27

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‌CHAPTER 27

17 September 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva means divine and pankaj means lotus – a divine lotus. The lotus is very symbolic in the East because it comes out of dirty mud, and yet so beautiful, so graceful, so other-worldly... is born of the earth but does not belong to the earth. It is unearthly.

So one has to be like a lotus – rooted in the earth but not defined and confined by the earth. Rooted, well-rooted to the earth, but still seeking the sky, going higher and higher. Not against the earth – with the cooperation of the earth. Not in a denial – the earth has not to be denied. It has not to be negated. There should be no ‘no’ in a religious person. The yes should be utterly total. The earth has to be accepted as a gift, but one should not remain confined to it. One should grow beyond it. So there should be a rootedness and yet a transcendence. That is the meaning of the lotus.

It remains rooted in the earth, it is being nourished by the earth, yet it is an alchemical change, a mutation. If you simply see the lotus, you cannot imagine how it can be born out of ordinary mud. It is almost impossible to conceive. When you see a Buddha, it is impossible to believe how this can happen in an ordinary human being. With the body, with the bones, with the blood, how is it possible – this lotus of consciousness? A Buddha is an impossibility. It happens but it is unbelievable.

So remember that – that wherever we are, our whole being consists of surpassing, of transcending. So wherever you are, go on transcending yourself. Friedrich Nietzsche used to say that man is the only animal who tries to surpass himself. So the very effort to surpass is human. That’s what makes you a human being – that you are constantly dropping yourself, your past, your boundaries, and trying to go higher, trying to become more expansive, more huge, more indefinite, more infinite, more uncertain, more nebulous. A moment comes when you are just a cloud of unknowing. In that moment your inner lotus flowers and for the first time you see the unearthly beauty happening in the very earthly. The soul arising out of the body. God happening in time.

[A sannyasin says:... there’s too much to say.]

That’s right. And fear is natural. Being close to me, it is natural to be scared. You are just close by a precipice. If you fall, you are gone forever. And the attraction to fall into the abyss is tremendous, hence the fear.

When you come to me, you come to die in me. And unless you die, you will not be reborn. So fear is absolutely natural. Accept it, and go on moving in spite of it.

These two things have to be remembered. These are the two extremes. Either people start repressing their fear and start trying to impose some bravery, courage – which is going to be false because deep underneath there will be fear – or people become so afraid that they become paralysed; then the fear becomes a hin-drance. In both ways you will be stuck with fear. The right way is to accept it so that there is no need to repress. Accept its naturalness – that is natural, bound to be so. Accept the fact of it and still go ahead, bypass it. Don’t repress it and don’t be hindered by it. In spite of it, go on moving. Trembling, of course, because the fear is there, but go on moving. Trembling, but go on rushing towards the abyss.

Don’t impose fearlessness, because an imposed fearlessness is a pseudo thing, a counterfeit. It has no value. So just be natural, authentic, sincere. Take note that the fear is, Still, but still go on. That’s what I mean when I say go in spite of the fear. Trembling – okay; shaking – okay, go on. Tremble like a small new leaf in the strong wind.

Have you seen the strength of a new leaf? So fragile, so weak, and yet so strong. Even when the storm is raging, the leaf goes on trembling – but have you seen its beauty? The fear is there, because fear is always there when something is alive. Only in a dead thing there’s no fear. The fear is there, the storm is raging, and the leaf is small and delicate, tender, soft. It can be crushed very easily, but have you seen its strength? Still it goes on dancing, singing. Still it goes on trusting in life.

So be soft, be tender, be delicate, be afraid, but never be hindered by it and don’t repress it. Accept the limitations, the human limitations, but still go on working beyond them. That’s how one grows, mm? And welcome home!

Deva means divine and saguna means with form. Your mother’s name is Nirgun. Nirgun means without form, without attribute. Saguna means with attribute, with form.

