12

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‌CHAPTER 12

12 January 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

... That’s my whole teaching, celebration; not worship but celebration. When you worship, you start making a hierarchy; the lower and the higher. When you worship you put something on top of other things. When you worship, something becomes sacred and something becomes profane. When you worship you divide, you split existence. Then something is praised but in the wake of it, something is condemned too. So worship is not religious. The god of the worshipper is not the true god, because to exist it needs a devil. Without a devil the god will not be possible. The more you praise the god, the more you have to condemn the devil. Then the world is tom apart into two enemy forces, and when you divide the world, you are also divided in it, you become split and schizophrenic. A part of you becomes evil and a part of you becomes holy, and then there is constant conflict, repression, and all joy is lost. A worshipper is basically ill-at-ease; he is dis-eased.

Celebration is a totally different dimension. When you celebrate, you celebrate all, you don’t divide. For a celebrator, prayer is as beautiful as drinking tea. The tea is not profane and prayer is not separate; all is one. The church, the temple, the mosque and the pub are all one. Making love to a woman or a man or praying to a god is the same.

Celebration does not divide. It unites, it brings things together; it creates a togetherness in the world. The duality disappears and there is unity, and with unity there is joy because there cannot be any conflict. There is no struggle, nothing has to be overcome. All is overcome in the celebration itself. The worshipper has a goal; he has to attain it. The celebrator has no goal; he has attained it already. Worship is always future-oriented; celebration is present-oriented. You celebrate this moment, you worship some other moment.

You worship Christ; now two thousand years have passed. You worship the past – Krishna, Mohammed, Rama – or you worship the future – heaven, god – which is going to happen. But the celebrator worships this moment, he lives this moment. That is his worship; he lives it totally.

It happened once: a Christian theologian went to see a Zen master who was a painter too. Celebrators are always creators; worshippers are non-creative. The master was painting. He was just going to do something, he was in that moment of waiting when something descends, when something takes possession. The Christian said, ‘I would be very happy if you can paint Jesus Christ for me.’ The master said, ‘Okay, I will paint Jesus Christ.’ And he painted a bamboo!

When the bamboo started coming up, the Christian was a little puzzled; had he forgotten what he had said When the painting was completed it was one of the most alive bamboos ever done. The Christian asked, ‘I am sorry; the painting is beautiful, but you had promised to paint christ.’

But the master said, ‘This is Christ! Can’t you see Christ in it? The fragileness of it is exactly the fragileness of Christ. The wind is moving it; can’t you see it? It goes with the wind: thy will be done. It is exactly Christ. And it is so alive and so beautiful; it belongs to god! What more can you expect? This is Christ...this moment this is Christ; Christ has taken the shape of a bamboo. And Christ was a bamboo, a hollow bamboo. He was not there, that is his beauty. He allowed god to exist in him, he allowed god to come through him, he allowed god to have a contact with the world; he became the connection.’ But the Christian could not understand. He can only understand a jesus on the cross; how can he understand a bamboo as christ?

Christians have been very much puzzled by the Zen attitude towards life, because it has no worship in it; it has celebration.

A Zen master was asked, ‘What is the essential secret of Buddhism? And the master said, ’The cypress tree in the courtyard,’ because in that moment that was the only reality for the master.

I have heard another story

A man came, a monk, not belonging to the Zen people. He wanted to be initiated by the master, a Zen master. He was asked, ‘From where are you coming?’ He said, ‘I come from a monastery which is called “the monastery of spiritual light”.’ The master said, ‘Spiritual light? Never heard about anything like that. Strange! I am ninety and I have never heard anything about spiritual light; what do you mean? In the day there is sunlight, in the night there is the lamplight. From where comes this spiritual light, what is this spiritual light?’

The man was at a loss, he couldn’t answer. Then the master answered for him. He said, ‘Don’t be worried. In the day, sunlight; in the night, lamplight. This is what spiritual light is; there is no other spiritual light.’

This is a different vision of life – as it is, in its suchness, and enjoying each and every moment of it. So don’t just remain contented with the name celebration; become celebration!

