Chapter title: None

‌Chapter title: None‌

7 November 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 7711075 ShortTitle: OPENSE07 Audio:

No Video:

Deva means divine, arjava means straightforwardness, simplicity, authenticity, sincerity... all those things. The fundamental thing is authenticity. One should not allow any kind of imposition... not by others, not by oneself either. One should not wear masks. One should live one's original face whatsoever the cost.

One has to pay much for it; that's why people decide not to be authentic. It is sacrifice, it is martyrdom, it is carrying one's cross. But immense is the benefit that comes out of it.

The sacrifice is great, so is the achievement... far greater than sacrifice. But in the beginning you need 1/08/07

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

the sacrifice, the suffering. Only in the end when you have suffered totally -- when suffering has done its work, has cleansed you, burned your ego, purified you, destroyed all that was false, when only that which was true is left, when the fire has passed -- do you start feeling the ecstasy of life.

And that fire can be long; it depends on you. If you go very very slowly into it, are very miserly, then it can take years or even lives. If one can go passionately into it, intensely into it, it can be finished within a single moment. Of course that moment will be almost like eternal hell. The intensity of it will be there; it will not be spread over a long period.

But once you understand that suffering, if accepted -- through authenticity, sincerity, truth -- brings joy, if you can remember that, then sooner or later you will become acquainted with the whole alchemy of life. I am not a supporter of suffering, remember. I am not saying to create suffering for yourself; that is moving to the other extreme.

There are people who go on living a comfortable, convenient bourgeois life. They think they are very happy, that this is joy. And for this so-called happiness they go on compromising. They become more and more false. The conveniences are there but they become untrue. To purchase those conveniences, those comforts, they go on compromising. They go on selling their soul and increasing their possessions. This is one type of person, one extreme, who becomes pseudo.

The other is he who, seeing the way convenience, comfort, pleasures, makes people impotent, soulless, moves to the other extreme. He starts searching for misery, for suffering. He starts creating torture for himself. He thinks to live in inconvenience, to live in discomfort, to move in thorns is going to help bring up his authentic face, to give him reality. That too is false. His authentic face never comes from inconvenience; how can it?

So I am not saying create suffering for yourself; that is pathology. What I am saying is that life wants joy. That is life's basic instinct. Follow it! But life can have joy only if it is authentic. Then comes the problem and the dilemma of life. Life needs joy, life is meaningful only when there is joy; life searches for joy, but joy is possible only if life is true, if it is based on truth.

Truth will bring much suffering, but it is not that you create it. It comes out of your facing reality.

Because everybody is false and you start being true, you start getting out of tune with people; hence the suffering. It is not really coming out of truth; it is coming because everybody is false. You become a stranger, you become an outsider; you don't fit any more. Wherever you go, you don't fit. That continuous not-fitting

hurts but one has to go through it knowing perfectly well that it is part of cleansing. The gold has to go through the fire to become pure. And great is the blessing.…

Once you have come to your originality with no imposition, with no false face, with no covering, with no curtain, when you have come to your nudity, to your nakedness of being, that's what meditation is all about...

Deva means God, ashar means refuge, shelter. God is the only shelter. If you are searching anywhere else, you are searching in vain. Man goes on searching in every dimension except the dimension of God.

But I hope now your sannyas will become the search in the right direction. We can be happy only with God and in God. Life can have meaning only when it is for God. And by God I mean the totality of existence, this whole celebration of stars and rivers and mountains.…

Deva means divine, avega means excitement -- divine excitement. And you have to be more and more ecstatic, not silent. Silence will come as a by-product; you are not to seek it. You are to seek ecstasy, excitement. You are to seek a state where you are possessed by God -- in a dance, in a song. God will happen to you that way, not by sitting like Buddha under a tree. That way God will not happen to you; that way you will feel suffocated. That way you will feel stifled, regimented; that will not come natural to you.

