8

< Previous | Contents | Next >

‌CHAPTER 8

8 August 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva means divine, upeeksha literally means ‘indifference’, but in english there is no exact word for it. Indifference feels like something negative; upeeksha is something very positive.

It means a centering of consciousness so that you are not wavered by anything. Success comes, it is okay; failure comes, it is okay. That is called upeeksha. Nothing disturbs you, nothing unhinges you from your centre; nothing is meaningful. One is so silent that nothing creates any stir; that is upeeksha. If life is there, good; if death comes, good. One has a total acceptance; whatsoever comes to pass is good. One has no denial, one never says no. One never rejects, one never resists; that is what upeeksha is.

But the literal meaning is indifference. The whole name will be ‘divine indifference’ – and that is going to be your key. You have to work on it; this is your sadhana. So be watchful: whenever you see that something is disturbing you, become cool, calm, become grounded. Immediately escape withinwards... be centred. Yes, the cloud has come; it will go. No cloud is permanent: only the sky remains, the cloudless sky.

Anger arises, remain indifferent. Look at it – it is there; take note of it, but don’t make any judgement. Greed arises; it’s okay but don’t decide in favour or against. By and by you will see that everything comes and passes by and you remain untouched. And in that untouchedness there is great joy. One has overcome the world; that is what is known as being the conqueror. then one has a self... otherwise people just talk about the self; they don’t have any self.

Self means a centre which remains unperturbed, unconditionally unperturbed.

Anand means blissful and islam means surrender – blissful surrender. Anand is a sanskrit word and islam is an arabic word. The real name of mohammedanism is islam. It means surrender, absolute surrender... and that is going to happen to you some day so prepare for it and get ready for it.

It is a great blessing when it happens but also very frightening. It is both together because on the one hand you disappear, on the other hand god appears. It is a curse from this side and a blessing from that side, because it is death and resurrection.…

Anand means blissful, and sufi has many meanings but the most meaningful for you is, ‘chosen friend of god’; that is one of the meanings of the term ‘sufi’.

Sufis believe that it is always god who takes the initiative. Even when you become religious, even when you start searching for god, it is he who starts it first. Maybe you are not conscious about it, maybe you have heard him only in your deep sleep, maybe in your dreams he has entered, maybe not even that visibleHe may have stirred something in your deepest core of being; only then do

you started searching.

This is a very beautiful understanding. It says only god searches; we respond. We are his echoes; we cannot act on our own; we only reflect. Hence the meaning: chosen friend of god, one who has been chosen by god already.

Before a man chooses god, god has chosen him already, but this is revealed only in the last moment of realisation.When the ego completely disappears it is realised – that this was not your search: it was god’s search for himself through you, via you. You were not more than a mirror: god was looking through the mirror at his own face. But that happens only in the last moment when the ego has completely been dropped. Suddenly one realises that one was nothing but an echo, a reflection. So how can the reflection search for the original? There is no possibility; only the original can search.

That is one of the deepest meanings of the word ‘sufi’. There are many meanings but for you that is particularly relevant: you have already been chosen.

I would like you to remember it as much as possible: you have already been chosen, so now behave accordingly and many many things will start happening. You will not need to do much for their happening – they will be more of the quality of spontaneity; you have simply to be available.

You are a friend alreadybut don’t make it an ego trip otherwise one who has been chosen can

be dropped too! Feel grateful but don’t feel egoistic about it; feel happy but don’t feel egoistic about it. In fact feel absolutely humblehumble in seeing the situation – that you are not worthy and you

have been chosen. If one becomes more and more humble, one comes closer. The more humble one is, the more worthy, and the more worthy one thinks oneself, the less worthy he becomes. This is the inner arithmetic.

Jesus says ‘Those who are first in the world will be the last in my kingdom of god, and those who are the last will be the first!’ So be poor in spirit.…

[Osho tells a woman taking sannyas to feel as if she is being born again I would like to make contact with you in that moment, he says. There are three moments in which to make contact – birth, love, death; let us start from the beginning. ]

Prem Torah.

Prem is a sanskrit word – it means love, and torah is a hebrew word which means law: law of love... and that is the only law. All other laws are man-created. One law is not man-created – that is love. That is given, that is god-given.

And torah is a beautiful word. It means exactly what ‘tao’ means in chinese: the law... what ‘dharma’ means in india – the law. It comes from an egyptian root.

There was an ancient goddess in egypt, ta-urt. She was the goddess who maintained order in existence; she was the goddess who maintained order in this immense chaos. The universe is a chaos, but there is an order in it also. From ta-urt the hebrew word ‘torah’ came, and torah became very very significant to the jews; their scripture is called torah.

The word is really beautiful. We are chaos. Something is needed to function as a centre to hold this chaos otherwise one tends to disintegrate. And people are living disintegrated lives; they are many, not one. Everybody is a crowd, there is not unity inside.

Love gives that unity. Whenever you are in love the chaos disappears; there is order, there is harmony, accord. Whenever you are in love all those fragments fall into one unity – and that unity is not a dull unity. It is not that the variety disappears, variety remains: just the conflict disappears. That’s why I call it a harmony: those different notes remain but they are no more in conflict with each other. They are in tune, it is an orchestra. It is not that it is a single note, because that will be ugly and boring.

