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Chapter title: None

11 January 1981 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8101115 ShortTitle: POND11 Audio:

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[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

Power is dangerous without meditation. Any kind of power is bound to become destructive if there is no meditation involved in it.

Lord Acton's famous statement is basically true, that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, because power means energy, but what is one going to do with energy if one has not the understanding to use it rightly, if one has not the perspective to see clearly where to go, what to do, what not to do? Then power gives a certain kind of intoxication. The unconscious person becomes even more unconscious, the mad person becomes even more mad.

For example, Adolf Hitler would have been mad even without power, but the world would not have suffered so much. Once he became powerful then what

happened was inevitable. A madman in power is bound to be a calamity. And we all have immense power, it is good that we are not aware of it, it is good that it is only potential.

Latest researchers into psychiatry have come to a very significant conclusions that many people who are insane are really insane because they have so much power that it is beyond their control. They cannot cope with it. Basically they are not bad people, not evil, but their power is like a sword, a naked sword in the hands of a child. What is the child going to do with the sword? Either he will harm somebody or he will harm himself hence power either becomes murderous or suicidal. These are the only two possibilities without meditation. But once meditation becomes the foundation then power is creative, then it brings great poetry and great music and great dance in your life. And not only in your life, it starts overflowing you, it start reaching others.

When the poetry is born in you, you have to share it. When the flower opens, the fragrance is bound to be released.

Humanity is suffering from too much power. Technology, science -- they have given immense power to man, and man is insane. Man has no meditativeness, no silence, no peace within himself. He knows nothing of awareness -- hence we are standing on the verge. Any moment the world can plunge into a suicidal act, global suicide is possible.

In the past, wars were never so dangerous. They were local. Now it is going to be a total war. It can consume not only humanity all the animals, trees, all life on this earth can evaporate within hours or even within minutes.

For the first time humanity is in immense need of meditation, to balance what technology has given.

Never before was humanity in such a need of sannyasins. They have to balance the soldiers. Unless we can keep soldiers and sannyasins balanced, technocrats and meditators balanced, there is no future, there is no hope.

Initiation into sannyas is not only your individual affair. It has far-reaching consequences. It will release, certainly, your energy, it will transform your personality, but it will be a blessing to the world too.

And the only thing that I insist upon is meditation. I don't give any other

discipline because no other discipline is needed. Once you know how to be silent and aware, everything else follows of its own accord.

Love comes, compassion comes, service comes, prayer comes. You need not seek for them, truth comes, freedom comes, godliness comes, but they come of their own accord. And remember, when these things come of their own accord -- without any effort on your part -- they have a tremendous beauty.

-- How long will you be here?

-- Six months or longer.

-- That's good. You will be here longer -- you are finished! (laughter) Good!

Man can make efforts for pleasure but not for bliss. Pleasure will not come on its own. You have to make efforts for it, because pleasure belongs to the outside world. The pleasure that comes through having money, the pleasure that comes through food, through sex, through political power, respectability -- these things never come as gifts. One has to work hard, struggle for them, one has to be aggressive and violent.

If one simply sits silently and waits for a miracle to happen those miracles never happen, they have never happened. You have to run and you have to run faster than others because it is a competitive game.

You are not alone; millions of people are running for the same goals.

Pleasure is of the outside -- competitive; hence one has to make a tremendous effort to gain it. And then too what is gained is not of much use. Once you have the money that you were hoping would give you all that you need, once you have it, all hopes evaporate, one is simply disillusioned.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

So pleasure exists only in the hope. When the hope is fulfilled there is only pain and nothing else. So much effort is needed to attain to pleasure -- and what one really attains is pain. Just on the way while you are journeying you can dream all kinds of fantasies, you can imagine, project; but by the time you. have reached, it always proves a mirage.

Bliss is of the inner, just the opposite of pleasure. There is no competition because there you are alone, nobody else is there in your being. Nobody can ever be there except you. It is absolute privacy, so no competition, no struggle... If you just turn in and sit silently inside, bliss starts happening. In fact it is your self-nature; that's why it is said bliss is a gift: it comes from the beyond, not because of your efforts but because of your effortlessness. You are simply sitting doing nothing and it starts showering.

