5

< Previous | Contents | Next >

‌CHAPTER 5

5 October 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyas couple bring a new baby.]

This will be her name: Ma Prem Bindi. Prem means love, bindi means symbol – the symbol of love. The Indian women use a bindi on their forehead, just exactly on the third eye spot. It is also called bindi because it is only used by married women... a symbol of marriage, a symbol of love. And it also functions to continuously remind one of the third eye, and to be aware of the third eye continuously makes it start functioning. So it is not only symbolic of the outer marriage; it is also symbolic of the inner marriage.

The inner man and woman meet on the third eye spot... that is the meeting place, where the duality, the bisexuality disappears. Beyond the third eye you are neither man nor woman; you are both and neither: you have transcended. The third eye is the meeting place... the meeting of the outer and the inner, the meeting of the polarities, and the meeting of your innermost division.

Each man is man-woman, so is each woman, woman-man; this is bi-sexuality. And till the energy passes through the third eye one remains dependent on the outer man or the outer woman. Once you have passed through the third eye then all dependence disappears. Then love is no more a need, but a play. Then love is not a necessity but an overflowing.

So the bindi on the third eye represents the outer marriage – that the woman is married – and it also functions as an inner remembrance that the true marriage has yet to happen in the third eye. It is a very significant symbol.

And the child, each child, is a symbol of love, because it is a meeting of two lovers. Just as the child is born because of the meeting of man and woman, so an inner child is born when the meeting happens between your man and woman, inside, not outside.

[The mother asks: I’d like to ask the difference between when we take sannyas and when a new baby takes sannyas.]

There is a difference. When you take sannyas it is your decision, so something of the ego is involved in it. It is your decision, it is your will. When a baby is brought for sannyas, the baby is completely innocent of any will, this way or that. The baby is neither asking for sannyas nor rejecting it. The baby is simply open, vulnerable, available – there is no will involved for or against. This is your will, that your child should become a sannyasin, but your will is your will; the child is simply open. Because of this opening the child can be contacted more deeply than others who take sannyas out of their decision. A child can be contacted really deeply and the contact can become a seed and will start growing.

Now many things later on in life will decide what the total outcome will be, but one thing is certain: whatsoever happens, the child will never be the same as he would have been without sannyas. He may remain a sannyasin, he may not remain a sannyasin, because he will have to decide some day. But even if he decides not to be a sannyasin he will be a different person, because that seed will go on functioning. It is planting a seed in open soil.And it is good, good because what more can

you give to your child? If you can give t your child the possibility to grow into a spiritual being, that’s more than one can ask for. Now everything will remain dependent on the child – he will be free to move. It has not to remain a structure around him. He has not to be forced. If he decides later on to drop out of sannyas, that is perfectly good. But even then, he will carry something of me.

It is very easy to contact a child. The more grown-up you are, the more difficult you are, because then between me and you there is a great mind, your mind. The child has no mind yet. It is just a clean slate, and anything written on a clean slate comes bold, loud and clear. To write something on a slate which has so much written on it already is not so easy. Even if you write, to decipher it is difficult, to read it is difficult. In every way it is possible to be lost in the confusion that you have carried. In this way a child can have a deeper contact with me.

On the other hand, because the child has not decided yet, he may decide later on to drop out of it. There is every possibility that he will decide to drop out of it; it depends on you. The day he wants to reject you, he will reject sannyas. The day he wants to be free of you he will reject sannyas. So it depends on you: if you bring up the child in such a way that his freedom remains intact, that he is not forced to do anything, that you don’t burden him with don’ts, that you don’t create in him anger against you, then he is going to remain a sannyasin.

But if you create any anger in the child – as it almost always happens, because parents live in a very unconscious wayEven if they do something good for the child they do it in the wrong way

and the child starts gathering antagonism. Sooner or later the child has to reject you, and when a child rejects, he rejects in toto – all that you have done to him, good and bad, all. He cannot reject in parts – he is not so conscious yet.That day he will drop everything. That is the danger, but that

danger is because of the parents, not because of the child.

When a grown-up person takes sannyas it is difficult, but because it is his will there is more possibility that he will remain in it. That is the good thing about it. Difficulties are there, more difficulties are there, but it is his own decision; there is a commitment in it. That commitment may keep him involved long enough to be transformed, but there is no commitment from the child’s side so there is

no involvement. All will depend on you. How the child feels about you will be his feeling about me, because I will always remain associated through you.

So to give sannyas to a child is really to give you a great responsibility. Now from the very beginning you have to behave in such a way that the child remains a friend to you and you remain a friend to the child. Then he will grow into sannyas. Good!

Deva means divine, guru means master – a divine master. The divine master is hidden in everyone. It is already there in the deepest core of your being. I can only provoke it, persuade it. I can only function as a catalytic agent. I cannot give anything to you, because in the first place you don’t need anything. All that you need is already the case, but you are unaware of it. I can only make you aware of it. I can seduce you into a remembrance. That’s the function of the master from the outside. And if the disciple is really in love, in surrender, slowly slowly a miracle starts happening.

