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‌CHAPTER 17

17 May 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva means divine and laya means absorbed – utterly absorbed in the divine, and that has to be the very key you work upon.

Start feeling that you are one with existence, start dropping your boundaries – and you will be able to do it. You have a very fluid energy, it will be very easy to do. Don’t think that the boundary of your body is your boundary – it is not. It is just a concept, a mind concept, and if we think that we are bounded by the body, then we are bounded by the body; if we think that we are more than the body, then we are more than the body. The thought becomes the thing.

And everything is born in the beginning just as an idea, then it becomes reality. We have been told that the soul is in the body – the truth is just the opposite: the body is in the soul. The soul is a bigger phenomenon, the soul is a bigger circle and the body is a small circle in it. So start thinking of yourself as the whole universe. It will look crazy in the beginning, but soon you will understand that that is the only sane viewpoint, because it is true and in tune with reality. We are not separate – only the body and the identification with the body gives the idea of separation. So feel more liquid, more flowing.

Holding a tree, forget that you are holding the tree: become the tree. Let the observer be the observed. Looking into somebody’s eyes, forget that you are looking into his eyes – become him! And you will be tremendously surprised that it opens doors, immediately doors open.

Life can be a great joy if we are not bounded by anything. We are oceanic, and just as a river drops into the ocean and disappears, disappear in god.

... Do Vipassana, mm? It will be paying, so don’t try to escape. Nobody has ever died in Vipassana, so don’t be worried! At the most it can be a difficult journey, mm? Nothing to be worried about.

And more people have become enlightened through Vipassana than through any other method. This is how Buddha became enlightened – through Vipassana – and in the twenty-five centuries since Buddha, thousands of people have entered into their being through Vipassana. No other method can claim that much; no prayer, no technique can claim that much. This has been one of the most successful techniques, so it is worth trying! Try it mm?

[Osho shows Purna her sannyas name – Purna with the prefix of yoga: perfection in yoga. That is the goal of life, Osho says. Yoga is a whole lot more than body postures – that is just the external part. Real yoga means a jump into existence so that you become one with it. Unless he becomes one with the universe, man remains separate and in misery]

... and the day I saw you, I recognised you as a potential sannyasin! Much is possible, great is the possibility... and you have not yet tackled your own potentialities: you have lived almost unconsciously, as if in a sleep. You have not taken your life in full awareness so that something can be done out of it, so that something is created out of it.

And unless one creates something out of life, life is meaningless. Life in itself has no meaning – we have to give meaning to it. Life in itself is just an opportunity. You can miss it; millions of people miss it. Only a very few rare people attain to meaning. That meaning has to be created consciously; all meaning conscious meaning.

Life can become a great poetry, life can become a great sculpture, life can become a great painting, life can become a great dance, a great song. Thousands of possibilities are there, but one has to take possession of life very consciously so each moment is used, so each moment one is working, creating. Drop by drop, one day, something arises in you. Inch by inch one grows, and step by step, a long journey is finished. So take possession of your life with full consciousness. Mm ? – just don’t go on living the way you have been living up to now. That will not make you happy, that will not release the joy that you are carrying within yourself.

And you will become more and more miserable: as days pass, you will become miserable because more and more you will see that there is nothing. Unless we put something there, there is nothing. Life is given to us like a blank canvas... colours are also provided, the brush is provided, but we have to paint, we have to mix the colours and we have to create a painting on the canvas. And the difference is tremendous! Just a blank canvas is valueless, and when a great painting has been done on it, it has great value.

And people are like that too – plain, empty canvasses – many people are like that. Mm? – you look into their eyes and you don’t see anything; they have not done anything, they don’t know even that they have colours and the brush and the canvas.

Only a few people try something. When these few people try something, god appears in them. God has to be created within our being. God is not given – he has to be discovered!

It is just like a sculptor discovers a beautiful figure in a marble rock. He goes on cutting the marble rock – all that is unnecessary he throws away – and by and by a figure arises, a beautiful figure. In exactly the same way one has to be creative with one’s life.

So let this moment of becoming a sannyasin be a very decisive moment.

[Osho is explaining Vivekananda’s name to him. Vivek has two meanings, he says. In the Hindu tradition it means discrimination – between the false and the real, the momentary and the eternal. In Jainism, vivek means awareness, and in that sense takes on another nuance]

It is far more meaningful than the Hindu meaning because when you discriminate – even if you know this is unreal – there are two. The unreal is there; you know that it is unreal, but it is there. You know the rainbow is unreal but it is there.

So duality is not transcended in the Hindu concept of destination – the duality remains. In fact for discrimination to exist the duality is a must, otherwise how will you discriminate? – ‘this is right and this is wrong’, and ‘this is day and this is night’. But if you have to discriminate the day, then you will need the night too, otherwise there will be no possibility to discriminate.

The Jaina meaning is far deeper; it simply says ‘awareness’. Just be alert. There is no need to be worried about what is right and what is wrong: awareness is right, unawareness is wrong. Now see the shift of the meaning: the Hindu meaning is objective – this is right, that is wrong. The Jainist meaning is subjective – to be aware is right, to be unaware is wrong.but both the meanings are

beautiful.

It is good to start with the Hindu meaning and good to end with the Jaina meaning, then it is a complete process. First start discriminating between the real and the unreal, then by and by forget the real and forget the unreal and just be – be alert and aware.

In that awareness you disappear and something greater than you descends. In that awareness you are no more like an island. You have become part of the main continent. In that awareness you don’t have any limitation, no boundary – neither of the body nor of the mind. You are simply infinite, unbounded. You are as big as the universe itself, you are spread all over existence, you are simply light – a light that is aware of itself.

So the name is good – I will keep it, mm? – but with these two distinctions that you have to remember: the Hindu meaning has to be transcended – it is a dualistic meaning – and the Jaina meaning has to be attained. But the Hindu meaning can be used as a stepping stone.

And that is natural: first we can become aware only of the outside things – that is easier. Then slowly, slowly, the consciousness has to be turned inwards, a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. When you are capable of becoming alert about things, you can move with the same capacity towards yourself.

That pure awareness is left, and that is our intrinsic nature, that’s what we are made of. That is the stuff we are made of – awareness. Call it god, brahma – it doesn’t make any differenceIt is the

same! And you also come some time, mm? Whenever you can find time become more and more in tune with this community. That will help tremendouslybecause alone it is very difficult: the path is

very arduous. and a thousand and one possibilities exist to go astray. Hence the commune, hence my insistence for this orange so that you start feeling in tune with many people who are on the same path, so you become joined with a great rush of energy.

And once you start feeling one with this commune, many things start happening that are not possible alone, on your own; our effort is tiny.

When you are joined with a great family your effort is not tiny; then so many people creating so much energy, you can simply ride on that energy. So whenever you can find time, come, start meditating.…

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