believe, you are no more available; you have already become closed. You have concluded that this man is right. Now there is no need to explore.
[The sannyasin asks: It’s an intellectual thing rather than a feeling thing; is that what you’re saying?] Now there is no need to explore; you become closed. You know that.In fact you will be afraid
to explore. If exploration proves to be something else, if exploration brings you something which
disturbs your belief, then ?
So, a man of belief cannot explore. He has something at stake – his belief. If you believe in me then you are no more available to me. It is exactly the same as the person who does not believe in me
and has a disbelief. He is closed, he is not ready to explore, he will not accept my invitation to come into me, to be with me. He will say ‘I don’t believe in you so why should I come?’ And the same is the case with the believer. He says, ‘I already believe in you so what is the point of exploring you ? Why should I ? Why should I take this trouble? I am already your follower, I believe in you.’ Both are closed people.
Just in the middle, when there is no belief and no disbelief, one is ready. [The sannyasin asks: Is that the feeling stage?]
Yes, in fact, only then are you as a total being available. It is not only the feeling state, it is your totality. Your mind is there, your feeling is there, your body is there. Your body, heart, mind – all are there, because you are ready to go for a journey. The feeling only cannot go for a journey, the thinking only cannot go for a journey, the body only cannot go for a journey. Only you will have to go totally, as an organic unity.
So I will not say that it is feeling, because again the same problem arises. People think that feeling is better than thinking. The total is better than a part... and that is a totally different thing. I want to take you totally with me: if your feeling goes then your thinking will lag behind and sooner or later will be back. If only your body is with me then your heart will feel repressed; your heart will feel rejected and it will give trouble to you. When you come with me totally nothing is left behind – and that’s what openness is!
So no need to believe, no need to drop any questions. If they arise, they are perfectly good, welcome... all questions are welcome. One has to go through them. When you have really gone through them they disappear; when they disappear there is trust.
[The sannyasin replies: I didn’t have any questions.]
No, no, if sometimes they arise that is another thing; if they don’t come that is perfectly good, that is beautiful. But if they come, don’t push them aside; that’s what I am saying. I am not saying to create them, I am not saying that you have to ask – there is no need – but what I am trying to make clear to you is that all is accepted here. Even your doubt is accepted and welcomed. It is your doubt! I don’t deny anything.
Even if sometimes you feel rebellious, resistant, rejecting of me, that is accepted; that is perfectly okay... that is human! You cannot love me for twenty-four hours a day. I don’t demand any inhuman thing from anybody because inhuman goals are destructive; then guilt arises and guilt is poison.
If I demand of you that you love me for twenty-four hours a day and you cannot, it is just not possible right now... One day it becomes possible, but that has nothing to do with you. You cannot do it, you cannot manage it; one day it starts happening. Then it is a totally different thing. But you cannot manage it: if you try to manage, more difficulties will be there.
So sometimes when you feel negative, it is perfectly okay.…
Accept that too because that is your night part. You cannot be a day for twenty-four hours; one needs a little rest. One even tires of love and trust. Mm ? you trust me in the morning and by the
evening you are against me and you are thinking, ‘For what have I come ? I should go back!’ That’s natural! By the morning again you will be thirsty. By and by you will learn that both are meaningful; it is a rhythm: the positive and the negative polarity.
And I don’t say cling to the positive, because that will be half, and I don’t say cling to the negative; that will be again half. What I am saying is: if you watch the polarity – the positive, and the negative, the day and the night, and the summer and winter – if you go on watching, watching, one day suddenly something clicks: you are separate, you are the watcher. You are neither belief nor disbelief.
That is the point of transcendence, that is the point of freedom... that’s the goal. That’s wisdom too! That’s the whole of theosophy.
Anand means bliss, anu means atom – a small atom of bliss... and that’s all that is needed: if one can become a small atom of bliss then all is achieved. We are atoms in the body of god, very tiny atoms. If our tiny atoms can learn how to dance and sing and be blissful – that’s what makes us part of the divine bliss – then we become part of the great harmony.
When we are miserable we are out of god because god is bliss; by being miserable we separate ourselves from him. When we are angry we are out of him; when we are full of jealousy we are out of him. Not that he expels us... we expel ourselves. The moment we are again in harmony, in love, in joy, we become part of the greater harmony.
All that one needs is to learn how to be joyful. And that is one of the calamities that has happened to humanity: religions have made people more sad rather than making them more joyful. They have made people feel guilty. They have made the whole life a serious affair.
Christians say that Jesus never laughed; I cannot believe that Jesus never laughed. A man of that quality must have carried laughter with him the whole of his life, but the way that christians have painted Jesus is sad. This is not possible. How can one who knows god be sad ?
Hindus are far better in their depiction: Krishna is with a flute, arrayed in a dancing robe, with a crown of peacock feathers and surrounded by beautiful women... and dancing! That seems to be truer... it makes more sense because it makes more celebration possible.
