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‌CHAPTER 17

17 April 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva Curtis. Deva means divine, curtis literally means court-bred, brought up in a king’s court; but that is only a literal meaning. Essentially it means graceful, gracious. Your full name will mean divine gracefulness.

Man can live in a violent way. That’s how many people live: aggressive – aggressive with others, aggressive with themselves. And those who are aggressive with others and with themselves are bound to be aggressive with existence itself.

The relationship between you and the existence is impossible if any kind of aggression remains in the mind. Hence Jesus says: Love your enemies too, so that all possibilities of violence disappear. Hence he says: The person who slaps you on one cheek, give him the other too – just to uproot all possibilities of being violent, of being angry.

Anger is just the opposite of prayer. To live in an angry way is to live without prayer. Prayer means gratefulness, prayer means no complaint. Prayer means “I am thankful for all that has been given to me; more I could not have asked for.” In that very prayerfulness one becomes graceful.

To be graceful is to be religious. Religion has nothing to do with the idea of God or with the idea of heaven and hell and all kinds of other ideas, but religion has something to do with grace. Religion is the art of creating grace in you. Then whether you believe in God or not does not matter. If you have grace, God will believe in you. If you have grace, God will come to you; you need not go to him at all, because wherever grace is, God starts pouring, showering. In a thousand and one blessings he comes. And then there is no need to believe, because one knows.

Anand Margot. Anand means bliss, margot comes from Persian; it means pearl – a bliss pearl. It is hidden in everybody’s heart. We have not to search for it; it is not somewhere else. No travel is

needed: just turning in, looking in. Once you are capable of looking in you will be surprised that all that one was searching for, seeking, desiring, dreaming, is fulfilled. God has already given all that is needed for the journey; we have been provided for. Existence goes on taking care, but we have lost trust, hence we are anxious, tense, driving ourselves unnecessarily mad.

All is perfectly okay. One needs tO relax and enjoy; and in those moments of relaxation and joy, you will become aware of the precious treasure within you: the bliss pearl.

Veet Gerhard. Veet means beyond, going beyond, transcending, surpassing; gerhard means hardness – going beyond hardness, becoming soft. The whole past of humanity has been praising hardness, masculinity, the qualities of a soldier. Woman has been condemned, and not only woman, but all that is womanly, all that is feminine; and the feminine is the way to reach to God. The feminine is the way to be aware of beauty, of love. The feminine is the source of all art, all music, all poetry. The ultimate peak of the feminine is the birth of a mystic, a mystic like ]esus or Buddha or Krishna. The feminine has to be imbibed.

Become more soft. Hardness has been praised because war has been praised. Hardness has been thought to be a great ideal because man has been taught to be constantly on guard, as if everybody is the enemy. It was a kind of paranoia that dominated the whole human past. Hardness becomes the ideal if you are afraid, hardness is the ideal if deep down is fear. But if there is love then hardness is not needed at all. If there is love, one can be soft, as soft as a rose, and one can be as vulnerable as a child. Those are the great qualities because those qualities make you receptive; and God has to be received, welcomed.

Shanti Ronald. Shanti means peace, ronald means power – the power of peace. It is a totally different power than any other power. It does not interfere, it does not attack. It does not dominate. It attracts, it invites. It wins you over without defeating you. It is so powerful that it is capable of surrendering. It is so powerful that it is even ready to be defeated – joyously, gracefully. And that’s where its great strength is. It is the strength of the water; it is not the strength of a rock.

Become peaceful and you become powerful; power starts exuding from around you. Become more and more peaceful; as you become peaceful in the center of your being, your circumference starts becoming very powerful. But the power is non-violent; it is the power of love. It helps people, it serves people; it becomes a blessing to them.

Power without peace is dangerous; peace without power is false, a pretension. When peace and power are both together, then know that something has really happened, that you are transformed.