That’s what sannyas is all about: it is a celebration of god, not a worship. And celebrate in your own way, because celebration cannot have any form. Worship becomes petrified into forms; celebration remains alive. And all is divine; there is nothing profane.

Prem means love, homa means offering – offering of love. And that’s all we can offer to god; anything else will not be worthwhile, will not be worthy. We can only offer our heart; that is our flower. In the

East they say, ‘Never offer a bud; always offer a flower’... because the bud is incomplete. When something is complete, only then can it be offered to god. So never offer a heart which has not loved totally, otherwise it will be a bud.

When the heart has loved totally, it opens, it blooms, it releases the fragrance that man carries within, and that is the time to offer it. Love prepares man as an offering to god. So love as intensely as possible, abandon yourself in love. Get lost in the dimension of love, because that is the only way to find yourself. Don’t go on holding yourself, otherwise you will miss.

Life is very illogical. It requires risk, it requires leaps where the mind cannot help, because the mind can always help in things it knows, it can help about the past, it can supply answers for questions that you have already solved, but when a new phenomenon faces it, it is impotent. In that moment it shrinks back, it closes itself; it tries to deny the problem because it feels impotent in front of it. That’s why so many people go on denying love, because it imposes great risks the mind is not capable of coping with.

So many people deny the existence of god. Not that they have searched, enquired and known that god doesn’t exist. They have not searched, they have not enquired; in fact they are afraid to search. The only way to protect themselves from the search is to believe that there is no god. If there is no god then there is no question of searching and enquiring. They are afraid to take the leap. So whenever there is a moment where the mind feels inadequate, put it aside, go ahead. That is the only way to grow and open.

Love gives great challenges. It brings all that is inside you to the surface; it provokes, it goads. And it is not all joy. There is much suffering involved in it because growth is not possible without pain. So when pain comes, accept it; when pleasure comes, accept it. Whatsoever comes, accept it and go on. Go on finding more and more ways and means to pour yourself into existence. That’s what prayer is for me.

And one day when your love flower has bloomed, it will be accepted. Only then can one contact god, not before that God is just around you; he is your around and he is your surround, he is within and without, but our eyes are blind.

A great poet, Paul Edward, has said that the other world exists but the other world exists in this world. The other world is, but it is hidden in this world. My own suggestion is that there is no other world. This is the only world and nothing is hidden in it. All is unhidden, but we are keeping our eyes closed, hence it looks hidden. There is no secret about god; god is not hiding in the caves, he is spread all over, but we go on keeping our eyes closed. Love opens you eyes, and only love can open them because love is unafraid, fearless. Logic is very very afraid.

Remember that, and as you go deeper into love, you will come closer to god. [Osho suggests a visitor takes sannyas. The visitor replies: I think I’ll feel it.]

That’s more or less a device to escape. It looks very very relevant when one thinks that first one should feel. But have you ever felt anything? The whole life goes by without feeling; you live through the head: you think. Even when you are in feeling, it is more or less a thinking about feeling. So the

faculty of feeling does not function at all, and it will not immediately start functioning for sannyas. It has not functioned for lives, so the sources are blocked. In fact it is like putting the cart before the horse. Sannyas will help you to feel, that is the purpose of sannyas: to remove the blocks from your feeling sources so that the fountain starts flowing again and you can start feeling.

Now you put the cart before the horses. You say, ‘First I will feel, then I will take sannyas.’ That is impossible; from where will the feeling come? It is making an impossible demand upon yourself.

And it looks very very logical that one says, why should one do anything unless one feels to? I understand it, it is very very intelligent, but deep down it is very dangerous because our whole training is against feeling. The school, the college, the university, the world, the politics, the priests, the politicians are all against feeling. They train you only to think, and that too in a very limited way... not to think to the very end, because if you think to the very end you will jump into feeling again. So they allow you to think according to particular rules, in a particular direction, with particular conditions: only go so far and stop, because if you go far enough you will fall into feeling again. They have created a small island of thinking in the ocean of feeling. So they give you a little rope. Move on the island, but don’t go too far otherwise you will fall into the ocean. Sannyas is nothing but making the ocean available to you again.