And once you have known the secret then any moment you can close your eyes and it is there. It is a divine gift. You need not deserve it, you need not be worthy of it, you need not fight for it. In fact all these things are hindrances. You have to be just open, empty, so that when it descends in you there is space for it.

Bliss comes ns a guest. All that is needed is a spaciousness so that you can function as a host. And this is the paradox of life; much has to be done for pleasure and nothing is attained I nothing has to be done for bliss and all is attained!

Knowledge is not knowing. Knowledgeability is just the opposite of knowing. Knowledgeability hides your ignorance. It does not destroy it, it only covers it up. The wound remains, but covered and the wound goes on growing and you have to go on uncovering it. So the knowledgeable person has to go on accumulating more and more knowledge, more and more degrees, more and more qualifications, to cover it up. But whatsoever you do it is there.

Knowledge cannot destroy it. Knowing dispels it exactly as light dispels darkness. Knowing is wisdom.

It has nothing to do with scriptures, nothing to do with information. It is an inner transformation. One has to become as innocent as a child. One has to drop all knowledge to become wise. Hide the ignorance and you become knowledgeable. Become innocent, accept your ignorance, be aware of it and it starts disappearing.

Not that you will have all the answers to all the questions. You will not have even a single answer for a single question, but in that innocence you will be able to respond spontaneously to reality. Your response will be always total, your action will be total.

And the total action is the right action and the total action is virtue. And a life which functions through innocence becomes sheer blissfulness. It has all the perfume of all the flowers, the freedom and the vastness of the sky, and the beauty of the stars. It is not confined within your body or within your mind. Knowledge is confined within mind but wisdom is vaster than you, bigger than you.

Knowledge is something in you, the moment wisdom is there, you are within it -- just a small dewdrop in the vast ocean. It frees you -- from misery, from anxiety, from death. Not only from these things it even you from yourself. One simply disappears. And that disappearance we have called nirvana, that disappearance is real liberation. That's our deepest longing of the heart, that's what we are searching for, and that's what sannyas is all about.

Sannyas is only a jump into nirvana.

The Zen haiku says The old pond, the frog jumps in -- plop!

And then there is all silence. Plop, and all silence. Soon the ripples on the lake also disappear, as if nothing has happened, as if you have never been there.

Nirvana is disappearing into the total, and that is possible only out of innocence. So to me innocence is knowing wisdom, and innocence has to be discovered. And it is not very far; it is just at the very core of your being. Layer upon layers of knowledge... we are just like an onion. One has to peel it. And the more you peel it... the fresher layers are there, and when all the layers are peeled, nothing remains. That nothing is nirvana, that nothing that was there before the frog jumped in and that will be there after the frog has jumped in -- just a plop, a momentary sound -- and all silence, a little sound and all silence.

That little sound I call meditation -- and then there is all silence. So do a little 'hoo, hoo, hoo' -- that is plop! (laughter) And then all is calm, gone forever, and only then you are at home. When you are not, you --

for the first time.

-- How long will you be here?

-- I don't know. I leave it for the future.

-- (a broad grin) That's very good!

There are two ways to know: one is logic, another is love. Logic is of the head, love is of the heart.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

Logic is capable of knowing the external reality, but about the internal it is absolutely incapable. It knows nothing of the inner, and because it knows nothing of the inner it denies that the inner exists at all. Rather than accepting its limitation, it denies the very existence of the inner, of consciousness, of soul, of the beyond.

Logic is materialistic, because it believes only in the measurable. The English word 'matter' is significant. It comes from 'measure'; that which can be measured is matter. It is the same word as 'meter' --

'measure', 'matter'. It comes from a Sanskrit root which means quantity, matra. Quantity means that which can be measured, but there is something more which is not quantity at all -- that can be known only through love, only through the heart.

One has to shift from the head to the heart. That shift is one of the most significant things in life, because once you shift your focus from the head to the heart, your whole vision changes -- and with it the whole world. You start knowing things in a new way: the same flowers, but they are no longer the same.

Through logic they were only matter -- chemical, mineral, a little bit of earth and water and things like that.

