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‌CHAPTER 1

1 December 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A visitor says she lives at Esalen Institute, a pioneer growth centre in california.] Mm mm, good! That is going to become my institute!

It will become! Become a sannyasin – that will help you to come close to me, because to come close something has to change inside you. Something that is a kind of no has to become yes; only then can you come to me. Physically you can be close; that won’t help. A different kind of participation is needed, and that is the whole purpose of sannyas, so that you are in an attitude of yes. That is the greatest secret there is – to say yes. Then things start immediately opening and there is contact.

Life ordinarily prepares us to only say no. Life goes on corrupting our minds and creating doubts. Because of those doubts and because of those no’s and the negatives, one becomes enclosed, one lives in a kind of imprisonment, a China Wall surrounds one. That wall is invisible, transparent, so you don’t know that it is there, but it is always there. Once you say yes it starts disappearing.

To say yes is to be religious. Yes is the most sacred word. One Christian saint, a really significant man, Saint Francis of Sales, only had six words in his prayer, ‘Yes, Father, yes, and always yes.’ That was his whole prayer and I have never come across a better prayer. Nothing more can be added to it: ‘Yes, Father, yes, and always yes.’ But my feeling is that this is a kind of repetition. One yes will do: why say’Yes, Father, yes, and always yes’? Yes means everything. It is always, it is forever. One single yes is enough. It should be intense, it should be total.

I have heard about a young girl who received a telegram from her boyfriend, saying would she be willing to marry him. The friend wanted an immediate telegraphic reply. The girl was a village girl, was very shy and was thinking how to formulate the message so it was neither on the negative side too much nor on the positive side too much, so it did not discourage him and did not show too much

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enthusiasm on her side either. She tried hard but she could not find how to do it. Then she went to the telegraph office and just wrote ‘yes’. But the clerk at the window said, ‘For the same amount of money you can write ten words,’ so she wrote ‘Yes, yes, yes’ nine times. The clerk counted and said, ‘But you can write it ten times...’, and the girl said, ‘Won’t it look too much?’

One yes is already too much. And if you understand me, and some day you will understand me, if you can say yes without even using the word ‘yes’ then it is the uttermost in prayer. One word is more than enough; no word is the ultimate. Just a yes attitude, a climate of yes... not a verbalisation but a heart full of yes. Not something in the head but in the very bones and the marrow.

When you can say a total yes, the being starts becoming a flame. The being immediately flashes into a flame. It is exactly as if you bring a small flame into oxygen and it flares up. The moment you say yes your being flares up and becomes a great flame.

Sannyas is nothing but a sacred yes. That is the meaning of Jesus’ saying that faith can move mountains. The word faith is ugly. I say that yes can move mountains, although yes never wants to move mountains. It is always no that wants to move mountains, it is always doubt that wants to move mountains. Faith can move mountains but does not want to. Doubt cannot but wants to. If I was to write the Bible again, I would say yes was in the beginning and yes was with God, and yes was God. So if you really want to come – and I know you want to come close to me – become a sannyasin! Come close!

Prem means love, amrita means deathless, immortal. And love is the only thing that knows no death; everything else dies. Love is the only reality that never dies. It is the eternal in existence, it is the very stuff that existence is made of. Everything is on the surface, it is at the core. The surface changes; the core remains the same. One flower comes, another flower comes, and another. Beauty continues, flowering remains eternal. One lover, another lover and millions of lovers, but they all float in the same river of love. Lovers are born and die. Love goes on.

[A sannyasin who is leaving for the West says that when meditating his energy builds up until he either experiences a blissful state or much pain.

Osho checks his energy.] Good! You do a few things.…

One is: whenever you are feeling that the energy is moving into bliss, dance. Stand and start moving and dancing. Whenever, but it has to be started when you are feeling that it is moving into bliss, mm? So first let your dance be associated with blissfulness: for a few days, for two weeks simply dance only when it is blissful. After two weeks start dancing when it is painful. So the dance will become the bridge and will help you in both ways. It will help you to release your energy in bliss and it will help you to release your pain, your pressure. But start first with the blissful quality. First let dance become associated with it, so when it is a pressure and you start dancing, immediately you will change the trend of it, the direction of it.

That’s what is needed right now: start dancing while you are feeling blissful so that dance becomes a symbol for bliss. Then when you feel pressure, after two weeks, start dancing and suddenly you

will see a change. It is the same energy: it is just that you don’t know what to do with it. Sometimes it happens without your knowing and it is good, and sometimes it happens but you don’t know what to do with it; then it becomes a pressure. You have to learn to do something with it.

So after four weeks, when you will be leaving, by the end of December, tell me. Mm? it will be completely settled nothing to be worried about. Good!

