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CHAPTER 22
22 May 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
Deva means divine, abhinanda means joy – divine joy. Ordinarily what we think is joy is not joy; at the most it is entertainment. It is just a way to avoid oneself. It is a way to intoxicate yourself, it is a way to be drowned in something so you can forget your misery, your worry, your anguish, your anxiety.
So all kinds of entertainments are thought to be joy – they are not! Anything that comes from the outside is not, and cannot be, a joy. Anything that depends on something is not, and cannot be, a joy. Joy arises out of your very core. It is absolutely independent – independent of any outer circumstance. And it is not an escape from oneself; it is really encountering oneself. Joy arises only when you come home. So whatsoever is known as joy is just the contrary, just the diametrically opposite: it is not joy.
In fact because you are joyless you seek entertainment. It happened that one of the great Russian novelists, Maxim Gorky, visited America, and he was shown all kinds of things that Americans have devised to entertain, to get lost in. The man who was directing his tour and was showing him everything, was hoping that he would be very happy, but the more Maxim Gorky was shown these things, the more unhappy and sad he looked.
So the guide asked ‘What is the matter? Can’t you. understand?’
Maxim Gorky said, ‘I can understand – that’s why I am feeling sad. This country must be joyless; otherwise there is no need for so many entertainments.’
Only a joyless person needs entertainment. The more joyless the world becomes, the more we need the TV, films, the tinsel land and a thousand and one things.
We need alcohol more and more, we need new kinds of drugs more and more – just to avoid the misery that we are, just not to face the anguish that we are, just somehow to forget it all. But by forgetting it nothing is achieved.
So joy is to enter into your own self. In the beginning it is difficult, arduous. In the beginning you will have to face misery; the path is very mountainous. But the more you enter into it, the more is the pay-off, the greater is the reward.
Once you have learned how to face your misery, you start becoming joyful, because in that very facing the misery starts disappearing and you start becoming more and more integrated.
One day the misery is there and you are there facing it – suddenly, the break: you can see the misery as separate from you and you are separate from it. You have always been separate; it was just an illusion, an identification that you got into. Now you know you are not this, and then there is an outburst of joy, an explosion of joy.
That’s what ‘abhinanda’ means.
Suveera.… It means courage. In this moment and all moments it will mean courage... and courage is such a need that it is always needed.
Fear is so fundamental to the human mind that courage is needed.
The human mind is constantly afraid – afraid of the new, afraid of the unfamiliar, afraid of the unknown... always afraid. And each moment we are entering into the unknown. The known becomes past, flies away, becomes dust, and the unknown becomes reality. So the mind is constantly trembling. It wants to cling to the known, but the known slips out of the hands – that’s how it is; and the unknown has to be faced constantly, so courage is needed.
If you don’t have courage you start living in the past, in the memories. Then one creates a wall of the past around oneself and does not see the present. One lives in illusions, dreams, projections, and one loses contact with reality. To be in contact with reality is to be in contact with god... but that needs tremendous courage.
And the only meaning of courage is to be ready always to be surprised, to be ready for the unpredictable, to be ready for something you have never even dreamt of. You don’t know what it is and you don’t have any map for it and suddenly it comes and possesses you. To be courageous means to be adventurous – never to be repetitive, never to go on moving in the old rut; that’s how one becomes bored.
The mind is afraid and it is also bored. It is bored because it is afraid so it goes on moving in the same rut, moves like a wheel – the same and the same and the same; it is always ‘ditto’. Then one gets fed up, one feels tired, nauseous. That’s how the whole world looks – tired, nauseous. Nobody knows why we are existing or for what.
In the mind there is no meaning. The meaning comes from the beyond, but the beyond is unknown. That is the dilemma, that is the predicament. If you want to be alive, you can be alive only with the
unknown. If you want to be really in a thrill, always in a thrill and moving, then you have to allow your doors to be continuously open for the future. Nobody knows what it is, nobody knows what it will bring.
That’s what courage is: a readiness to accept the unknown; not only a readiness but a tremendous welcoming attitude, a receptivity.