Now, what you are saying is like saying ‘I will not step in the river unless I first learn how to swim.’ Where are you going to learn to swim? You cannot learn it on your bed. You can throw up your hands and you can do a few gymnastics but you will not learn swimming. You will have to go into the river. You cannot make that condition.

Feeling will come, but one has to dig for it, one has to search for it. It is lost in the rubbish of the mind; it may take years to reach that source of feeling within you. It is like digging a well: it depends on what kind of things are in between you and the water. There may be rocks, the water may be very very deep, it may be a hard land... it depends.

But I am not saying to go against yourself. I am simply making these suggestions so that you can think again, you can reconsider. Doing these few groups will be helpful. If the idea arises, then don’t make the impossible demand that it has to be a pure feeling; it will be an idea but the idea is also yours. Catch hold of the idea; that will be the thread, a small thread, and from there, slowly, slowly move and you will come to the feeling too. Sannyas will certainly bloom when it comes to the feeling; that is true.

So in fact there are three initiations: the first is when you take sannyas from the mind. Almost always, out of one hundred people, ninety-nine take sannyas from the mind. Then the second initiation will happen some day when sannyas has penetrated deeply into you and has become part of your feeling; but that too is second. Then one day, the third thing will happen: when it has penetrated even more, to the very core, and has become your being, the real sannyas happens. The first two are just preparatory; even the one that happens through feeling is preparatory.

Think! – I will not say feel – you think! (laughter) And then... [The visitor decides to take sannyas!]

Anand means bliss, neehar means chaos. Bliss is a chaos, misery is very orderly; that’s why people decide to remain miserable. It is manageable, it has a certain pattern, you can rely upon it. It is predictable; you can trust it. Bliss is a chaos. It is not predictable and it is not manageable. When bliss comes, you simply disappear into a chaos.

There is no more any controller left. Hence people go on talking about bliss and they want to become blissful but they don’t take a single step towards it. Deep down they are frightened. They know that it is better to live with misery; it is familiar and at least it is within their control.

Bliss is bigger than you. It is inviting the whole into your being, it is inviting the ocean into the drop. Mm? just think: the ocean falls into the drop. There will be chaos, utter chaos, but that chaos is creative. The whole world has come out of that chaos. Everything that exists comes out of chaos and one day again relaxes into it, disappears into it. God is chaos. God is not a law, god is love. Gd is freedom, god is utter licence.

I am giving you this name, neehar, to keep you alert that you have to invite chaos into your being. With the entry of chaos you will become religious, with the entry of chaos you will start feeling. Feelings bring chaos, that’s why people repress feelings. It is good to live in the head, everything is clear cut; there is a clarity in the head. Two plus two are four. Not so about feeling and the heart. Sometimes two plus two are only three and sometimes five and sometimes no one knows what; everything is possible. Enter into the heart and you enter into the world of the uncertain. The principle of uncertainty is absolutely of the heart.

It seems to me that the physicists have entered into the heart of matter; that’s why they have stumbled upon the principle of uncertainty. Up to now they were playing around in the head of matter; now they have reached the heart. If they reach the being, then there will be utter chaos, not even uncertainty, because uncertainty also has a few certainties about it; that’s why it is called uncertainty. Certainty is there, loose, liquid; but when all certainty disappears... Clarity is like a solid thing, uncertainty is like liquid and chaos is vaporous. Then one falls into one’s own being.

Just keep this in your awareness, and while you are here invite chaos more and more. In the groups you will come across it; don’t shrink back, go headlong. And you will be able to because you have taken the first step of becoming a sannyasin. You have taken the risk, you have taken it without thinking about it. The horse is already in front of the cart; now everything can settle!

Anand means bliss, himen means snow. That’s why Himalaya is called Himalaya. It comes from the same root ‘hima’; hima means snow. And snow is a metaphor for two things: one, its coolness, its utter coolness.

