1

< Previous | Contents | Next >

‌CHAPTER 1

1 October 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Tao Devam. Tao means the way – not the way to any goal, but the way things are. Tao has nothing to do with goals; it has no future-orientation. It is the present moment and the things that are in the herenow. It is the totality of existence in the present and the law that holds it.

Tao does not believe in any cause and effect. It does not say the seed is the cause and the tree is the effect. It says the seed is the tree and the tree is the seed. They are not two so how can they be divided into cause and effect? It is not that the seed causes the tree but that-the seed becomes the tree. And the beginning also is not something new. It is just unveiling that which already was. It is a discovery, not an invention.

All already is. Sometimes it is hidden and sometimes it is manifest, but there is no division in existence. Tao is that indivisibility. And to understand tao is to become divine. To live in tao is to live in god.

Tao is a far better word than God, because the very idea of God creates the desire to worship... or to deny. So a few become worshippers and a few become antagonistic to it. Tao does not create the desire to worship, because it is not a person; it is simply an impersonal law, like gravitation. And because it does not create worship it does not create antagonism either. So one cannot say ‘I believe in tao’ or ‘I don’t believe in tao’. Tao is so vast it can contain belief and disbelief both. That is the beauty of it.

The word ‘God’ is a little small, tiny, narrow. It cannot contain the disbeliever. It is arrogant, it immediately becomes jealous. Tao accepts all. Whether you know it or you don’t know it does not matter; any way one lives in it. If you start living consciously in it, you become divine. If you don’t live consciously in it, you remain worldly.

2

Sannyas is an initiation into tao. It is a tongue-tip taste of tao. It is a beginning... a beginning of something that never ends. You are entering a path, the way, tao. But remember again: tao is not the way to some goal; it is the way things are. Trees are green – this is tao. Rivers are flowing towards the ocean – this is tao. Children are becoming older this is tao. An old man is dying – this is tao. This whole complexity, this totality is tao.

[A sannyasin who is going to the West says: I’m really scared of leaving. Osho asks: What is the fear? He replies: I don’t know.]

That’s a good kind of fear if you don’t know what exactly it is. That simply means that you are on the verge of something unknown. When the fear has some object it is an ordinary fear. One is afraid of death – it is very ordinary fear, instinctive; nothing great about it, nothing special about it. When one is afraid of old age or disease, illness, these are ordinary fears... common, garden variety.

The special fear is when you cannot find an object to it, when it is there for no reason at all; that makes one really scared. If you can find a reason the mind is satisfied. If you can answer why, the mind has some explanation to cling to. All explanations help things to be explained away; they don’t do anything else, but once you have a rational explanation, you feel satisfied. That’s why people go to the psychoanalyst to find explanations. Even a stupid explanation is better than nothing; one can cling.

You have a stupid dream – ninety percent of one’s dreams are stupid, rubbish – but if you go to the psychoanalyst he will give a beautiful interpretation. He never says that any dream is rubbish. He finds out something, invents, and gives you a very coherent picture, and suddenly you feel very good. Nothing has happened, but something was there hankering in the mind, ‘Why?’; now the why is answered. The answer may be as stupid as the dream itself; in fact, it is, because you cannot intelligently answer a question which is not intelligent. A stupid question creates a stupid answer. Ninety percent of your dreams are rubbish – and I am being very conservative when I say ninety percent; in fact, to be really true, ninety-nine, because your mind when you are awake is stupid. How can it be intelligent when you are asleep? It is bound to be more unintelligent, more foggy, more clouded, more confused. But the psychoanalyst will give you a beautiful explanation that satisfies you, so now you know why you dreamt this way – maybe something in your childhood, the relationship with your motherThat psychoanalyst goes on digging up old graves.