He listens to the master but somehow in some subtle miraculous way, he finds that it is as if the voice is coming from himself, that the outer master is simply articulating something that has been in him in an inarticulate way. The outer master is expressing something that was always there inside in a vague kind of way. It depends how deep the surrender is. The deeper the surrender, the sooner it is realised that the outer master is not somebody you have to depend on but somebody who is trying to make you independent. He is trying to bring your own divine master into a functioning state. The divine master within you is fast asleep. All that I can do is provoke him into awareness.

I can function as an alarm or as a shock. The mind is a kind of shock absorber, so whatsoever shocks come from the outside it absorbs them – they never reach to your innermost core; hence trust and surrender is a must. Trust means that you put your mind aside. Surrender means ‘I will not listen to my own mind anymore; now the master’s voice is going to be my voice.’ Then there is no shock absorber between me and you. Then whatsoever shock goes from me to you reaches exactly to the core where the divine master in you is fast asleep. And he has to be awakened.

The master also has to be understood in a few other ways. One: he is not a teacher. The teachers are almost useless for spiritual growth because the teachers will teach your mind. They themselves are teachers; they are knowledgeable. They cannot shock the fast-asleep master within you. They don’t know anything about it – their own master is fast asleep. They function as minds.

The real master has no teaching. He has many methods but no teaching; he has many devices but no teaching. He has no doctrine, he does not indoctrinate – he hits. The real master is difficult to be with because he is going to break many things in you, and that is possible only if you have really fallen in love. Sannyas is a gesture from your side that you have fallen in love, that now you are ready – not only ready to receive shocks. you are asking for them, saying that they will be welcomed, that you are ready to become a host to whatsoever the master wants to do to you.

The teacher teaches – the master does. The teacher has much knowledge – the master has only his being. The teacher is a very very well-fed computer. The master is pure awareness, fire, but only fire can create your inner fire, only a flame can make you aflame.

The Indian word ‘guru’ is very significant, ‘Gu’ means darkness, ‘ru’ means light – one who takes you from darkness to light is the guru. The English word ‘master’ has not that significance. The

English word ‘master’ is almost equivalent to teacher. There is no single word which can really be a translation of the word guru. It is tremendously significant: the one who leads you from darkness to light, from unconsciousness to consciousness, from sleep to a state of awakening.

Anand means bliss, amito means immeasurable. Bliss is immeasurable. Misery can be measured, and so can happiness. It can be measured. Both are human and both are two aspects of the same coin. That’s why people search for happiness but also get misery, and in the same proportion. If you get a certain proportion of happiness you will get the same proportion of misery – they come together; it is the same package. Hence many people become afraid of happiness because it brings misery.

For example, love: people want it and yet are afraid of it. It certainly brings happiness, but following it comes misery. There is no way to avoid misery. The only way is to avoid happiness, but then one feels lonely. And that loneliness makes one so empty that one would even like to be miserable rather than to be lonely. So man is caught in a dilemma: either you are empty – which is not anything one can aspire to, life will seem utterly meaningless – or you can have a little bit of happiness; but in the same proportion misery comes.

Bliss is a totally different dimension. It is neither happiness nor misery. And it is not emptiness either: it is fullness. You are not lonely in it, not at all, but there is neither misery nor happiness. On the contrary, there is a very deep pregnant silence... pregnant with great poetry, throbbing with something about to bloom. Bliss is creative. But bliss has the quality of silence rather than the quality of happiness. It is the music of silence. It is a state of non-tense mind.

In happiness one becomes tense, in misery also. That’s why if happiness continues a little longer you become bored with it. And this has to be watched. You may like a woman, you may be very happy with her, but only for a certain time. Beyond that the presence of her becomes heavy. You may like to kiss a woman but you would not like the kiss to be very long. If it continues for one hour, you will be aghast! You may run from the woman and never look back!

You can tolerate happiness only in a certain amount too. Happiness, misery, both are tense states. One becomes tired of both. If you go to hell you will find there bored people, and if you go to heaven there also you will find bored people... bored to death. And I have heard that the people who are in heaven go to hell for a holiday! (LAUGHTER) Where else can they go? So if you live in a state of happiness for long, immediately you will start hankering for misery.

Bliss is utterly devoid of both. Bliss is relaxation... bliss is a state of let-go. And that’s what I would like you to learn – that is the greatest art, and it is through this art that one comes to know truth, god, nirvana.

[Osho asks a young boy from Spain: What would you like to do? Would you like to go to the school? And he replies that he doesn’t know English.]

No need! In our school nothing is taught – no language is needed. You can fight, you can jump, you can do whatsoever you feel like doing. Any language will do and all kinds of people are there and all languages are spoken and nobody understands what is going on! (MUCH LAUGHTER) You will enjoy it! It is anti-school.

< Previous | Contents | Next >