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‌CHAPTER 13

13 October 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Prem means love, mahabodh means great awakening – a great awakening of love. Only love is great – all else is very small. Even the greatest thought of the mind is very small. The mind cannot be great; the mind is basically mean. It is not spacious. The heart is spacious, expansive. The heart can grow so big that it can contain the whole universe.

The mind goes on shrinking – as you grow older, the mind becomes smaller and smaller and meaner and meaner. It is no accident that old people start being a little mean. They are always angry, irritated, annoyed for no particular reason, and the basis is that they have missed the heart in their life. They have lived only by the mind, which knows no way to expand; it knows only how to shrink, it goes on shrinking. The more you know, the smaller the mind you have.

The ignorant person has a bigger mind than the knowledgeable person, because the ignorant person has nothing in his mind. There is space. The knowledgeable person is too full of knowledge; there is no space. But the heart is another name of the inner space. Just as there is outer space – the sky unbounded, there is no limit to it – exactly in the same way the inner sky is also unbounded... has to be. If the outer is infinite, the inner cannot be finite. It has to balance the outer; it is the other pole of it. The inner sky is as big as the outer, exactly in the same proportion. So when love arises, it is a great awakening.

Meditation has not to happen in the head – it cannot happen there, and whatsoever happens there is only an imitation of meditation... not true, not the real – the real a1ways happens in the heart. So remember it: when I talk of awakening I am talking about the heart’s awakening. It has not to be understood only as a doctrine; it has to be experienced, it has to become your existential state... and it can become.

Nobody is barring it; we have not looked into the matter that’s all. We have not looked into the inner

world, the inner gestalt. We have simply been negligent. Ignoring the inner one remains ignorant. Not ignoring the inner is the beginning of wisdom.

I like this word ‘ignorance’. It means something has been ignored, something has been by-passed... you have not taken note of it. Something that is there has always been there but you have been negligent of it. Maybe because it is always there it can be ignored easily. We always ignore that which is always there; we always take note of the new because the new brings change. The dog can go on sitting if nothing moves around – he can rest, he can dream. Let anything move and he is immediately alert. Even if a dead leaf moves, he will start barking. That’s exactly the state of the mind; it takes note only when something changes, and then it falls asleep again.

And our inner treasure has always been with us. It is very easy to ignore it; we learned to ignore it. That is the meaning of the word ‘ignorance’.

Let sannyas be a beginning of not ignoring the inner and the awakening comes by itself. And when love is awakened, life has a totally different taste. It has the taste of nectar, of immortality, of deathlessness.

Deva means divine, subuddha means the awakened one. Man is asleep, but because he is asleep, the other possibility is always there: he can be awakened. The very phenomenon of sleep is enough proof that awakening is possible. The very existence of the night is proof that sooner or later the day will break, the morning will be coming. So there is no need to become pessimistic because there is darkness. The darkness is the womb of the morning. And so is the human sleepk is in the womb

of sleep that the seed of Buddha is conceived.

Sannyas is the beginning of a conception, it is exactly a conception – just like a child is conceived. Sannyas is a conception. To be a sannyasin means to be pregnant – pregnant with a great future, pregnant for the first time to give birth to god. And unless a man is capable of giving birth to god – I call it ‘god-consciousness’, Buddhahood, Christ-consciousness – he has not been true to his life. He has been unnecessarily wasting his time and energy. He had come to bloom, to flower, to manifest the miraculous that is hidden inside.

My work here is to create devices so that you can become aware of yourself. The work is to throw you upon yourself. The work is to destroy all ways in which you escape from yourself. The work is to go on hammering, so that sooner or later you are forced to open your eyes and see what is the matter. Once you have opened your eyes, the revolution has happened. Then you live in the same world but it is no more the same at all: everything has changed. The ordinary existence becomes utterly extraordinary and each moment is a precious occasion to celebrate, to sing, to dance.

But life can happen only to a person who is alert, otherwise we go on sleeping and life passes by.

Deva means divine, nirmalo means innocence. Innocence is wisdom. Wisdom has nothing to do with knowledge. It is the simplicity of the heart. It another name for a silent, still heart.

Knowledge destroys something, something very precious: the capacity to wonder. That is one of the most valuable things in life, and knowledge destroys it. The more you know, the less you wonder, and the less you wonder, the less life means to you. You are not exhilarated with life. You are not surprised – you start taking things for granted.

The innocent heart is continuously in wonder like a small child collecting seashells on the sea beach or coloured stones, or just running hither and thither in a garden after butterflies... and is surprised by everything. That’s why children ask so many questions.