And this has been observed again and again, that if you consult a Freudian, slowly slowly you will start dreaming Freudian dreams, and if you consult a Jungian you will start dreaming Jungian dreams. There is a mutual satisfaction: first the psychoanalyst gives you satisfaction – giving you a beautiful explanation to make you feel that you have done something really great, that you have created a work of art.… Your dream is not ordinary – it has many mysteries, and each symbol indicates great things, complicated patterns of thought, being, conditioning, past.…

And when the psychoanalyst gives you so much satisfaction, it looks impolite not to dream the dreams that he would like! So slowly slowly the person starts dreaming the dreams the psychoanalyst is waiting for. And the mind is very very adjustable; it adjusts to all kinds of things. Slowly slowly a mutual satisfaction arises between the psychoanalyst and the analysed, they both feel good and great. The patient brings the dreams that he can interpret beautifully and he gives beautiful interpretations. It is very ego-satisfying, but nothing happens out of it... no change, no transformation ever.

But the mind has a hankering for the why; it always asks ‘Why?’ Existential psychoanalysis will not ask the question ‘Why?’ There is no need to dig up old graves; let the buried remain buried. It is unnecessaryIt is better to see the thing as it is without asking why. This is a tremendously

potential approach.

You have fear – don’t ask why; just look into the fear, go into it, watch. Don’t be in a hurry to analyse, to explain, to interpret, because if you bring in your interpretations, your explanations, the purity of the fear will be lost; you will start molding it into certain patterns, to fit into certain theories. You will start giving it shape and form and labels. You will start distorting it – it will no more be the natural, wild phenomenon that it was. You will start training it, conditioning it, and sooner or later it has to agree with you – it is your fear. It is your shadow; it is bound to agree with you. But you have destroyed a beautiful experience that may have led you into new spaces.

Let this fear which has no object become the object itself. Don’t ask why – why you are afraid. This is a wrong question. Ask ‘What is this fear?’ Ask what it is not to find an explanation but to go deep in it: What is this fear? ‘What’ is the right question.

And don’t be prejudiced from the very beginning that ‘fear is wrong’, ‘it should not be’. If you have that attitude you will not be able to enter into its innermost core. With no judgment enter into it and experience it in its totality, and you will be surprised – it is just the beginning of a new space in you. And everything new makes the mind scared: the newer it is, the more fear. If it is absolutely new then one is really scared to death.

Something unknown is hovering around you, and it is going to hover around every sannyasin. This is the fear every sannyasin has to pass through. And I am not here to give you explanations but to push you into it. I am not a psychoanalyst – I am an existentialist. My effort is to make you capable of experiencing as many things as possible – love, fear, anger, greed, violence, compassion, meditation, beauty, and so on, so forth. The more you experience these things, the richer you become. Everything has to be experienced. When you have experienced all possible experiences, you mature, you transcend. By knowing all, one goes beyond. That beyond is tao or god or nirvana.

So make this fear your meditation. And the mind will ask again and again ‘Why? What are you afraid about?’ Don’t listen to this question; that question is dangerous. That leads you into more and more verbal explanations; it is a camouflage, a distraction from the fear. Just go into fear itself, with great love for this experience. If trembling arises, tremble; if you feel shaken, then shake. There is no need to hide it. Don’t condemn yourself, that you are a coward; these are the tricks the mind plays. And the society which has made you very much of an expert in these things, immediately condemns something: ‘You are a coward. Why are you trembling?’, and immediately you start repressing that trembling. That repressed trembling will create a great disturbance in your being.

Let it happen: tremble joyously, enjoy the vibe of it, go into it totally, cooperate with it. Become trembling.be it, and a great realisation will arrive. Trembling will disappear and you will be left with

such peace, such great silence as one feels after a storm, and only after a storm. And this is a great storm that is coming to you!

Don’t hide, don’t fight, don’t escape into explanations. Go into it! Go into the storm. And be afraid – there is nothing wrong in it. Fear is as human as love, as anger. Be human and welcome humanity

in yourself. The old religions have been very condemnatory towards humanity. I am utterly in love with humanity, with all that is human. Because of the old religions’ antagonism against humanity they created men of steel. They used to call them saints. They were not real men, they were bogus, because they would not feel human fear, they would not feel human love, they would not feel human anger.