You could have taken the flower to the lab and dissected it, put it into different bottles, labeled how much potassium it contains and how much iron it contains, but you would not have found beauty.

The moment you look with the eyes of love, the flower is not just matter, it is far more. It is surrounded by an aura of beauty. Suddenly the material part becomes the most insignificant, and the immaterial part becomes the most significant. You encounter the soul of the flower, and the same becomes your approach about everything.

When you meet a friend you don't meet just his body, bones, blood, veins, skull -

- or do you?! Nobody ever meets a friend in that way. When you meet a friend, you meet something which is not the body --

something more, something plus -- but ordinarily it remains in the background.

When your love is functioning it becomes very clear; it comes into the foreground, the body goes into the background. The body becomes just a vehicle. You see the inner reality reflected in the mirror of love.

And then one lives in a different world. That world can be called the world of godliness, of truth, of beauty, of bliss.

We can give any name to it, because it is so vast that all these names are just small aspects of it. It is all-comprehensive, all-inclusive. It is simply immense, beyond the comprehension of words, language, concepts, but love is capable of knowing it -- only love is capable of knowing it.

So drop logic and enjoy love. Even if the world thinks that you have become mad, let them think! You are not going to lose anything, they are going to lose everything.

These are the three planes of existence the material, the psychological, and the spiritual. To know all three is to know the divine. To become confined to one is to miss the whole. And the unfortunate thing is that people are confined to the first, the lowest, the material. Out of a hundred persons maybe only one per cent enter into the second, the psychological. And out of those few people who enter into the psychological, only one per cent of those enter the spiritual. And out of these few people who enter the spiritual only one per cent enters the divine.

But that is the ultimate goal: to know life in all its planes and to know that all those planes ore interconnected, interdependent. All those planes are not antagonistic to each other, they are in a deep synchronicity. The whole is an organic unity.

This experience can be called god-realisation or the realisation of truth. Once one has come to know the whole as it is without excluding anything, one has fulfilled his destiny, one has managed to do that which was the whole purpose of life and all its journeys. Millions of lives we have lived, but unless this is found our living is just moving in circles. We go on moving it is tedious and boring, it is a long, long journey. And the strangest thing is that we can end the journey any moment... just a little understanding of not going on repeating the old pattern, but of taking the right plunge towards the centre. By moving into the circle nothing is going to happen.

There is a small spider, a special spider found in African jungles, which functions almost like human beings -- at least in one way. If you put that spider into something circular -- a plate -- it will go on moving round and round and round till it dies. All that is needed for it is to move is somebody ahead. If you put only one spider it won't move, because a leader is needed, a guide is needed. If you put a few spiders around the edges of the plate so every spider knows there is somebody ahead, and that one also knows there is somebody ahead, then you can kill them. You need not do anything, they will go on moving, go on moving, go on moving and they won't think that they are moving in a circle -- till they are so tired that they start 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

dying. They go on moving till they die. Just two things are needed, a circle and the feeling that somebody is ahead.

When I read about those spiders I could see that they are functioning almost like human beings. That's what human beings need: a leader -- Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, any leader will do -- and a circle, a circle of habits, just a routine and they will go on moving, go on moving. They will die, they will be born again and they will start moving, they will die and they will be born again

and they will start moving...

Becoming a sannyasin means coming out of this vicious circle. That's why I am so critical of all your leaders, the so-called gurus, guides. In fact I am not against them. I am simply trying to put you out of that vicious circle -- and that is one of the most important parts -- following somebody.

Second, I am very much against, continously hammering against your conditionings, because those are your patterns. You have done those things thousands of times and you will be doing them again and again.

There is no end to it, it is ad infinitum.

So these two things have to be destroyed -- that's my work; you have to be stopped from following others and you have to be stopped from following a dead routine, a conditioned, habitual pattern. Once these two things are fulfilled there is nothing else to be done. You will be able to reach to the centre this very moment. ,,nd on the circle, on the circumference, there is birth and death, and death is followed by birth and birth is followed by death and it goes on. At the centre there is no death, no birth one enters into eternity.

And to know that eternity is to know god.

So my sannyasins are not my followers. One thing has to be very clear to every sannyasins they are not my followers. I am not their leader, they are not my followers. At the most, just friends, fellow travellers.

