Chapter title: None

‌Chapter title: None‌

8 January 1981 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8101085 ShortTitle: POND08 Audio:

No Video:

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up.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

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

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Pleasure is from the outside and bliss is from the inside. Pleasure depends on others. Bliss is independent. Pleasure inevitably brings bondage. Bondage is sbsolutely part of pleasure, because the source of pleasure becomes more important than you are, and the fear arises that today it is available, but what is going to happen tomorrow? So make sure that it remains yours tomorrow too -- but then you have to bargain, you have to lose something, you have to pay for it. And then too it is never absolutely certain --

hence fear, anxiety. And when there is fear and anxiety and bondage, what pleasure can you have?

It is all destroyed. So it remains only a hope, just a carrot hanging in front of

you. As you move the carrot goes on moving. You never achieve it, it never becomes a reality. It is always a dream. But it keeps you occupied, keeps you so much occupied from the cradle to the grave that you don't have any time left for the real search. You fail again and again, but the hope goes on living. After each failure it resurrects, it is again there.

Hope never dies. Even when we say 'I am hopeless,' it is not really true, because if one is really hopeless, if the hope has completely disappeared, then you cannot even feel hopelessness. The feeling of hopelessness is possible only with the background of hope: you are still hoping but becoming desperate, seeing all the failures. You are becoming less and less certain, less and less do you see the possibility of its ever becoming a reality, but somewhere, in some corner of your unconscious, the seed of hope still lives. It will sprout again. That's what they mean by the proverb that time heals; what it heals nobody asks. It simply heals the wounds that have been left by past hopes, it heals them so you can start hoping again, but it is the same game. It is moving in a circle.

The pleasure-seeker goes on seeking but he never arrives. To understand the utter futility of pleasure, the impossibility of its ever happening, becomes a revolution in your life. Then you move towards the inner from the outer. Then you move from dependence to independence. Then you start searching into your own nature, into your own interiority.

And one is simply in for a great surprise: the moment one turns in, the very turning in -- a one hundred eighty degree turn it has to be -- and one is dazzled, puzzled, that this is what one has been seeking maybe for millions of lives. It was within oneself and we have been seeking it everywhere else. If we could not find it, there is no wonder in it, because it was within us. The search was without and the real source was within.

Just a glimpse of it brings freedom, brings a new breeze. For the first time you feel alive, free, joyous, for no reason at all, simply joyous, because now the understanding dawns that joy is our self-nature. That is the meaning of your name: turn from pleasure to bliss, turn from the objective reality to your own subjectivity -- and the kingdom of god is not far away!

Love is the bridge which takes you beyond your self. Love is the fire that consumes all your boundaries, makes you unbounded, infinite, eternal. Love is the alchemy that transforms the baser metal into gold, the mundane into the

sacred, the ordinary to the extraordinary.

We are born with a great potential, but it is only a potential. We can die without realising it, we can miss the target -- if we don't move consciously, with awareness. If we just remain driftwood at the mercy of the wind, and the waves, if we remain accidental, then there is every possibility we will miss. And that's why you see so many people in such misery, the misery has no outer cause, it is rooted in their missing the target.

They are all feeling something is being missed. They are not even aware what it is exactly, but one thing is certain everybody who is miserable feels that something of which we have been carrying the seeds has not grown. Something has not blossomed.

The seed is bound to be miserable; only a flower can dance in the wind, in the rain, in the sun. Only a flower can sing its song -- the song of bliss. Only a flower knows fulfilment, contentment. Only a flower feels at ease with existence. The seed cannot feel at ease, it is closed, it has no connection. It knows nothing of the moon and the sun and the stars, it has not even heard about them. It knows nothing of the flowers and the colours and the rainbows and the songs of the birds and the humming mantras of the bees -- it knows nothing of it, but somewhere hidden in it there is a longing to know it all.

A very deep longing to open up to reality -- that's w what religion is all about. Religion has nothing to do with churches and temples and mosques, nothing to do with Vedas and the Bible and the Koran, nothing to do with all kinds of games that go on in the name of religion. They are all political games. Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Jainism, these are all political parties hiding behind religious labels. At least a political party is sincere enough because it says it is a political party, all these religious organisations are 1/08/07

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

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basically political but they play the game behind the name of religion -- they are far more cunning.

The priest is more cunning than the politician. The priest plays the game in a more subtle way. True religion has nothing to do with all these games, true religion is simple, it is just the longing of the heart to blossom. It needs no rituals. it certainly needs a certain intelligence -- that's all that is needs. The only quality that is required is intelligence, and that is the only quality that is being destroyed by the priests; they don't like intelligent people, they like unintelligent people -- only lukewarmly intelligent -- so that they can become good servants, obedient slaves. That much intelligence is okay, very minimal.

They are not interested in great intelligence because great intelligence means rebellion. Great intelligence means a person has started thinking on his own. He cannot be dictated to, he cannot be ordered.

He will follow only according to his light, he will say yes only because his intelligence says yes, otherwise he will say no.

And the people who are powerful don't want anybody to be rebellious, hence they have all crippled humanity's intelligence. These are the real criminals. One day history will take account of them and they will be counted as the greatest criminals. The people who murder and cheat and steal are nothing compared to these people. These people don't murder, don't cheat, don't rob anybody, don't rape anybody, but they are doing such harm as no rape can do, no murder can do, they are destroying the very possibility of human beings flowering.

Intelligence is the only quality required. And that's what my work here consists of: to help you to become more and more intelligent, to help you to sharpen your sword of intelligence, to live at the maximum of intelligence. Meditation is only an art to help you towards intelligence. It is a ladder towards intelligence. It helps you to get rid of all the nonsense that others have imposed on you. It is that nonsense which is not allowing you to be intelligent.'

Once all those superstitions are dropped, all that holy cow dung is thrown out and you are emptied of all rubbish, rotten ideas of the past -- once you are empty, clean, you can begin to be intelligent, you will have to be intelligent, because you will be thrown upon your own source, you will have to respond to life and its situations not according to ready-made answers. They have all been taken out. You will have to find your own answers.

And remember, even if your own answer is wrong it is far better, anybody's

answer which is right. It is not a question of right and wrong, the question is whether it is yours. A parrot can repeat a right answer but that does not mean that the parrot is intelligent. It is better to commit mistakes but be on one's own, because one learns through mistakes. There is nothing wrong in committing errors. One should learn. Commit as many errors as possible -- and don't commit the same error again! That is learning, that sharpens your intelligence.

Become silent, become aware, meditative, and your intelligence will start growing -- and the seed will burst forth one day. That day is the greatest day of rejoicing, when your flowers come, when the spring comes to your inner world, when you become a garden.

The moment you become a garden you have become a paradise. That's exactly, literally, the meaning of the word 'paradise'. It comes from the Persian word 'firdaus'. Firdaus means a walled garden.

The moment you blossom, paradise has come to you. it is not true to say that people go to paradise --

that is not right. Paradise comes to people when they are ready. Paradise can come right now, this very moment... whosoever is ready, whosoever deserves it. Remember a fundamental law of life, that you get only that which you deserve. If you are living in hell that's what you deserve. If you want to live in paradise then deserve it: then create intelligence, courage, and work upon yourself to undo all that others have done, so that you can be free from all bondage and slavery, so that you can have the innocence of a child and the wisdom of a sage.

Meditation does both things. On the one hand it gives you the innocence of the child and on the other hand it gives you the wisdom of the sage . And the circle is complete: when you are a child and also a sage the circle is complete, your journey is fulfilled, you have arrived home.

1/08/07

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

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The Old Pond ... Plop

Chapter #9

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