Prem Daniel. Prem means love, and to me daniel represents trust. Daniel was an old Hebrew prophet. He was thrown into the den of lions, because he refused to deny his trust in God. He came out of the den without being harmed at all. This may have happened, it may not have happened, because lions are not known to be so religious; but the story is beautiful.

The man of trust finds security even in insecurity. He finds friends even in ferocious, wild animals. It is his vision that transforms everything around him. If you throw a stone at him, it is a stone for you, it is a stone for everybody who is observing, but as it reaches closer to the man of trust it starts turning into a flower. Not that it actually turns into a flower, but to the man of trust it is a flower, it is a gift of God, because all are God’s gifts.

To me daniel represents trust. Your full name will l, be: loving trust. That quality has to be grown, that quality has to be imbibed. It is not difficult, because all the essentials are there. You just have to pay a little more attention to your loving qualities, to your trusting qualities; you have to be a little more attentive.

You have been ignoring these qualities, that’s what everybody has been doing, and to ignore love and trust is to remain ignorant. Not to ignore love and trust is to become knowing, is to become wise.

Deva Peter. Deva means divine, peter means rock – divine rock. That’s what man is: on the surface a rock and in the depths a God. If one is deceived by the surface, one’s whole life goes astray. The rock is just a protection: deep in the rock is the lotus flower. But nobody thinks that hidden inside the rock will be a lotus flower, so people think that a rock is simply a rock; people think they are only bodies and nothing more.

Man is divine, not only matter; man is godliness. That is the lotus flower I am talking about. It is hidden inside the rock. The rock has to be penetrated. It can be penetrated.

Religion is basically the art of sculpture so that the unnecessary can be cut and the necessary can be revealed. You are the sculptor, you are the rock, and you are going to be the sculpture.

[A sannyasin says: Everything is fine... except for my headaches. That is the one thing in my life still that gives me tremendous pain.]

Mm mm. Accept it.

But if something is there and it is not going... and it has been there, accept it. Acceptance may help: it may go. Maybe the very effort, that it should not be there, keeps you constantly tense about it and keeps you focused on it. It can become a kind of auto-hypnosis; and that’s my suspicion.

If you become concerned with something continuously, for years... and naturally, it must have started physiologically and then you became concerned, but slowly slowly it has become more a part of your psychology than a part of your physiology.

And the more you fight with it, the more you will be looking at it, the more you will be expecting it... you know that it is going to happen, you know that it can’t be cured – all these things are there.

If it is cured you will not believe it for months!...

[She asks if Osho means she is responsible for her headaches.]

No, no, I am not saying that; I am not saying anything about it. I am simply saying: accept it. It has been there so long, it is time to accept it; that’s all that I am saying. What the consequence will be we have to leave for the future. If I say it will not be there, accept; then through your acceptance also you will be fighting. Because I say “It will not be there, it will go” you accept. Then acceptance is only a means so that it can go. Again you are focused on it.

I am saying to simply accept it. It has been there for so long, maybe you were born with it, maybe this is just the way you are...

I am knowingly not saying anything about the consequence, because then the acceptance will be false: you will be focused on the consequence, the result. Simply accept out of helplessness, not for a certain result.

Something is bound to happen, because acceptance is such a great force; something is absolutely certain to happen. But what it will be, I cannot say, and I should not say and you should not ask. Just accept. Yes, maybe it is going to stay there For your w hole life – accept it, and let us see what happens. Keep the future open. Then it is a totally different quality of acceptance. Then you are not motivated towards anything.

And it is psychological now. You have become focused on it, you have believed in it so long. It has become such a part of your being. It has been a kind of marriage and divorce is painful.…

You prefer it but deep down such a long marriage... you cannot just simply divorce!

Start accepting. From this moment accept. Forget about it that it is a problem. When it comes, let it be there; nothing can be done. When it does not come, enjoy; when it comes, accept.

Let us see what happens out of acceptance. Something is bound to happen, something that may be a surprise to you!

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