If you go for a morning walk with a child you start feeling exhausted because he goes on asking about this and that, and questions which cannot be answered: ‘Why are the trees green?’ and ‘Why is the rose red?’questions which cannot be answered. But why is the child asking? He is intrigued. He is interested in everything. The word ’interest’ comes from a root which means: to be involved in – ‘inter-esse’. The child is involved in everything that is happening: the dog that is passing by the side and the cow that is just sitting on the road and the car that passes by and the bird that is on the wing.A child is involved with everything that is surrounding him.

The more you become knowledgeable, the less and less you remain involved in life. You simply pass by – you are not concerned with the cow and the dog and the rose bush and the sun and the bird; you are not concerned. Your mind has become very narrow; you are just going to your office or back to your home. You are just running after money more and more, that’s all. or after power, but you are no more related to life in its multi-dimensionality.

To be in wonder is to relate with everything, and to be constantly receptive. That is the meaning of ‘nirmalo’; to be utterly innocent like a child. And when one is like a child.… And remember, I say ‘like a child’ – not a child, because all children have to grow; sooner or later they will become burdened by knowledge. That’s why I say ‘like a child’. Physically you are not a child but spiritually you remain a child. You don’t collect the past, you don’t collect reminiscences of the past, you don’t collect memory. You remain fresh and young. You die moment to moment to everything that has passed so that you can remain fresh.

That freshness is ‘nirmalo’ – innocence – and in that innocence wisdom happens. That innocence is wisdom. Then life is a mystery, a sheer mystery. And each moment of it is so valuable that one constantly feels in gratefulness, one constantly feels like bowing down to god. Even if there is no god, one wants to bow down to all that is.

Deva means divine, anando means bliss. Devanando means divine bliss.

Bliss is a gift from god. We cannot manufacture it. Nobody can become blissful on his own. We can allow it to happen but we cannot produce it. We can hinder it from happening – that is in our capacity – but we cannot manage, we cannot force, coerce it to happen.

It is as if in the morning the sun has risen, but you can go on remaining in your room with closed windows and closed doors and it is still dark for you. But this darkness is your own creation. All that is needed is to open the windows and the doors and the sun will start pouring. That is exactly the case with bliss: bliss is always there surrounding you. We live in the ocean of bliss, we are like fish in the ocean of bliss, but we don’t allow it to enter. We are very closed, we are window-less; hence the misery.

My work here is only to open a few windows in you, to make a few holes in you so that something that is surrounding you can penetrate. And once you have seen even a little ray of bliss penetrating in, you will come out, because once you have recognised the fact that the sun has risen and the

trees are dancing in the sun and the birds are singing and it is all light outside – what are you doing inside in this darkness and in this stale air? – you will rush out. But one needs at least a little experience of something from the outside that penetrates inside. We cannot bring the sun in but we can go out; but a little experience of the sun is needed while you are inside the room.

The ego is our prison. A little ray, a little wind, a small breeze will do the miracle. And that’s what happens in meditation – sitting silently, open, available, vulnerable, one day suddenly it happens: you are possessed. Nobody will be able to understand it and you will not be able to explain it to anybody either. When it happens to you you will be surprised why it has not happened before. It is so simple! Nothing was needed – it was always there, and you will recognise then that you knew it was always there; just you were closed to it. But even then you will not be able to explain to others how it happens.

There is no ‘how’ to it. There is no technique to produce it – just a preparedness to be in a passive space, to be in let-go. And that is the greatest art to learn. The man who knows how to be in a let-go knows all that is worth knowing and he will not miss the ultimate flowering.

Deva means god, habib means beloved – beloved of god. We have been told down the centuries that we are sinners. We have been condemned by every priest from every pulpit, and that has created the greatest barrier between man and god, the greatest distance. We have started feeling guilty deep down, and a guilty person cannot pray. If he does pray he prays out of guilt and fear; he cannot Fay through love. He cannot believe ‘God can love me – me, a sinner.’ He feels unworthy; he cannot trust himself. That’s how man has lost his self-confidence. It is because of the priest that man’s roots have been cut and man has become an ugly phenomenon; he has lost all beauty and grace.

To remember that you are beloved of god is one of the most fundamental things. That very remembrance will make you feel at home, that you belong to this existence, that this is your existence, and you are the way god has wanted you to be; there is no guilt.