There are two types of people in the world and the type is decided by the way God happens to them. To a few people he happens in utter inactivity, as it happened to Lao Tzu or Buddha -- utter inactivity, almost as if they were dead, no excitement, no wave, no ripple even. Their being is absolute nothingness; then God happens.

And to the other type God happens when they are nothing but vibration, nothing but pulsation. When their energies are streaming forth in every direction, when there is a great dance and ecstasy inside their being it happens.

To you it will happen the second way, so don't miss any opportunity to take part in all the groups that are available here, all the meditations in which you can become possessed. And the whole point is to be 1/08/07

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

Query:-

possessed by God. Let God dance in you and sing in you, move in you, run in you. Let God become your excitement!

... So enjoy all that is available here. Become a part and participate in everything. Don't miss a single opportunity and a single moment. It takes a little time to get into a new kind of life and a new kind of climate... and this is a totally different kind of climate. This climate has disappeared from the world.

Churches are no more alive, temples are only graves. At one time, thousands of years ago, there may have been life, but the flame has gone. Those houses are empty; the master no more lives there. So people have become almost entirely unacquainted with religion... alive religion!

They are acquainted with these corpses -- Hinduism, Islam, Christianity -- so whenever a new religion comes, when God descends in a new way, when God starts searching for man again, when he spreads his hand and finds some new people to get involved with him, it is such a new climate, such a strange thing that it looks very difficult to enter into, to become part of. But if one can become part of it, only then can one know what life is and what God is and what the significance of being here on this planet is; otherwise we go on missing. So in these few weeks that you will be here become part of things. And something is going to happen!

Prabhu means God, alol means moved by, turned by, whirled by -- moved by God, turned by God like a wheel. and that has to be remembered: movement is your meditation. Let your meditation be more and more of movement.

For example, running will be a beautiful meditation for you, swimming will be a beautiful meditation for you, dancing will be a beautiful meditation for you. To movement, awareness has to be added.

Movement plus awareness; that is the formula for you. Run, but run with perfect awareness; keep alert.

It is natural and easy to keep alert while you are in movement. When you are just sitting silently the natural thing is to fall asleep. When you are lying on your bed

it is very difficult to keep alert because the whole situation helps you to fall asleep. But in movement naturally you cannot fall alseep. You function in a more alert way. The only problem is that the movement can become mechanical. You may be just running mechanically. You may become an expert, a professional runner; then there is no need for alertness. the body goes on running like a mechanism, an automaton; then you miss the point.

Never become an expert in running. Remain an amateur so that alertness can remain. If you feel sometime that running has become automatic, drop it. Try swimming. If it becomes automatic, then dance.

The point to remember is that the movement is just a situation to create awareness. While it creates awareness it is good; if it stops creating awareness then it is of no use any more. Change to another movement where you will have to be alert again. Never allow any activity to become automatic.

If we can de-automatise our activities the whole of life becomes a meditation. Then any small thing --

taking a shower, eating your food, talking to your friend -- becomes meditation. Meditation is a quality; it can be brought to anything; it is not a specific act. People think that way: they think meditation is a specific act in which you sit facing East, you repeat certain mantras, you burn some incense, you do this and that at a particular time, in a particular way, with particular gesture. Meditation has nothing to do with all those things. They are all ways to automatise it and meditation is against automatism.

So if you can keep alert any activity is meditation. And movement will help you immensely.

[The new sannyasin says he has a problem with his thoughts which are very active.]

No, nothing to be worried about. Just one month and your bolts will become loose! Two months and then nobody can screw them back! It will happen; nothing to worry about. The whole work here is about that, mm? It will happen; it just takes a little time. Just old habits of thinking, and everybody has been trained to think. The society pays so much for thinkers, so naturally it is an economical asset. About non-thinkers the society does not bother. It does not pay poets or the painters or the musicians. It pays mathematicians, engineers,

doctors, professors. It pays heads. It is almost against lovers; it punishes them.

It is against emotions, against feeling; it does not allow them. It is okay on a holiday but not ordinarily.

