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‌CHAPTER 18

19 March 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Pari means ultimate, nirvana means enlightenment – the ultimate enlightenment. It is a buddhist term of tremendous significance. The ultimate enlightenment means the ultimate dissolution of the ego, the ultimate disappearance of the individual.

When you become a non-being, when you are not, then god is, because when you are not the whole is. When you are, the part is claiming to be the whole, and that is the whole fallacy. That’s what ignorance is: the part claiming to be the whole.

We are parts of existence but somehow we have taken it for granted that we are the whole. This is what constitutes the basic substratum of the ego. It is as if my hand starts thinking it is the whole in itself. Then something has gone wrong: it will start struggling against the whole, the organic unity of my body. That’s what man is doing.

The trees are in enlightenment though not aware of it; they are unconsciously one with existence. So are the animals and the birds and small children – and so are great saints, buddhas and christ, but they are consciously one with it. That is the only difference between a tree and a buddha: the tree is enlightened unconsciously, one with the whole but not knowing about it. Buddha is also one with the whole but knows it.

Ordinary humanity is just between the tree and the buddha: neither conscious enough to know that it is one with existence, nor so unconscious that it can become one without knowing it, but just in the middle, in the limbo; hence the misery, anguish, anxiety, the split.

And the whole of religion is nothing but a process of disappearance. One has to disappear by and by, one has to dissolve one’s boundaries so that one can become unbounded. Not that in disappearance you will disappear. In fact, paradoxically, when you are not you will be for the first

time, because you will be this whole. These stars and these trees and these birds, all that has been and all that is going to be, will be part of you; you will be a vast ocean. Bliss is possible only with that vastness, that expansion that knows no limits.

Man is bound to remain miserable. He has become confined to such a small prison cell that you call the body and the mind. To get out of the body-mind prison cell is what meditation is. And there is no need to really get out of it because you are out of it!

Deva means divine, ananya means one – one with the divine. That’s our reality, that’s how it is. We may know, we may not know, but our knowledge or our ignorance does not change the reality at all. It is so: we are one with the divine! Otherwise is not possible because we cannot exist without being one with the divine. We are rooted in it, we are part of it. In fact to say we live is not right: only he lives through us. So many millions of forms but the reality is one.

Ananya is one of the beautiful terms, the most beautiful terms. Literally it means ‘not other’... not other than god. Mm? somebody thinks he is a man, somebody thinks she is a woman, somebody thinks he is a child, somebody thinks he is old, somebody thinks he is beautiful and somebody thinks he is not beautiful, somebody thinks he is intelligent and somebody thinks he is not – but all are one with the divine.

These are all just forms of the surface; deep down our reality is one. They are just like waves of an ocean: they are all ‘ananya’ with the ocean, not other than the ocean. A small wave, a big wave, a very big tidal wave – all are one with the ocean.

So this name will remind you again and again, and whenever you are reminded of it feel one with god in that moment. By and by one becomes more and more skilled in that feeling, that’s all.

We have not lost anything, we have simply forgotten. Once the memory returns, once the remembrance comes back, everything is there, has always been there. The treasure is not lost, we have only forgotten where we have put it. It is in our houses; we have lost track of it.

Anand means bliss, blissfulness, and siddha means the ultimate state of inner achievement. And it is the same: the state of bliss or the state of ultimate inner achievement.

Man is on the way... he has not yet reached the goal. Man is a wayfarer, a pilgrim. Man is in the middle: he has lost contact with nature and he has not entered god yet. He is on the ladder, hence all the problems of humanity.

Trees have no problems, rocks have no problems, neither do gods have any problems, but the problem is in the middle because the old pattern is gone and the new has not settled. We have lost the old home and the new home is yet far away. We are in the same state as a person when he is changing houses: the whole luggage is on the truck and the man is on the street. The old is gone and the new has not yet arrived; everything is topsy-turvy, in chaos.

Siddha means that you have attained to home again, you have settled again; now there is no more anywhere to go, one has come home. That is the meaning of the word siddha.

And that state is of bliss too, because then there is rest and is happiness and delight – and a new kind of delight: uncaused, for no reason at all, not connected from the outside, just flowing from your within, just flowing out of your centre, overflowing you, flooding you, spreading all over you, vibrating.

Ordinarily what we call happiness comes from the outside, hence it cannot stay long: it comes and it goes; it is momentary. Bliss is a state which is non-momentary. It does not come from anywhere, it is yours, or it is better to say it is you, so there is no way to lose it.…

[A sannyasin asks: Have you something to say to me to keep in my heart when I’m away?]

Keep me in your heart rather than the things that I say. Because whatsoever I say never reaches to the heart. It remains in the mind, because whatsoever is said is caught by the mind; it never goes to the heart. Something else reaches to the heart, never the words. I can reach but not what I say. My presence can reach.…

So if you allow me I can enter your heart. In fact I have already entered without asking you... so excuse me! This is not legal but I do it!

[A sannyasin says: I’m feeling a very strong tension. It’s like fire. I can hardly stand it sometimes. I think it comes from the heart.]

Very good... It is something beautiful that is happening, but I can understand: because it is so strong it can almost be like a pain and you get disturbed because you are not accustomed to such an explosion. In fact it is love that you are feeling as fire.

Love is a fire and when it comes for the first time and penetrates the heart it is painful. Painful not because it has to be painful; painful because we are not familiar with it, it is so unfamiliar. One starts melting in it and the fear arises. The very strangeness of it scares and you start shrinking back; then a conflict comes between you and your energy, split. And out of that split, such pain can be felt. So drop that split: simply go with it.

If it is fire, good! If it is going to burn you, good! Even if you feel that you are going to die, die. Totally accept it and you will come out of it utterly new, resurrected.