And it was not that they had gone beyond, because how can you go beyond unless you have gone deeper and deeper into them? Yes, one goes beyond, a moment comes when one goes beyond, but the way beyond is through. The way is through; there is no other way and no short-cut.

So use this fear as a great experience. Go into it lovingly, meditatively, watching, witnessing... without having any prejudice for or against. Go choicelessly into it without any like and dislike. Like and dislike are the disease of the mind. That’s what Sosan says – and he is one of the persons who knows: Like and dislike are the disease of the mind. Drop the disease, simply go into it, and great will be your experience and the realisation out of it.

[A sannyas couple. The woman asks: Does the relationship between us... does that grow even in spite of my resistances and fears?]

Yes, it will, but remember: a relationship always depends on two persons: it cannot depend only on me. I will do whatsoever I can do, in spite of you, but the difficulties that you will create will be an unnecessary wastage of energy. You could have grown faster, much more could have happened if the resistance was dropped, because that resistance takes much energy. It is as if I am working against you, so rather than helping me to transform you, you are hindering so it will take a longer period, unnecessarily.

Become conscious about those resistances and don’t cooperate with them – they will disappear; and it will continue to grow anywhere you are.

[The man of the couple says:... I see it here. It’s like you hit me on the head and I see it and then I forget about it. When I go back to the West you’re not going to be there to hit me on the head... And so I’m kind of scared in a way of leaving because you.]

No, I will go on hitting on your head! In strange places in strange ways I will hit on your head. Somebody may be talking – just a sentence and it will hit you.

It will happen – nothing to be worried about. In strange placesyou are just reading a newspaper

and a sentence will hit you as if it is mine, reading a book and a sentence will jump upon you. Or seeing a movie or watching tv or just talking to a friend: he is just gossiping but something will hit you immediately.

I will use many opportunities and many occasions to hit you and you will immediately see the hit and it will transport you into the same spaces that were happening here.

[A sannyasin, just returned from the mountains, says he is afraid; there is a vibe in his belly.]

That happens just after staying long in the mountains. When you come to the market-place again it happens because the body has to get adjusted to a different vibe. That is the difficulty with the

mountains: they take you into another world, and when you come back to this world, it is a totally different world, of a very gross vibe... so it hurts, it hurts at the navel.

[The sannyasin answers: I feel I will receive some strong blows to blow me into some new space but I don’t know from where or anything.]

There is no need to know from where, mm? – just accept when they come...

Just accept when they come and enjoy when they come and when they don’t come, don’t expect that they should come; never desire them. When they come, simply go with them, and when they disappear, let them disappear; don’t cling. They come on their own, they go on their own. They are beyond our will – those moments, those spaces, those blows are beyond our will; we cannot manipulate them. They are happenings; you cannot do them. You can’t do a thing about them. Man feels utterly helpless for the first time when things from the beyond start happening... when one is simply a passive witness and utterly helpless. You cannot prevent, you cannot call forth, you cannot provoke, but that is a good experience because that’s how one starts dropping the ego. One sees the futility of the ego. It is utterly meaningless, pointless, to carry the burden of it. That’s when let-go happens. Then one lives according to the will of god or according to tao. One lives will-lessly. One simply lives not knowing why, not knowing even what, not knowing from where and to where, not knowing at all. Then one lives innocently, and that is the way.…

So be around – the stomach will settle within a few days. If you want to hang around, hang around; if you want to work, go to Laxmi and find some work.

[Osho speaks to a sannyasin who just arrived to take care of his wife who lies very ill in a local hospital.]

She will survive – just wait; help her. You have come, that’s very good. Just be as loving to her as possible. And death, when it is around, or when one feels that it is around, is a great opportunity to be loving, because when we think the other person is going to live we are miserly in love, because we can love tomorrow or the day after tomorrow; and the mind always postpones. The mind is afraid of love because love is too much and the mind cannot control it; love overwhelms it. Love creates a chaos and the mind is always trying to create some order. So the mind goes on postponing love. But when one starts feeling death around – and death is always around; anybody can die any moment.… But when it is felt that somebody is seriously ill – and the person may not die, but when we start feeling the shadow of death – then there is no way to postpone. Love has to happen right now, because we cannot think even of the next moment. Next moment she may be gone, so there is no future.