Once in a while you can relax, can take a little alcohol and relax, but otherwise you have to remain in the head. The world is run by the head, and because the heart brings chaos the society does not allow it. School, college, university, everything has been made in such a way that the heart is crushed.

People who belong to the heart suffer much because they behave in a way which cannot go with society, with the majority. They are always falling away from the crowd, from the mob. They never walk on the 1/08/07

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

Query:-

super-highway; they seek their own small footpaths in the jungle of life. The society does not want individuals. The head is a collective phenomenon. This has to be understood.

For example, two plus two are four. Whether you make it or I make it or anybody else makes it, it is universal, it is collective. Whether you do it in Tibet or in Iran or in Japan it doesn't matter. Even if you go to Mars or to the moon it will be the same; it is a collective phenomenon. But my love is my love and your love is your love and there is no way to make it universal. You love a woman and you say she is beautiful.

Nobody may agree with you but that doesn't bother you. Nobody need agree; that is your personal thing.

You like a rose flower; somebody may hate it. You like the peacock and its beautiful feathers; somebody may feel nauseous.

It remains individual. The heart is individual, the core of the individual. So society does not pay respect to the heart. It trains generation after generation for the head, for the collective. It is dependable, predictable. But then life becomes

monotonous; the individual is killed, is just a computer.

Remember that computers are available now which can do all the work a human mind can do. In the future there is every possibility, it can almost certainly be predicted that computers will be available that are better than the human mind. But no computer is able to fall in love. No computer will ever compose poetry like Shakespeare. One day it will be possible for computers to do mathematical calculations as well as Albert Einstein or even better. But there is no way that computers will ever paint like Vincent van Gogh or will compose music like Beethoven. There is no possibility. The computer has no heart.

One day man will have to assert his heart to protect himself from the computer. Otherwise the computer will compete with man very dangerously; the computer will defeat man. Now the struggle of the future is going to be between man and machine. It is no more a question of the poor and the rich, the slave and the maSter, the serf and the feudal lord. Those days are gone. It is not even going to be a question of conflict between man and woman but conflict between man and machine... and man himself has created the machine.

Man can survive only if he moves towards the heart. Then he can show the machine that there are a few things only he can do, that machine cannot do: poetry, painting, love, meditation. That will be the superiority of man. That day is coming, it is close by, when there will be no other way to keep one's dignity except through the heart.

It is going to happen. Just watch and get into things.

Prem means love, sapan means dream -- a dream of love. Love is the greatest dream and love is the greatest hope. It is love that keeps people alive and flowing. With love all is poetry; with love all is music.

So keep that dream alive. Sacrifice everything for that dream. Put your all at stake. Let that dream be fulfilled.

Once that dream is fulfilled you can go beyond dreams, never before it. Yes, there is something beyond the dream, too, called truth, called God, but the dream is the school through which we prepare for truth; it is the training. If your dream remains unfulfilled you will never be able to know what truth is, because the unfulfilled dream will go on haunting you, will go on pulling you backwards. It will go on enchanting you, creating new desires and it won't allow you to rise to

that height from where truth becomes available.

The dream has to be fulfilled, and there is only one dream in the human heart and that is of love. All dreams are just fragments of that big dream. And my understanding is that once that dream is fulfilled you simply transcend life. You start floating like a cloud, a white cloud. You are no more attached anywhere.

You are free... you are freedom. But first that dream has to be lived.

So my approach sometimes seems very contradictory. Because truth is beyond dreaming, God is beyond dreaming. All dreams have to disappear. When your eyes are completely empty of dreams, only then will you be able to see that which is. But still I preach and teach and help people to dream, because unless the dreaming is completely fulfilled -- not even a small iota of dreaming has remained unfulfilled in you, all seeds have been burned by fulfillment -- only then will your eyes be empty of dreaming; otherwise they will remain dreaming. And if some seeds are still there they will go on sprouting into new dreams. They will go on bringing you back into life again and again. Then no death will be a real death; every death will become a new birth in a new womb. And again the same story starts, with new actors, but the story remains the same, basically the same.