One should become an orchestra. One should remain rich with many things, with many experiences, with many directions, dimensions, but all should be rooted in one centre. And I don’t see that that centre can be anything else than love: hence I call love the only law.

All other laws are needed because we are missing love. We have to substitute. Those ten commandments are just substitutes; all the great moral teachings are just substitutes. If you have loved, those commandments are not needed. Then love is enough; all those commandments will come automatically as shadows of love. But if love is not there all those commandments are needed, otherwise man will go mad and the society will go mad.

So become more and more loving. Let love be your prayer, let love be your religion. That’s my message in your name. And it is possible; one can hope for it. It is not a hopeless hope! It is almost there, ready as a seed, just waiting for your cooperation and support and nourishment so that it can start growing.

[Osho gives sannyas to an elderly man.]

Close your eyes, and if something starts happening in the body, allow it. If your hands start moving and then start making gestures, mudras, go into them. If your body starts moving backwards, forwards or sideways, allow it. I would like to see you moving with the body, in the body – not against the body... in cooperation.

Prem means love, nirvan means enlightenment – enlightenment through love. Effort is not so much needed – more, loving surrender. And you have done all that you could do.…

The very idea of doing creates a kind of struggle, conflict, friction. Yes, there are methods that use friction but they are unnecessarily long methods and unnecessarily torturous. The real thing, whenever it happens, happens through surrender. Even if one follows the path of effort, struggle; ultimately, finally, in the last step, one has to surrender. The devotee surrenders on the first step, the man of love surrenders on the first step, and the man of will surrenders at the last step. But without surrender nothing ever happens so why bother to wait for the last step ? And meanwhile the struggle is long and unnecessary.

If you don’t reach the last step you are caught up with a great strong ego; that is a very bad side effect. If one thousand persons start moving on the path of will there is only possibility of one reaching to the very end. And what about those nine hundred and ninety-nine? They will be somewhere on the way, stuck with their egos... and very strong egos! They cannot go back because there is no way to go back. They can only go ahead... and sometimes it takes many lives; that is the path of yoga.

That’s why yogis have tried to prolong their life span – because a hundred years are not enough! There has been much effort down the ages to prolong the life so that one can finish the whole work in one life, otherwise who knows ? If one is caught somewhere in the middle, which is more possible, then again in the next life you will have to start from the middle. You will not be conscious of what you have done in the past life so everything will be disrupted.

The path of love is very simple, and because it is very simple it appeals to very few people. Simple things

don’t appeal because they don’t give any challenge to the ego. Hard, difficult things appeal: they become challenges.

When everest is there it becomes a challenge; somebody has to conquer it. The difficult attracts the ego; the simple does not attract the ego: the ego is not interested in the simple and the easy.

And this is my message for you – that the easy is right. Drop the ego and move through the easy. This is the meaning of... prem nirvan, – that it is going to happen through love. Love means surrenderLove means no more struggle. Love means god is not far away. He is just in front of

you.he just surrounds you within and without. You have just to fall in love with him and things start

happening.

I have a feeling, maybe in this life or in your past life, that you have been a struggler. Sometimes it happens that when you struggle and you fail you tend to forget it completely, because to remember it is so frustrating. That’s why we forget our past lives; otherwise there is no reason to forget. The memory continues, the same mind continues; only the body changes. There is no discontinuity from one life to another life but we forget about past lives, we become oblivious of them; there is a reason in it.

The reason is the failure, the whole failure of the past life. It is like a wound. If you remember it, it will hurt, it will make this life difficult, so one drops a curtain on it and starts doing the same things again!

It is said that if you don’t read history you will repeat it. In the east we have tried many methods to remember the past lives simply for this reason – because if we remember the past life we will not be committing the same mistakes again. It is very difficult to find a man so foolish as to repeat the same things again and again and again. But we think this is the only life so we are doing everything fresh, we are not repeating anything.

My feeling is that you have been doing many things, and soon you will remember. If you start remembering, just start keeping a diary. And don’t reject it – prima facie don’t reject it. Don’t just say that this is fiction or a dream or what is happening to you ? Are you going mad ? Simply write it down; soon things will become very very clear.

As I can see in you, you have been struggling in your past lives. You have followed the path of will. You have tried hard and you failed... hence I want to change your whole style of being. Let it be of love, not of will. Let it be of surrender and trust. We are not enemies to god; there is no need to fight. That is the basic meaning of why god has been called ‘father’ or even more significantly ‘mother’: he is not the enemy; we need not struggle. We are his and he is ours, and if the child goes astray it is as much his responsibility as the child’s... even more; his responsibility is more.

We are living in a family; this whole existence is our family – we are not alien or strangers. This is what I mean by love. And there is no need to struggle and fight. There is nobody to fight with. It is all ours just to claim; just for the asking it is ours.

Jesus says, ‘Knock and the doors shall be opened unto you’ – just for the knocking! ‘Ask and it shall be given’ – just for the asking! ‘Seek, and you will find’ – just seek! It is enough to ask like a small child. It is enough for the child to cry and the mother rushes to him. And god is always ready to help. We just have to learn how to cry... how to cry in deep love, in deep trust. Something is going to happen; it is very imminent. Good.

< Previous | Contents | Next >