And when there is no future, the mind cannot go on controlling you. The mind can control only through the future, through postponing. It says ‘Tomorrow. Wait – let me do my things right now; tomorrow you can do other things. There is tomorrow, so why are you in such a hurry?’ But when there is no tomorrow and suddenly you feel the curtain falling then the mind cannot deceive you. And these moments can become of immense revelation.

So be loving! All that we have is love – everything else is immaterial because everything else is on the outside; only love comes from the inside. Everything else – we can give money and things and

presents... we have not brought them with us; we have collected them here. We come naked but we come full of love! We come empty of everything else but we come full of love, overflowing. So when we give our love, then only do we give. That’s the gift, the real gift, and that can be given only when death is standing there. So never miss the opportunity.

She may survive, but then you would have learned a lesson of tremendous importance. Then don’t forget that lesson, because nobody needs to be seriously ill to die! One can simply die of a heart attack, any moment. So never postpone love; you can postpone everything else but not love. And the man who never postpones love becomes love, and to become love is to know god. And death is a great opportunity: it throws you back into your love source. So be around her, shower your love energy... If she dies, she dies in a great loving space – if she survives, she survives as a new being; both ways it is perfectly good. Death doesn’t matter – all that matters is love.

And when people feel very sad after a person has gone, the reason for their sadness is not the death of the person but the guilty feeling that they didn’t love, that they didn’t give enough; they could have given. My observation is that whenever a loved one dies, those who are left behind start feeling guilty. To hide their guilt they cry and weep and they make much fuss. That is just somehow a substitute because they could not love when the person was alive and now there is no way... no way to repent, no way even to feel sorry, and apologise, no way to say the thousand and one things that one wanted to say but didn’t, no way to take many things back which one had thrown on the other person in unconsciousness.

All that anger and rage and the wounds one would like to take back, but now they cannot be taken back. A thousand and one times one wanted to be loving, wanted to hold the other person close, but did not... one continued to postpone, for stupid things. All this creates great guilt. It hurts. How to forget it? What to do? So ‘as an excuse’ one starts crying and weeping and feeling sad and desperate and in despair. This is just an effort to cover things up.

But my feeling is that if a person has loved totally, yes, one will be sad, but that sadness also will have beauty. It will be a kind of depth, very loving... a silence. And even if tears come, those tears will not be of despair and misery; those will be of thankfulness, of gratitude, of a very subtle joy of fulfillment.

Yes, even when somebody dies one can feel very very joyous if there is no guilt, there is joy. And one can say goodbye with gratitude for all that the other person did and was, for all that the other person gave to you, for all the poetry that the other person was and the music the other person was, and the dance that the other person introduced into your life. One simply feels grateful, fulfilled.

So be loving. If she leaves, she leaves in great love; and when there is love there is no death. Who cares about death? One can die laughing! If one knows that one is loved, one can meet death with great celebration. If she dies she dies in tremendous peace. If she survives she will be a new person; she will have known your heart for the first time. So just be loving... and you have come – that’s very good. Good!

[Osho gives an ‘energy darshan’ to a sannyasin and says:]

You are coming closer to me every day and things are moving absolutely in the right direction, so don’t be worried. But when one starts feeling very close, one starts feeling even more thirsty and

wants to be even closer. That has to be understood; that is natural. The closer you come, the closer you would like to be, and there is no end to it.

So feel very very blissful that that desire is becoming more and more intense... and you are coming closer and closer.…

[A sannyasin talks to Osho about a book project on Tantra.]

A few things will be helpful... One: call it Neo-Tantra, because the traditional Tantra is very ritualistic and most of it is mumbo-jumbo. Make it very simple, no ritualism, and divide it in four parts. You will find my statements for all the parts, so collect them. The first part has to be sex. The second part has to be love. The third part has to be prayer, and the fourth has to be transcendence. So from the gross to the subtle you move.