Fulfill the dream of love so that one day you can go beyond it!

[A sannyasin, who is leaving, says: I've been doing latihan for several hours every day. Just towards the 1/08/07

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

Query:-

end of the third month my mind became very noisy... especially when was in latihan. It has become difficult to continue it every day.

Osho checks her energy.]

Now the work of latihan is finished, mm? It has done its work -- now you need not do it. For a few days you may miss it but nothing to be worried about. Just

stop it completely; its work is complete.

When some medicine has worked and you go on taking it sometimes it can create illness because now there is nothing for it to fight with. Mm? there were the germs of the disease and the medicine was fighting with the germs. It helped you; the germs are killed. Now the medicine will start killing you.

All methods are medicinal. Hence, so much need for a master, because it will be very difficult to decide when the medicine is no more needed. Now it is no more needed so it will create noise; it will create many problems. The noise is just the beginning; it will create many problems. That is happening to many people who are in Subud because there is nobody to see when the work is complete.

Subud himself is not a master. He is a God-realised person but not a master, and these are two different things. Nobody can be a master without becoming a God- realised person, but everybody who becomes God-realised does not necessarily become a master. He is a realised man, he has attained, but the attainment has been completely accidental, and the reason for his attainment and its being accidental is that he is a Mohammedan. Mohammedans and Christians don't believe in past lives. The very idea that there are no past lives functions like a barrier.

It will not harm those very rare people, those who are near about ninety-nine degrees. Just one degree and they will have jumped. But it is very rare to find people who are ready ninety-nine degrees. One who is not ninety-nine degrees ready... For example, someone may be only ten degrees ready, so after eleven degrees problems will arise because Subud knows about only one degree. Twelve degrees, thirteen degrees, subud will be of no help: it will say go on doing it.

Your work with latihan is over, mm? Simply forget about it. It has been good; say good-bye to it. Now you can simply sit silently, just sit silently doing nothing. Even that nothing has not to be imposed. Just sit relaxedly... no effort even for this nothingness, otherwise you become tense. Just sit.

In the beginning, even in sitting silently, latihan may happen a few times because it has become an old habit. Get out of it immediately: stand up, start moving. Don't go into it; it has to be stopped now. It has become almost automatic. For a few days you have to consciously stop it. Otherwise things are going perfectly

well! Good.

[A sannyasin group leader had previously written to Osho about his relationship as his girlfriend was interested in another man.]

I received your letter.… Love is always a problem, and it is alive only while it remains a problem. Once everything is solved it disappears. So to remain alive love has to remain a problem. You cannot have love without problems, mm? Then it is not there. You go beyond it; it has no relevance. So, that problems are there is intrinsic to love; in one way or other the problems continue. Love is ecstasy and agony both. The agony is the price we have to pay for the ecstasy. If there is no agony in it there will be no ecstasy either; they are always in the same proportion.

You love... hence suffering will be there; that comes as part of it. She loves you, hence she also suffers. I have never come across a love affair where suffering does not exist. So that maturity has to be gained.

That's why many people have decided to go without love: then there is no suffering. Of course, there is no ecstasy either. And if one has to decide then I will always say to decide in favour of love. It is better to have loved and suffered than not to have ever loved. Because the kind of peace that comes without love is a very dull and dead peace -- the peace of the cemetery. There is a higher quality of peace that comes after these storms have passed. One matures only through these storms.

They say that the cypress tree goes the highest and suffers the most -- through wind, sun and clouds. But that is the way it becomes seasoned. The cypress wood lasts longest. Even when the tree has been cut and the wood has been used for something its life is almost endless... even the dead wood lasts forever. From where does this seasoning come? Those winds, the sun, those clouds, those storms and that continuous fight have given it stamina.

