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CHAPTER 22
22 November 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
Prem means love, vidheya means positivity, acceptability, affirmation, the quality of saying yes to existence – and that is the greatest religious quality. In fact only that quality makes a person religious. Renouncing the no is renouncing the mind. The mind exists by saying no, the mind is basically negativity. Its whole existence is that of denial. It always looks at the dark side of things it is incapable of seeing the light side. It cannot see the silver linings in the dark clouds; it is utterly impotent for that. It can make much fuss about the dark clouds but it simply goes on missing the silver linings. And the dark clouds exist only for the silver linings.
The thorns exist only to protect the roses and the dark night is nothing but a womb for the dawn to be born out of. This is the attitude of one who says yes – yes to all that is. Then the whole gestalt changes: you move from the mind to the heart.
The mind is synonymous with no and the heart is synonymous with yes, a total yes. The heart affirms, reveres, loves, trusts; those are all aspects of yes. The mind doubts, suspects; those are aspects of no. And either a man can live through the no – then he lives in misery and in hell; in the language of hell there is no word corresponding to yes, yes does not exist in the vocabulary of hell – or a person can live through the yes. Then one creates a paradise around oneself. Then there is no need to wait for paradise to happen somewhere in the future; it starts happening herenow.
The moment you say yes you open up. The very climate of yes and your flower starts blooming, as if it has been waiting for it, and waiting for long, maybe for many lives. Yes is spring to the flower of the soul.
And the person who lives through yes can also use no, in the service of yes, just as the person who lives through no can use, will use, yes in the service of no. So I am not saying that the no has to be utterly effaced from your vocabulary, no. It has to become subservient to yes, it has to become
part of yes-saying. Then even no has beauty, because it serves yes. And when yes serves no it is ugly. It depends who is the master. The master decides the quality of your being: your present, your future, your destiny.
Sannyas has to become a yea-saying, a sacred yes to existence and to an that existence brings, even to those things which you don’t like in the first place. Because what you like may not be the right thing and what you dislike may be the right thing.
The person who wants to say yes says yes unconditionally. Even if sometimes he does not like a thing, knowing perfectly well that there is dislike, he still says yes in spite of it, because he trusts in the wisdom of the whole. ‘The whole knows better than me, than the part, so if I am not in a situation to love it and like it, I must be wrong. I have to grow; I have to become more alert and more understanding. I have to attain to a greater perspective, but the whole can never be wrong!’
Religion can be reduced to a single statement and this is that statement: ‘The whole can never be wrong, the whole is infallible.’ Then there is only surrender, then there is only let-go. That let-go is sannyas.
Prem means love, vidheya means the yes-saying quality – a loving yes to an that is!
Prem means love, sarit means river – a river of love. Love is never a dormant thing; it is always flowing. The moment love is dormant it dies. It can live only in the flow. It can live only as growth, it can live only as movement; movement is very intrinsic to it. And because people all over the world have tried again and again to make love a possession, they have killed it. You cannot possess it. A thing can be possessed, a flow cannot be possessed. A dormant, stagnant thing can be possessed, but a riverlike flow – how can you possess it? It is a process: it goes on moving, it goes on changing.
The change is so intrinsic in love that the moment we decide to cling to it, we start suffocating it, we start killing it. Parents kill the quality of love when they cling to their children; and when they teach the children to cling to them, then even more calamity. Then husbands and wives cling to each other and try to possess each other. Then friends, and everywhere, in all relationships, the whole effort is to make unmovable something which is intrinsically movement. This effort is bound to fail, and because it fails love brings frustration. If love is allowed to flow then love will bring the greatest fulfilment possible.
So start teaching him from the very beginning that love has to remain a process, it always has to remain growing. It is unpredictable: we cannot say anything about where it will be tomorrow, how it will be, what it will be. Nothing can be said about tomorrow. Tomorrow will bring its own surprises, and we have to relax with it. Whatsoever it brings as a gift has to be thankfully accepted.
Veet means beyond, tamo means darkness – beyond the darkness. Man essentially is light but is surrounded by great darkness. The darkness is infinite and the light is very small, although it is more powerful than the infinite darkness because darkness is impotent. In fact darkness is not something in particular, it is just an absence. Darkness has no positive existence; it is only absence of light. That’s why you cannot do anything directly with darkness: you cannot destroy it, you cannot bring it into the house, you cannot push it out of the house. If you want to do something with darkness you will have to do something indirectly. You will have to bring light in then darkness goes out or you will
have to turn the light off then darkness comes in. Because darkness has no existence nothing can be done directly about it. And that is one of the greatest problems that man has always been facing. He starts fighting with darkness, directly, and then the whole effort is futile, absurd, ridiculous. And it simply dissipates your energy.
For example, a man who is fighting with his anger is fighting with darkness. Anger has no existence of its own, it is only absence of compassion. So is the case with hate: it has no existence, it is only the absence of love. So the people who are fighting with anger and with greed and with hate are just wasting their time. They will never be victorious.
The only person who can ever be victorious is q the one who starts searching for the light. And once the light is there and you pour your energies into the source of the light, it grows bigger and bigger and bigger and you become full of light. In that state there is no anger. Even if you want to be angry you cannot; at the most you can pretend, act. Then there is no hate, no greed, no possessiveness. The whole darkness of life simply disappears when the light is there.