If he is the creator and you are the creation then how can there be guilt? If he is the painter and you are the painting and he is the Poet and you are the poetry then how can there be guilt? In fact the very phenomenon that he has created you, is enough to show that he has loved you. The musician creates music because he loves it. The very existence of one’s being is enough proof; no other proof is needed, no other witness is needed to show that he loved you – you come in the world out of his love! Jesus Christ is not only his son... everybody is!

Once this idea enters into your heart, one starts opening up. A great self-respect arises, and that self-respect has nothing to do with the ego; that selfconfidence has nothing to do with ‘self’ at all. It is pure confidence. You know you are loved. You know it is your father’s home; you know you are not deserted by him. You know that you have nothing to do out of fear; you can do something out of love. And when life is lived out of love it has tremendous beauty. It is prayer, it is grace.…

This is my message to everyone, that from the lowest to the highest, from a small atom to the great sun, all is showered on, continuously showered on by his love. We exist only because of his love, and to respond to his love is to be religious. And only by loving can we respond to his love – by loving his existence, by loving his people, by loving this world. I teach this earth.

Purnanando. It means perfect bliss, absolute bliss; and one should not be content with less than that. There are many things in life which can make one contented, but they are not the real thing. One needs a great divine discontent so that nothing can hold one back unless the absolute happens. In that happening of the absolute you disappear completely. The experience of the absolute bliss is not an ordinary experience. In fact to call it experience is not right because there is no experiencer in it; and that has to be the criterion. There are pleasurable moments in life, joyful moments in life, even verging very close to blissful, ecstatic moments, but if you are there, then it is not perfect bliss yet. The experiencer is there and the experience is there; there is still duality.

Till the experiencer dissolves into the experience just as a dewdrop drops into the ocean and is no more, and has become the ocean, the journey has to continue. And it can be attained... it is within everybody’s capacity. In fact, not to attain is our own responsibility. We are made to attain it. Just as each seed is made to become a tree and bloom, and dance in the wind and sing in the sky, each man is destined to become god.

We are god in seed form... hidden, unmanifest. But to become a tree, the seed has to pass through many stages. First it has to fall into the soil. That’s what sannyas is: falling into the soil of the master’s garden. And then the seed has to die. If the seed persists in remaining itself, it will not sprout. It has to be courageous enough to die in the soil, with great trust that it will disappear, but something greater than it is going to happen.

The seed cannot be convinced about it, that is the whole problem. There is no way to convince the seed because he has never seen it happening to himself.

It may have happened to other seeds, but who knows? – their experience is their experience. It may have happened to Buddha and to Jesus and to Mohammed and to a few other people, but who knows? They may have been deceived by their own mind or they may be deceiving others. Who knows? How to trust it? The greatest problem for the seed is how to trust the unknown.

That miracle happens in the relationship between a disciple and a master, because between you and Buddha there are twenty-five centuries distance. k is even suspicious whether he ever existed as a historical person or not. Is Jesus really a historical person or just a myth? There is no way to be absolutely convinced about it, and even if one is convinced the distance is vast. There is no direct contact possible.

To be initiated means that you have felt something which is beyond the mind. You have got wind of something, a vibe, and now you are risking. It is a gamble. To be initiated in a gamble, it is a risk, so only the very courageous can take the jump. The cowards go on hesitating, although they will rationalise their cowardice. They will not call it cowardice – they will call it consideration of a thousand and one things. They will rationalise it, but the basic fact is that they are not ready to gamble; they are business-like. Those people never fall into the soil and never die as seeds and hence they remain seeds. And if a seed has not sprouted, it is dead. This is the miracle: by dying the seed becomes living; by remaining the seed it is dead.

So be ready to die! And perfect bliss is possible. It has happened to me – it can happen to you, it can happen to everybody... because it is our intrinsic potential.

[A group leader has written to Osho: ’It bas happened sometimes that as the scene descends into my eyes and I see everything as a screen, now the group members also become somehow unreal. So I play with the figures on the screen, and as images come to me – just as if I were painting with them – I play with the big canvas. When I relax into it it’s great fun and so fluid, like deep music.

I’m a bit afraid that I’m just using these people in the group as colours on my palate – or is it really your palate?]

... perfectly good. Things are going absolutely as they should so don’t get worried. Sometimes worry comes, mm? because when things start changing one becomes apprehensive, because one cannot be so certain about new things as one is about the old pattern. The new has started happening and many more things will happen. So just remain in deep trust – let them happen. They will come and they will pass but don’t make problems out of them.

Whenever something new happens and you feel that some worry can arise out of it just write a letter to me and forget about it. Then it is up to me.

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