So accept this suffering. And another thing: accept that that also is part of the game. Love is really an intricate game. One remains a chaser and the other the chased. If you are the chaser, your woman is the 1/08/07

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

Query:-

chased. She tries to escape from you -- only then can the game continue. Otherwise why should you chase her? If she is simply available, only for you, then the chasing stops. You can chase her only if she is running away in some way or other. If you stop chasing her there is every possibility she may start chasing you... but then you will have to run!

This game has to be looked into. [Your woman] loves you, she cannot leave you, she cannot be happy without you, but she is the chased and you are the chaser. And this is just a game to continue the chasing, so she starts thinking of somebody else. She cannot actually go to somebody else; she would not be happy. If she were forced only then would she go, otherwise she would not. But this continuous 'going' in her mind keeps her running away from you and keeps you running after her.

I have seen so many couples and sometimes the miracle happens For example,

you can get bored with this whole thing. You can say 'Okay, now do whatsoever you want, and you start becoming interested in some other woman. Suddenly the whole game changes; she will start chasing you. She will forget about the man she is thinking of. Now she will think about the woman you have started thinking of. Now the whole thing changes but the problem remains the same! The problem is there, and if both of you stop chasing and being chased then suddenly you are stuck. You are not going anywhere and she is not going anywhere; then what to do? You are stuck with each other and then boredom arises. That is far worse ! Her mind going to somebody else keeps the whole thing alive. She does not allow you to take her for granted. And I am not saying she is doing all this deliberately. These are just unconscious games and they continue unless you become completely conscious.

Now, what is happening is that because you feel she cannot be totally in love with you, unconditionally in love with you, if she gives some love you don't accept that; you resist. You want either all or nothing.

That too is part of the unconscious mind. Because you want all or none she will start thinking more of the other person because you are not accepting her love.

By not accepting you are helping her to think of the other person. The more she thinks of the other person, the less accepting you will be, the less you will be together. Less and less you will be open to her, and more and more you would

like to be left alone. And you will not do anything in your aloneness; you will think of her. But whenever she is there you will at least pretend that you don't care; you will become hard. One has to protect oneself, one has to protect one's pride.

When she is in an affair you will be thinking of her and you will be worried. When she is there you will show that you don't care where she goes and what she does; you want to be left alone. When you are not there she will think of you and will not think of the other man. When you are there she will think of the other man.

Because you are more mature than her your responsibility is greater. She is still childish, hence this desire. That is part of the childish mind. She wants both together, she wants all. She is simple, innocent, and childish. Your responsibility is bigger than hers so you have to be more alert.

For example, my suggestions are these: when she gives you a little bit of love accept it with great, deep gratefulness; accept it with immense gratefulness. Don't ask for everything; even a fragment is good. Accept it as if it is total... and feel joyous! Don't try to escape from her; that will be throwing her away.

Then you will change the whole trend. If you can accept her little love with joy, she will be ready to give more. Accept that too and she will be able to give more. Because when somebody's love is accepted gratefully it is so satisfying. To give love is more satisfying than to get. So don't hurt her, otherwise you yourself are pushing her away. She is not as mature as you. Your maturities are different, there is a gap, so naturally your responsibility is bigger. If something goes wrong you will be more responsible than her.

So just see the game and play this chess game a little more consciously. Think at least two, three moves ahead. The great chess players think of five moves ahead. Think at least two, three moves ahead -- that if you do this then how will she react? If you do that, how will she react?... And let it be a game! Don't be too worried; there is nothing to worry about. She is not going anywhere; she cannot go. And finally I am here so you need not worry.

Love her and let her think whatsoever she wants to. Love her more and accept whatsoever love she can give, and accept with gratefulness -- not as if you take it for granted. And within a few days that idea of hers will disappear. But if you go

on doing these things that you are doing, you are helping her to go. Because what will she think then? You don't accept her love so her infatuation for the other person grows more. You are making her infatuated with the other. She starts dreaming and thinking that maybe the other man will accept more gratefully. He will love her more, he will not escape from her. He will not reject her.

Let her think about the other. And just be in this game a little more consciously, seeing the future moves, and within a month her mind will be changed; there is no problem in it. It is just that she is 1/08/07

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

Query:-

indecisive as every childish consciousness is.