This is the fire that can become a cross and a resurrection... something really beautiful. If you can accept it and relax into it, it will be a blessing. If you become too afraid and start escaping it, it will become a curse! It depends on you.…

My whole purpose here is to create such fire in your being that the lower metal can be transformed into a higher metal so you can become gold, pure gold. But there is no other way to become pure gold unless you pass through fire. It is the fire of love. Just go into it and relax.

This fire needs much fuel, mm? so it burns more and absorbs you completely. – On the ashes of your being there will be a new life.…

Sagarpati. It means the master of the ocean and it is symbolic of the oceanic expansion of consciousness. One can become an ocean, and less than that is not going to suffice; never settle for less than that.

These tiny puddles of consciousness won’t do; they are just like puddles by the side of the road. That’s how the human mind is, hence there is always misery around it, because with limitation one can never be happy.

Only with the unlimited is there bliss... and one can become that. In fact, it is so easy to become it that it is a miracle how so many people miss it. It should not be so because that is our natural state of being – the oceanic consciousness.

And you are very close, just standing on the beach. You can jump into the ocean any moment and can become the ocean. Hence I give you the name ‘sagarpati’; it means the master of the ocean. And if you don’t resist, I am going to make you one!

[The new sannyasin says he has spent years in Gurjieff work, self-remembering. He asks Osho what personality defect he must struggle with.]

Just one thing – and that is the problem with all the people who are working with the Gurdjieff group and the Gurdjieff school: the problem is of too much seriousness.…

Because of too much seriousness you want to be attentive, alert, aware, self-remembering for twenty-four hours; that is against the rhythm of life. Life is very rhythmic and the rhythm is created by the opposites – life and death, attentiveness and inattentiveness.

You cannot be attentive twenty-four hours because that too is losing the rhythm. That’s what people are doing – being asleep for twenty-four hours. That is bad, certainly bad, but to move to the other extreme and to make an effort to remain alert for twenty-four hours is again falling into the same trap – of a non-rhythmic life.

My approach is more rhythmic, so I will tell you one thing: whenever you can be alert and aware, be, but be very playfully. And whenever you lose attentiveness forget about it, don’t be worried about it. And whenever you remember again, good; feel happy.

And don’t think about those moments when you were not aware; accept them as part of the rhythm. Then the tension will disappear, and with the tension disappearing you will find that you are more and more aware, and less and less is the need for that inattentiveness.

My understanding is that when you are too tense you need inattentiveness more because otherwise you will go mad! That inattentiveness is a sort of intoxication, a way to sleep; it relaxes you. So the more tense a person is, the more sleep he will need. But sleeping eight hours in the night won’t be enough: he’s so tense, so anxious, so serious, so tight that he will die or go mad.

There is a natural system so that the moment you are too tense and too serious your body immediately creates a situation in which you fall asleep and you relax. You follow me? When you are less serious and less tense there will be less need for inattentiveness. And a moment comes when a person is totally relaxed; then there is no need for inattentiveness, but in that state there is no need for attentiveness either. They both disappear because they both live together, they are two aspects of the same coin.

A really relaxed person is neither attentive nor non-attentive; he is simply there. He is a sort of presence but you cannot call it attentiveness. The very word attention comes from tension. You cannot say that the man remembers himself because self-remembering means that the self is there. A real man who has come home has no self and nothing to remember. He is simply there; his presence is very simple, non-dual.

So these are the clues for you: first, become more playful about it. That was one of the serious problems with the Gurdjieff group.…

Gurdjieff himself was very playful but somehow he gathered very serious people around him and those serious people started interpreting his non-seriousness very seriously. He was a very playful man but they thought that playfulness was also a device that he used to help people to be attentive or self-aware or something.

It is very difficult to find a more playful person than Georges Gurdjieff – almost a rascal! But the people who gathered around.…

Maybe it was because it was in the West that the whole trouble was created. Had he been in the East a different kind of person would have surrounded him.

When an eastern method reaches the West, immediately something goes wrong because the western mind interprets it in its own way.

So drop seriousness and start playing with self-remembering – ‘playing’ is the word I use for it – just as one plays with a toy. So whenever it is there easily, good; when it is not there easily, then it is not needed. Let this be the attitude.

Never repent, never think that for half an hour you were asleep again – now where are you going to land? Don’t repent – there is nothing wrong in it; nothing is lost because you have eternity available.

Time is not money as people think, because money is limited and time is not limited. And if you miss this life you have another life and another and another. That too is a question in the western mind: they think there is only one life, so much tension is created; hurry and do everything quickly because there is only one life and then comes the judgement day. Their judgement day comes so fast and so soon!

It looks very ugly that god gives only seventy years to a person in which twenty-five years will be wasted in a university, twenty to thirty years will be wasted in sleep.

The remaining will be wasted in eating and defecating and taking a bath and going to the office and coming back home, making love and fighting with one’s woman.

If you observe a life of seventy years it is very difficult to find seven moments in which you can grow; this seems to be hard. And then comes the judgement day!

Indians are more lenient, mm? They say there is life upon life, many lives; there is no hurry. You can throw the watch and simply forget time and move easily. That gives a certain quality of playfulness, ‘leela’.

So the first thing: play with the idea of self-remembering. The second thing: never repent. Whenever it comes, good; whenever it goes, that too is good, accept it.

And the third thing: when you self-remember, don’t do it in concentration otherwise you will not be able to be in it for long because you cannot hold that much tension, rather be relaxed. It is not a work! Mm? that is what is wrong with the Gurdjieff group: they call it work. It is not work. It is joy, it is delight, a celebration of one’s being.

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