Secondly, I am not giving you any discipline because I don't want you to make a mechanical life; I want you to live moment to moment according to your awareness. I will give you methods to be aware but not a discipline, not ready- made answers. I will give you a mirror which reflects, wherever you are, whatsoever the situation is, so that you can act on your own. You need not wait for my guidance.

So my work is a little strange. It is not the routine, ordinary work of your so- called gurus all around the world. It is just the opposite.

I am not a guru, I am nobody' s leader. I hate the very word 'leader'. I am not giving you any guidance, where to go, what to do. I am not at all interested in giving you a certain character, a discipline. On the contrary I am destroying your

desire to be a follower and your desire to have a fixed pattern so that unconsciously you can repeat it.

Once you are on your own, listening to your own heart, following your own silence, that's enough. Then you have risen above the so-called humanity -- which is not better than those spiders. Then really you become human. Independence, individuality, awareness -- and you are an individual. And every individual is bound to reach the goal.

Love is the greatest experience in life; but one has to be very aware that it should be true -- it should not be false, pseudo, pretentious. And we are brought up in such a wrong way that from the very beginning our love starts going along wrong lines.

The mother wants the love of the child just because she is the mother -- as if love is something which can be asked for and produced on order. The mother wants the child to love her; she gives the reason

"Because I am your mother," as if love is a logical syllogism; "I am your mother, you are my child, therefore, love me!" And the child is at a loss; but the child is helpless, so he has to pretend. He becomes diplomatic, he starts playing games. He smiles when he sees the mother and the father. Whether he feels like smiling or not, that is not the point at all. He has to smile, it is part of his survival; otherwise it will become difficult to survive -- these people are powerful people and he has to depend on them. They can do anything.

And he is very much afraid, scared.

So by and by he loves the brothers and the sisters and the uncles and the aunts, just because it is ordered.

You have to behave, you have to do it, and he goes on doing. By the time he becomes an adult he is already accustomed to a false kind of love; then he will love his wife in the same way he used to love his mother and his father, and he will love his children in the same way as he used to love his parents. And he will demand from the children the same kind of love as he was asked for. And this is how we go on from one generation to another, doing the same stupid thing, the same pretentious game of love. It is phony, it is not true, it is not authentic; it cannot be authentic. We have never allowed the real love to arise.

The moment you become a sannyasin make it very clear to yourself that you will put aside all 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

diplomatic games. For a few days you will be in a very transitory period, you will not know what to do, because you have dropped those old games and the new will take a little time. It has been repressed so long, it has become so afraid of light, it won't come easily; but if all the pressure is removed then sooner or later the springs of your own love will start welling up.

And once you feel your own fountains of love rising, your life becomes, for the first time, something authentic, something true. And unless our love is true we cannot find the truth. That condition has to be fulfilled.

If even our love is not true then what else can ever be true? Love is the closest thing to our heart; it has to be true. Once it is true then everything else can be true. But if the closest thing is false, then everything else is bound to be false.

So my emphasis is to make the authentic love grow in you; and all that you need to do is remove the unauthentic. It is a negative kind of process. Put aside all that has been taught to you, put aside all the shoulds and should nots, all the musts, so that the spontaneous within you can start growing. And the first experience of the spontaneous arising is such an exhilaration, it is so exquisite, so ecstatic -- one cannot imagine it, one cannot dream about it. It is beyond all our dreams, it is far beyond the fantasy. The very capacity to imagine falls short. The truth is so far away, so qualitatively different that the mind is absolutely incapable -- but the heart is capable.

So one has to behead oneself and one has to become just the heart. The moment your heartbeat possesses you, overwhelms you, you have entered in the temple, the temple of gods. It is neither Christian nor Hindu nor Mohammedan; it is simply the temple of god.

My sannyasins don't belong to any religion, to any cult, to any creed. They don't belong to any kind of theology, scripture, philosophy; they belong to the

universe, they belong to the stars, to the sun, to the moon, to the trees.

They belong to the whole. And to belong to the whole is the only way to be holy.

The Old Pond ... Plop

Chapter #12

  

 

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