Meditation is the search for the light. Morality is the fight with darkness. So the moral person goes on moving into a wasteland. He never attains anything; he always remains empty and poor. The meditator is the only one who attains because his direction is to find the light, to search for the light... and the light is there! It is very small right now, just a spark, but if you go into it and you pour all your energies into it, it becomes a great fire. Then the whole forest is on fire!
Sannyas is to be aflame, afire. Hence the colour orange has been chosen: it is the colour of fire, of light, of the sunrise. So remember this: my work here is not to make you moral but to make you a meditator. And the beauty is that when you are a meditator morality comes on its own; it follows like a shadow. It is a consequence. One need not bother about it at all.
When you go for a morning walk you need not bother about your shadow. You don’t look behind you again and again to see whether your shadow is coming with you or not. It comes, it has to come. Morality is a shadow of meditation.
[Osho explains the meaning of deva amira – divine richness, divine kingdom – reminding us that we are made in god’s image; we have all the potential to be emperors, yet remain beggars because we never look within.
He tells the story of the child found some years ago near Lucknow who was reared by wolves till he was discovered, and finally died through the efforts of doctors to humanise him.]
Now what had happened? He was born as a human being but he was not given the human environment. He was born to become a human being but he was not nurtured.
This is the case with all human beings: everybody is born with the capacity to look within but nobody is nurtured, so we never come to know about our own potential, about our own possibilities and peaks and depths. And we have infinite depths – the Pacific is nothing. We have great heights – the Himalayas are nothing.
A special nurturing field is needed. That’s what I am trying to create here, a Buddhafield where you can be reminded again and again that you are a Buddha, that less than that won’t satisfy, not to
settle for less than that, that you have all the greatest possibilities that any man ever had or will ever have in the future. Search for it!
I am here to create a great thirst in you. And to be initiated into sannyas is to be initiated into my Buddhafield. To be initiated simply means that you are ready to become part of this commune, of this great experiment which will remain invisible to millions of people, which will be visible only to those who participate.
This is not something that anybody can know about by being a spectator. This is something so subtle that unless you are part of it you will never be able to taste of it.
[Pragito – a song.]
Life can be thought of either as a logical syllogism or as a musical song. These are the two alternatives: either life can be arithmetic or it can be poetry. And man has two minds inside his head. One is the calculative mind. That calculative mind is very mechanical, obviously, its function is to calculate. If you are after money then the calculative mind is perfectly skilful and efficient. But if you are in love, it is utterly meaningless. Then you have to move to another side of your mind, the side that knows how to love, the side that knows how to be sensitive, the side that is intuitive, the side out of which poetry is born. These are two separate minds.
The left hemisphere is calculative. It is connected with the right hand, that’s why the right hand has become very important. The right hemisphere of the brain is poetic, it is a song. It knows nothing of calculation, it is very innocent. It knows how to love. It knows how to be madly in love, but it is irrational, emotional. This mind is connected with the left-hand side. Because the society values arithmetic very much, it values the right hand, so the right hand is right and the left hand is wrong. That has become the general assumption. It is not true.
The left hand needs to rebel. And with the left-hand rebellion, the whole structure of society will change. If the right hand remains predominant then woman will never become equal to man, because the woman means the intuitive mind, the irrational mind; the woman means the left hand. And if the right hand remains predominant then life will never know what joy is, because through calculation you cannot come to joy. Joy is not a calculation, joy is a very very non-calculative process. Joy is available only to those who are childlike, still full of wonder, awe, still interested in the small things of life.
... You have to change from the logical to the illogical, and to be a sannyasin is the beginning of that. This is the revolution of sannyas: moving from the calculative part of the mind to the non-calculative. I am not against the calculative, it has its own uses, utilities, but it should not be the dominant one, it should not be the master of your life, it should not be the captain of your soul!
Poetry should be the central force of your life. Celebration, not calculation, should be the most important thing. And calculation should serve your celebration, mm? then you are on the right track, then you are moving towards god. And then things are no more upside-down; everything is in harmony.
Your name is an indication, it contains a message for you – to move from syllogism to song. Dance more, sing more, play. Love music and love trees and rocks and mountains and stars and people.… And then slowly slowly you will see a totally new fragrance arising out of your life, which fulfils.
Prem nadoIt means love music. Love has its own music. It is not produced on any instrument; it
arises out of a silent heart of its own accord. In fact it is already there but it is a very still small voice, and the mind is so full of noise that you cannot hear it, you cannot contact it. Once the noise of the mind is dropped it starts arising. And when the music of love fills you then only do you know what god is. There is no other proof for god, only love is the proof. And god comes into your life as music arising from your very core.
Man is made of music. That is one of the greatest findings of the mystics: the whole existence is in a harmony, it is a great orchestra, and man is a miniature universe, man is also an orchestra. But to feel it we need a little better sensitivity, a deeper sensuousness, a more clear perspective.
That perspective arises out of your meditations; hence in this place all meditations are somehow joined with music. The outer music starts functioning as the catalytic agent for the inner, so the outer music creates a synchronicity in the inner world. It cannot cause it, there is no cause-effect relationship between the outer and the inner, but it can provoke the inner without causing it. It can simply make you suddenly aware one day that there is outside music and there is something inside happening also, parallel to it. And once you have become aware of the inner music then there is no need for the outer music. Then there are silent meditations like vipassana, zazen: you simply sit and you hear. You simply sit and you are overwhelmed.…
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