Bliss has to be utterly cool. If it is feverish, if there is excitement in it, then it cannot be eternal. No excitement can ever be more than momentary, because excitement is such an unnatural state; you cannot prolong it. So we have to find a bliss which is cool, which is calm, which is not feverish, which knows nothing of excitement and passion... and that bliss is possible. Mm? the buddha statue symbolises that bliss. They have chosen marble to give you the feel of coolness.

And the second thing about the snow is its purity, its whiteness. Bliss has to be cool and pure. Bliss is cool when it doesn’t depend on anybody else. When it is simply an inner journey, when you stand

at your centre and look at the world detached, when you are just an observer, a witness, when you are not involved, a watcher on the hills, and when you are not dependent on anybody, then it is cool.

In the final stage you also disappear, because the ‘I’ exists only in reference to ‘thou’. It cannot exist alone for long; it needs the ‘thou’ to continuously feed it. When ‘I’ also disappears then the bliss is pure. Cool, when you don’t depend on anybody; pure, when you have completely disappeared into it.

That is the uttermost vision of what a human being can become, what a human being needs to become. And it is not impossible. Once the seed falls into your heart and you start searching for it, it becomes possible. It has become possible for a few, it can become possible for everybody.

Prem means love, parama means ultimate, unconditional, absolute, total; those are all the meanings of parama. It is a very very potential word. Literally it means ‘of the beyond, transcendental’, and of course, the transcendental can only be unconditional. And love hankers to become unconditional. The deepest urge in love is to become absolute, and when it cannot become absolute it suffers, when it cannot give itself to talk without any motive it feels hurt.

Love is joyous only when it is a sheer sharing, a gift, for no motive at all, no idea of getting anything. When it is not a means but an end unto itself it is joyous, then it celebrates. And for our whole life we search for a person, a situation, a place where love can bloom in utter nudity, in its totalness.

But it does not depend on the situation and it does not depend on the person; that’s where we are wrong – it depends absolutely on you. It does not depend on your finding a perfect person whom you will love totally; it depends on you. You can love totally and the person may be a devil and be as imperfect as possible. In fact if you love an imperfect person totally you help him to move towards perfection. And it happens unawares, he never becomes aware. An unconditional love provokes unconditional love in others too. So love for no reason at all. Love for the sheer joy that one is, and don’t confine your love: let it remain liquid and flowing.

Only three things are to be transformed by man. One is love: it should be unconditional. The second is life: it should be utterly involved in the herenow. And the third is death: it should be a guest, a welcome phenomenon. If these three things can happen, then god has happened to you. Forget about god, there is no need to remember him; god will remember you. Love has to become unconditional, life has to become timeless, in the present moment, and death has to become a welcome guest.

Then there is no need for anything; no church is needed, no bible, nothing is needed. You have found... you have found the temple.

[The anatta group are attending darshan. One participant says: I feel very much hate inside myself. I fought the whole group... I don’t know what to do with that hate inside, because I think it has to come out.

But it is good. You tried and risked; it is good.…

The hate is coming up and it will be gone. First it has to come up, only then can it leave you. It has been deep in the recesses of your being, now it is coming out. Once it has come to the surface it will evaporate.…

Don’t do anything. If you do anything whatsoever, you will repress it. Even in the effort of bringing it out you will repress it. All effort is unnatural. One has to allow things. It is because of your effort that it has gone deep. You have repressed it your whole life. You have never allowed yourself to be in hate, in anger, in rage. You have always controlled yourself, you have been a gentleman. Now, please, no need to do anything.

Simply wait and watch and enjoy when it comes. It will be gone. Suddenly one day you will find that a cloud has disappeared, a great burden is no more on the head, and you will be light of step. Suddenly you will find that you have become weightless. Hate is the weight that keeps people down. It is the very gravitation that does not allow them to fly in the sky.

Just enjoy, and no need to do anything. I can see it – it is surfacing. It will be gone; those bubbles have started coming up.…

It is easy. Life is easy; you make it difficult!

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