In the East we conceive of God in two ways – one with form. The whole universe is God with form, saguna – with attributes, qualities, colour, taste. You can touch it, you can hold it in your hands. You can kiss it. You can embrace it. It is available to the senses. That which senses can understand, eyes can see and ears can hear, and hands can touch and the heart can feel. You can love. You can worship. This is God in form.

Then another concept of God is formless, nirguna. It means the formless beyond – which cannot be seen, which cannot be touched, which is untouchable, unseen, unknown; not only unknown but unknowable. There is no way for the senses to approach it. Even the mind cannot approach it. You reach it only when all the senses are dropped and the mind is dropped, and you yourself lose all form. In deep ecstasy, in samadhi, when you are completely formless yourself, then you come to know it.

The devotee believes in the saguna. The worshipper, the man who goes to the church and to the temple and to the mosque, believes in the saguna, in God that is available, humanly available. And there are meditators who are not devotees, who believe in the nirguna – the God who is always beyond. You have to drop everything and you have to become a zero, absolute emptiness, then you come to know it.

I have given your mother the name nirguna because nirguna is the mother of saguna, because that form comes from the formless. This whole world comes from the formless. The original source is formless and millions of forms arise from it. So the formless is the mother and with the form is the son.

God is formless, Christ is the form. So between you two, it is complete. The whole philosophy is complete, mm?

[To a visitor Osho says:]

It is rarely that I give sannyas without asking. You may be the first sannyasin to whom I am giving it without asking, because I can see that you are absolutely ready. You may know it, you may not know it.

You have been working for it through many lives. Something is ripe, ready to fall. So just become part of the orange people and allow things to happen.

This will be your name: Ma Deva Ashu.

Deva means divine and ashu means quick – one who approaches the divine very quickly. And it has been quick so you will have to get adjusted to it a little, mm? Something to say?

[Ashu answers: I was going to tell you that I was full of anger.]

Full of anger? Nothing wrong in it. It is pure energy. It can be transformed in any way. It can become love. It can become compassion. It can become the very force upon which you can ride and move towards God.

Anger simply means energy stuck, energy not finding a way to move and to be creative. That’s what anger is. Anger is not really anger; it is just stuck energy... a river which wants to move towards the ocean but cannot find the way – so many rocks.

When energy is stuck and becomes stale, it becomes poisonous. It needs to be flowing. A flowing energy is pure, just like a flowing river. When the river is not flowing, then it becomes stale, dirty, angry. So nothing is wrong. It is perfectly okay. We will use that energy. Dance more, meditate more, do a few groups, and within a month you will feel your anger simply gone. And you will feel very grateful to your anger because it will release much energy that will make you more loving, more happy, more blissful.

A person who has no anger has nothing to grow with. He is impotent. A person who has tremendous anger has much potentiality. A person who has no anger is simply dull. He has no intelligence. The

latest findings of psychologists say that children who are angry are more intelligent. The children who are not angry are a little stupid. They are a little dormant, retarded. Anger is pure fuel. It can be used in many ways. If it is not used, then it is dangerous. Then it can become destructive. If it is used, it becomes creativity.

Leave it to me. Simply do what I say and within one month it will be gone. Within a month the old will be gone and the new will have entered.

And you have to be quick! You have to be true to your name, Ashu!

Deva means divine and shobha means elegance – divine elegance, divine grace, divine grandeur or divine splendour, will it be easy to pronounce?

And try to become one, mm? Everybody’s destiny is that – to become a divine elegance, and unless we attain to that, we remain frustrated. Nothing else will satisfy unless one becomes a divine grace. Everything else is just not enough. One can have as much money as one desires, and Still one remains poor; the beggar continues. One can have as much power as possible, Still one remains impotent, because all that we can accumulate outside cannot help us grow inside. The inner growth is the real need, and no substitute can be of any help.

Unless one becomes more and more divine each day, one can never be content. That’s why there is so much frustration in the world. People are here to become gods, and they are trying to become something else which falls very short of the goal. So if you don’t achieve, you are frustrated. If you achieve, then too you are frustrated because your destiny is far beyond. You belong to the stars. Just make it a point to remember continuously that this is your destiny.