To be religious is to be in celebration; that’s what I teach. Long faces should disappear. More dancing, more singing, more joy, should enter the soul because that is the only door from where we again become one with god; again we contact the divine. And it is so all over.…
The stars go on dancing and moving and the trees and the birds and the oceans, the sun and the moon. Except for man the whole of nature is full of bliss, ecstatic. Except for man the whole of nature is psychedelic... and primitive man was also psychedelic. The primitive societies knew no other religion than dancing. Dance was their religion and dance was their prayer and dance was their door to god. The more sophisticated man became, the more civilised. The churches started looking like very gloomy places. Laughter died... smiles disappeared.
So that has to be remembered... and that is the meaning of your name anand anu. Anu means atom, the smallest particle which cannot be divided any more. Man is the smallest particle of
consciousness – it cannot be divided any more, it is indivisible; that is the meaning of the word ‘individual’.
Now this indivisible atom of consciousness can exist in two ways: it can exist in sadness – then it is in the world – it can exist in bliss; then it is in god. These are just two styles possible, and the same energy is needed for both. The same energy not allowed to move becomes stagnant, stale, creates sadness. The same energy allowed, expressed, flowering, overflowing, becomes bliss.
So one can forget religion, one can forget all religious dogmas if one can remember only one thing: how to live joyously, cheerfully, how to live a life of laughter. Then all else follows on its own.
God comes one day and takes you unawares, but he comes only when there is absolute joy. In that absolute joy you are in tune, bridged. That is the orgasm that hindus have called samadhi: the drop has fallen back into the ocean.
[The new sannyasin says she has been in psychoanalysis for seven years.]
Very good! That’s great – that you survived!... It is a good exercise in absurdity, it is a good exercise! If one can afford, it is fun... but meaningless.
But that has become the religion in the West.… Mm, many people are addicted to it now.…
It is because you just go on throwing your rubbish. How long can you do it? Unless you are very creative and very inventive you get fed up sooner or later! Mm ? one cannot go on and on.
But good – one can learn a few things from it. A quality of detached observation arises. One starts feeling a little more distant from one’s own mind, and one starts looking at the mechanism of how the mind functions. Many things change just by this looking – not that psychoanalysis changes anything: just by looking at the mind it happens... and that looking is meditation.
It is futile to go so long; what they do in years can be done very easily within months and sometimes not even in years.
[A sannyasin says he did a group with a sannyasin therapist in the West and felt he was going more and more crazy]
It is good sometimes to go crazy. It gives you a different taste of life and it helps you remain sane. People who never go crazy arc in danger. Sometimes they can go and then they will never be back. They will accumulate so much craziness in them that when it explodes it will be like an atomic explosion: it will kill them or at least will kill their sanity forever.
It is very good sometimes to go for a holiday. Craziness is the greatest holiday possible; it is the real holiday. You drop the whole world of sanity for a few hours or for a few days and you enter a different kind of reality, a separate reality. It is very good to enjoy that and come back. Then this world seems new, fresh, again an adventure and again you can be in a honeymoon with the world.
Once you learn how to get out of it and into it, you can do it every day for a few minutes or a few hours; just for one hour one slips back into a crazy world. It is a different dimension, and very relaxing.
In fact that is what you are doing every night when you are dreaming: you slip into a crazy world – very absurd, a world of fantasy with no logic, with no mathematics. The sanest people are those who have the craziest dreams. By the morning they are back into the world, relaxed, refreshed, and all the tensions that ordinarily one accumulates in life are relaxed in the world of dream.
It was thought before that if somebody was forced not to go into sleep for a few days he would go mad, but the latest research says it is not lack of sleep that drives people mad, it is lack of dreaming. If you disturb people’s dream within a few days they will start having fantasies with open eyes; that’s what happens to mad people.
If we can teach mad people to dream in a better way, they will never go mad. There are a few communities in the world, small primitive communities, where not a single man has ever gone mad. Down the centuries, at least for three thousand years, they have kept records: not a single man has gone mad, not a single man has committed suicide. And the whole trick is that they have immense control of their dreams. They can create dreams, they can stop dreaming, they can re-live dreams... and they are taught from their very childhood the secrets of dreaming. They take dreams really seriously, as seriously as they take daily life. In fact that’s how it should be, because if you live sixty years, for twenty years of that you will be sleeping; it is not a small part. In fact to no other activity will you be giving so much time; no other activity is comparable to sleep.
From the very childhood they are taught how to dream and how to take dream messages, how to interpret, how to find out clues, what to do about their dreams. And they enact their dreams in their actual life. By and by there happens a merger between the day and the night. There is no fast, clear-cut demarcation: everything is mingling and meeting with each other. That helps them to remain sane.
And all these therapy groups are a kind of holiday in madness. It is good... but one should learn how to get back into the world easily.
[A nine-year-old sannyasin has frequently asked Osho to assign him groups.]
I have found the group for you; you have to do it, mm?... So book for centering. You have been always asking for a group – now I have found one!... Now you have got the group; now you are being treated as a grown-up!
[The child explains to Osho he is supposed to write a letter to his teacher in Germany, but does not want to.]
You can write a great spiritual letter to your teacher! Don’t be worried. Give her some good teaching, mm ? really good! You can show me your letter first and then you can send it... But write a really good thing to her!...
You are a sannyasin and you have to spread my word to people – don’t miss any opportunity! Write a really great thing. And you can write perfectly well.
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