It is just like a child. You take him for a walk and he wants an ice cream and he wants that toy and he wants to purchase this car and that elephant too. He wants everything! Just out of her simplicity, out of her innocence, she sees somebody and she feels infatuated. But she loves you, and that is the basic thing.

These are just infatuations. They come and go, they come to everybody. And we should be compassionate about them; they are natural. Man is really helpless. But don't become part of the unconscious game; play it consciously. Try. For one month let this game be a conscious game, from your side, and then I will see your woman. Good!

[A sannyasin, who participated in the Tao group before leaving for the West, says: I feel I've got in touch with some kind of softness and vulnerability... and I want to keep a hold of that somehow.]

It will remain. Don't try to keep it. In that very trying it will start slipping out of your hands. Don't try to keep it; it will be there. Just remain relaxed, enjoy it. Rather than trying to keep it, enjoy it, use it more.

Whenever you are in a situation remain vulnerable. In different states try it and taste how it works. Rather than trying to keep it, have as many experiences of it

as possible.

It is not a question of hoarding it; it is not property. It is a very subtle experience. It grows if you experience it more and more.

For example, you are talking to a friend. Relax and become very open, very receptive. You are holding somebody's hand. Don't remain hard, become very soft. Don't remain frozen, protective, defensive. Allow his energy to flow in, allow your energy to flow in. Just use it in as many ways as possible. Expose yourself to more and more situations and it will grow through that experience.

You cannot possess it but you can help it to grow... and the difference is great. You can possess money, you cannot possess a plant. The only way to possess a plant is to help it grow. It is not a dead thing. All that is alive remains only while it is growing. The moment growth stops it dies. So let it remain breathing. Don't miss any opportunity.

Listening to me you should become vulnerable; sway with it. Seeing the morning sun, become vulnerable; dance with it. Swimming in the pool become one with the pool, lose boundaries. I'm just giving you instances; they are there every moment. Then you will see it is growing, growing, and it can grow to no end' It can go on growing; it is an endless process. It begins, it never ends.

[Osho suggests she start a centre in the West. She is surprised and says: I feel pretty green to be starting a centre.]

No, only green people can start! Once the greenness is gone then it is difficult; don't be worried about it.…

It just means to help people towards me. Let your friends be acquainted with me, with what is going on here. Sometimes just invite a few friends and by and by it starts growing. Sometimes, once a week, meditate with a few friends, listen to the tapes. Keep the books, sometimes read them to friends. then it will go on by itself. It has no formal structure.

This will be the name: Avit.

It means to know well -- to know well, to know deeply. Vita means to know. The Indian scripture 'veda'

comes from the same root. It means to know so deeply that the knower and the known become one, to know through love so that the distinction between the knower and the known is lost; you are not separate from the known.

To know God deeply means to become God; that's the only way. If God and you are separate then it is not really knowing, mm? -- you are going round and round. To know God really is to go directly into his heart and disappear there; that is the meaning of avita.

Just invite a few people and it will start working. That's how all my centres work, mm?

[The assistant leader of the Tao group said she was sick because she couldn't accept being the assistant instead of the leader. But when she became conscious of this she was able to clear it.]

It will be very very good for you; you can learn many things from [the leader]. It will make you more rich. It is always good to be around people who have a kind of understanding and maturity; it makes you 1/08/07

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

Query:-

mature. And to assist is far more enriching than to lead because you have no responsibility and you can absorb things more quietly, observe things more quietly.

Sooner or later you are going to be a group-leader but I wanted you to sometimes assist too. I have the idea that I am going to make you a group-leader but many times you will be a group-leader and many times I will send you to work with somebody. You will become more enriched.

Don't think in terms of your being second; there is nobody who is first. If you can enjoy, then it is good; assist [the leader]. If you feel it creates trouble, start editing; forget about the group, mm? You decide!

The Open Secret

Chapter #8

< Previous | Contents | Next >