That’s why I change the name and I give a new name. The new name will become a new remembrance. Whenever somebody calls you Shobha, you will remember that you have to become one. Unless that is happening, you are missing the opportunity of life. You have to flower that way. And if one is continuously reminded of it, it starts happening, because it is only a question of remembrance. We are divine – we just have to remember it.

And remember – because you are a student of anthropology – unless you understand the divine element in man, you will not be able to understand man at all, because man is something like a bridge. Man is not a being in himself. Man is a process. That’s where anthropology goes on missing something. You cannot understand a process unless you understand the goal, because the process is goal-oriented. If you don’t understand the goal and you simply try to understand the process, it will look meaningless.

For example, a train is going somewhere. Just in the middle you start studying the train. You don’t know from where it is coming and to where it is going. Then the whole thing will look absurd. Why are these people sitting here? What are they doing? Once you know that the train is destined towards some goal, things start falling into a whole, into a pattern.

Man is a process, a bridge – a bridge between the animal and the divine, a bridge between the earth ar d the sky, a bridge between the known and the unknown, a bridge between the visible and the invisible, the finite and the infinite, a bridge between the material and the spiritual. Unless this

is understood, accounted for, anthropology remains superficial. Then you cannot understand man, because man is not an animal like a dog.

You can understand a dog. Have you observed that a dog is born complete? You cannot say to one dog that he is less than he should be. All dogs are similarly dogs. You cannot say to one dog that he is doggier than another dog – they are all simply dogs. But you can say to a man that he is not human enough. You can say to a man that he is not man yet, but you cannot say the same thing to a dog. Dogs are all dogs; they are already. Born, they are complete.

They are not processed. They have a being. The dog has a being. The rosebush has a being.

Man has no being. That is man’s anxiety and his grandeur, both; his worry – that he has no being. He is just in between two abysses hanging like a bridge. He does not know who he is.

A dog is perfectly aware of who he is... instinctively aware of who he is. He is not seeking his identity. You have never seen a dog with an identity crisis. They don’t have any psychoanalysts and they don’t have any therapies – nothing. They are simply whatsoever they are. A mango tree is a mango tree. A rose is a rose is a rose. But a man? – you cannot simplify him that way.

A man is a man – and a thousand and one things more, because man is the whole future, not only the past. The dog has only a past. The man has tremendous possibilities of growth, of evolution, of transmutation. Unless those things are accounted for, anthropology remains very superficial. Only religion can give anthropology meaning.

So it is good that you have come to me. Much will become possible, and your studies will be affected in a very meaningful way. You may be able to contribute something to anthropology. If this concept can be given – that man should be understood as a process, a being who is on the way, is not yet arrived, a being arrived, a being not complete, incomplete, a being in movement, fluid – then we can understand the anguish. The anguish is that man is always worried about who he is. And there seems to be no answer.

If he looks at the past he can find some answer about who he is, but the past is not at all. In fact the past is no more meaningful. It is gone. Gone is gone. And man is always arriving, surpassing his past, reaching beyond. He is always reaching for the stars. That is what man is – a surpassing, a transcendence. And unless that is understood, anthropology is not really anthropology because it is not a science of man yet.

[Sometimes I enjoy the thought of going back to the West and speaking with people about my experiences, my beautiful experiences here, and at other times I think it is better to be silent and to let you speak through me. You speak better than I.]

No, you have to speak for me. I will be speaking through you. I will need many more vehicles, I will need many mediums. And because I am not going anywhere, I will be sending ambassadors. You are my ambassador – official ambassador to Italy! Soon we will be having ambassadors everywhere.

You have much to do. You have to write. You have to speak... you have to shout from the rooftops. And I will be there shouting through you, don’t be worried. You just start and the remainder I will do. You just initiate it, mm? Good.

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