In the first part you can use all kinds of pictures you want. That will be the gross part. In the second, make it more subtle, indicative only, symbolic, metaphoric.

In the third make it even more subtle... just a far-away echo, a shadow.

And in the fourth, sex has to completely disappear, love too, prayer too. Make it absolutely silent, peaceful, meditative... not even a trace is left. These are the four stages of Neo-Tantra, and you will find statements about all these stages, so collect them, separate them.

And don’t feel puzzled at all. Start working. Start with full freedom. Finally I will have a look, so if I feel that something will not be right I can tell you.

But right now start working and with full freedom, otherwise you will continuously be in confusion about what to do and what not to do. Do whatsoever you feel like doing but keep these four in mind.

A few things you can use in a symbolic form. For example you can use a few Khajuraho pictures. Particularly the faces of the lovers can be used in the second love part... and a few faces are very ecstatic. In fact, no other sculpture in the world has been able to express ecstasy, orgasmic ecstasy through stone, except Khajuraho. So those few faces, that ecstatic expression, can go in the third part too. And in the fourth, everything becomes absolutely centered in the innermost core. In the fourth you can use a few natural pictures, of nature, or a few paintings or a few sketches, sannyasins meditating, sitting just silently. The fourth has to be just the transcendence. And then there is no problem – even if in the first you use a few gross pictures, in the context of all the four stages they will be relevant.

And start working with full freedom. So you need not be worried whether to take a photograph of this or not; if you feel like taking, take it. And go through all the books, because you will have to find... [The Publications department] can be helpful; [they have] collected all the references, and then sort them out in four parts. And you can put all the commentaries in.

It is going to become one of the most beautiful books, but call it Neo-Tantra so we can take it out of the old context. Then you can be more inventive and a few other things can be involved in it.

For example, when you collect my statements you will find that in many darshan books I have talked to people about how to enter into love-making – so just see and collect photographs so each stage can be depicted by the photographs – that love should not be a direct thing: it should start by meditation, music, dancing. The lovers should dance. First they should start falling into a deep rhythm with each other – love has to be the culmination of it. And that is the misery that is happening in the world: it has become the beginning, so it never reaches to the orgasmic state. It has to be the culmination, the crescendo, and the crescendo has to be built up slowly.

So start working and as you collect my statements you will find indications about what to do, what kind of photographs to collect.

But these four sections will be of immense help. In the fourth sex completely disappears. In the first there is sex; in the second sex becomes joined with something which is non-sexual. Sex becomes the body and the non-sexual love becomes the soul. In the third love becomes the body and prayer becomes the soul. In the fourth all disappears, emptiness has been arrived at. In the fourth even partners are not to be there – just single meditators, because a person has become able to join with the inner woman or the inner man.

In the first, two bodies are very prominent. In your photographs also those two bodies have to be very prominent. In the second, the bodies become shadows, secondary. The heart becomes prominent. In the third the heart itself becomes secondary; it is no more human love. Something of the divine has entered in. So you can have a few pictures... pictures of bells ringing, prayer, incense burning, flowers. You have to create the quality of the temple in the third.

The first is gross, animal, the second is human, the third is divine, and the fourth is beyond. In the fourth it is pure poetry without words. It is music without notes. So in the fourth you will have to be very inventive, because the fourth will be the most important part. And everything will depend on the fourth – if the fourth can come up then everything else falls into an organic unity. If the fourth is not there and only the first is, then it becomes pornographic. These same pictures become pornographic if they have no wider context.

Pornography is taking the body as the sole and whole. It is just trying to titillate the sexual desire. But if the context of love is there it is no more pornographic; it is aesthetic. And if the context of prayer is also there it is religious. And in the fourth it is transcendental, it has no levels left... it is the state of Buddhahood, nirvana.

So start working and with no problems. Finally I will see. First start and do the whole thing, then I will see.

< Previous | Contents | Next >