[The gestalt group was present. One participant says she has been sleeping in the group room at night. There is another man, a bit crazy, there whom she is afraid of so she hasn’t slept well.]

So either you find another place or make friends with this man! Both will do. If you are friendly then there will be no fear; you can sleep well. Because you are not yet really friendly towards him there is fear. So find another room if you don’t want to be friendly with this man, or be friendly and then there is no problem.

Crazy people are not bad people; be afraid of saints but never of crazy people. [A sannyasin says he always feels tired and bored. Osho checks his energy.]

Don’t do any groups, mm? – just rest for a few days. Up to the eleventh, simply rest. Sleep as much as you can: eat well and go to sleep, and if you want to do any exercise then just go to the swimming pool and lie down in the pool. For these ten days simply rest. Be really lazy. On the eleventh your energy will take a turn; nothing to be worried about. So get ready for the eleventh. That means to become as lazy as possible so that energy accumulates. On the eleventh it will explode. Keep the eleventh in mind! [the birthday celebration]

[A visitor says: Please tell me who I am.]

Mm mm.My telling you won’t help; you will have to come upon it yourself. Others have been telling

you, that is the problem. Your father has told you ‘This is what you are’; your mother has told you ‘This is what you are.’ Your teachers and the priests and the politicians have told you. The whole world has been telling you who you are; that’s why you are confused. Because of so many voices and so many people and so many ideas, you are lost in them.

I am not going to tell you who you are. I’m going to tell you how you can find who you are. You will have to come to it. You will have to be completely nude of all opinions of others. That is the problem, that others are heavy on the head, that they go on injecting their opinions and ideologies and philosophies. All that has to be burned.

You have to start as if you are the first man. You are Adam and you don’t know who you are. You have to search for it, you have to find it and things will be very easy. Never ask anybody ‘Who am I?’ It has to be asked inside your being. Ask there ‘Who am I?’ Others will be answering from your head, from your memory. Somebody will say ‘You are a Christian’ and somebody will say ‘This is your name’ and somebody will say ’You are a man, a young man, a German, a Hindu, or a Chinese. Throw out all those answers; those are false answers. Any answers given by anybody are false.

You have to find your own answer; only that will be the truth. Truth cannot be borrowed, it cannot be transferred, it cannot be a gift from anybody to you. You have to dig for it inside your being.

I can help you to dig! I can give you methods to dig but I cannot give you the answer. That will be inimical to you, that will be destructive.

Do three, four groups more, and the answer will come but don’t wait for it to come from the outside; it has to come from the inside. So listen more and more, get attuned more and more to your inner being.

[The visitor says he doesn’t want to take sannyasin from a mental decision, but with his feelings.]

That’s very true. It is very good if you can be a sannyasin from your heart... but the heart may be a long way away. Then it is better to be a sannyasin from the head than not to be a sannyasin at all! The choice is not between the head and the heart right now. The choice is between being a sannyasin from the head or not being a sannyasin from the head. Both will be from the head; the heart will take a little longer.

And if you are a sannyasin, even from the head, that will help the heart to start functioning. So think about it. Nothing is wrong with the head either. It is better than not to be a sannyasin at all.

[The visitor answers: I have heard you say it’s important to be first-hand, not to be second-band.] Mm mm, that’s perfectly true: each of my sannyasins is a first-hand sannyasin.

... Nobody is a copy of anybody else; they are not copies of me.

[The visitor replies: I think they are; the sannyasins want to be copies of you.]

That is their misunderstanding. If somebody wants toBut I am continuously throwing them to

themselves. And you need not be that way! Even if others are making the mistake you need not: you need not try to become a copy of me. Think about yourself. Why should you be worried about others? If they are going to hell, let them go. You can go to heaven! You can be a first-hand sannyasin. Why be worried about others? These are just tricks of the mind, strategies of the mind to keep you in control. There is no need to be a copy, at least not here.

Each of my sannyasins is individual; that’s my message to them. If somebody persists, insists, on being foolish, then it is his decision. But I am not helping anybody to become anybody else’s copy. In fact that is not possible. Each individual is so unique. If you become a copy, you can become a copy only on the surface; deep inside you remain yourself. You can never be somebody else.

Think about it, mm? And my feeling is that you are going to become a sannyasin from the head first. Feeling will take a long time, maybe lives. But if you become a sannyasin feeling may start flowing; that may be the beginning. These things are so interrelated, just like the egg and the hen. You bring an egg: it can become the hen; you bring the hen, it can give you an egg. They go that way, parallel.

Good: if it can happen from the heart it will change your head. If it happens from your head, it will start entering and filtering into the heart. But think! Whenever you feel, mm? Good!

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