Befriend the unknown – that is the meaning of your name and never get caught with the known. In each moment one has to be very alert not to be caught in the known, because the known is there; it is big! Your whole past is your known: if you have lived thirty years, then those thirty years are there – a big pile of the known.
And the unknown is very fragile – just a single moment, just like a dewdrop, fresh, young, but very small and very fragile. And the past is big, the past can destroy the unknown easily.
Don’t allow the past to destroy your future, don’t allow your past to repeat itself again and again. Each moment say ‘good-bye’ to the past, die each moment to the past so that you can be alive. That’s what courage is.
[A sannyasin analyses and intellectualises at length about his relationship, his lessening desire for sex, his curiosity about death.]
... Love and death are very deeply related, very deeply related – almost the same door; from one side it is love, from another side it is death.
If your love life is going perfectly well, harmoniously, you will not think about death at all. People start thinking about death only when something is going wrong in their love energy. When somebody is celebrating his love then death is not a problem at all.
It arises only when you start feeling that love is drying up in some way, is getting dry and the juices are no more flowing. Then you are threatened – and the threat in that moment is of death, because without love, a man is dead.
That’s why I wanted to know what is going on in your love affair. So first something is to be understood about your love thing.…
It is always so – that a woman’s need is more than a man can satisfy; it has nothing to do with you – because man loses energy while making love and the woman gains, she never loses any energy while making love.
So this is a problem. It is nothing to do with you; it has to do with all lovers!
[Osho says that society has repressed women for centuries, and only recently have women come to know that they can have orgasms. Now that the modern woman is more in touch with her sexuality, says Osho, she will want to have her sexual appetite fulfilled.]
And now they are having orgasm. If you cannot give them, they are ready to go to somebody else, because it is such a sheer joy, and they don’t lose anything. You have to live with a modern woman now, so you have to understand the whole thing. This has to be accepted and enjoyed.
So whenever you can make love to her, good; enjoy it. Whenever you cannot make love to her, give her total freedom. It hurts not because you are threatened – it hurts only because of the old habits of the mind. You start feeling that your ego... mm ? Your woman is making love to somebody else; that is just an ego thing.
Then you can start forcing yourself to make love. That will make the whole thing more ugly, because when you force yourselfLove is beautiful when it happens. When you force it, it is just gymnastics,
and very ugly at that. Deep inside you feel very bad about it – it is almost a duty you are fulfilling – and you will feel very very depressed after it, because you lose energy and you don’t gain anything, you don’t enjoy it.
This has to be understood; otherwise choose a very very old-fashioned woman who does not know any of the joy of love-making. But then too you will not be happy, because then she will not be happy when you are making love. This is the predicament of the modern man.
And my suggestion is that it is better to choose a modern woman who can enjoy and celebratebut
then you have to be ready if she wants to share her energy. And nothing is wrong in it.
If your woman is playing cards with somebody and enjoying it you don’t feel jealous. If your woman is laughing with somebody you don’t feel jealous. If your woman goes and dances with somebody you don’t feel jealous. Then what is wrong in making love with somebody else? It is again the same thing! Playing cards or laughing or reading poetry together or dancing together – it is a dance of the body.
... [Playing cards] doesn’t bother your emotions because you have grown up at that point. In India if somebody’s wife is playing cards with somebody else it will bother the husband.
It is just an old-fashioned mind. In India, one will not allow one’s wife to dance with somebody else. Indians think the western dance is ugly and obscene – holding the woman so close to you, almost rubbing bodies and dancing. The Indian will not allow his wife; he will feel jealous. The same is the case – just a little more understanding is needed.
... It is not a question of intellectual agreement! You have to experiment with it – and she is giving you such a good opportunity to grow.
And the second thing is death.
Death can never be explained because it comes only at the very end of life, and there is no way to experience it unless it happens. And naturally, because it is at the very end – that is the meaning of death – it is the culmination of life. So nobody can say anything about it, and whatsoever is said is just conjecture, guesswork. Nothing can be said about it and there is no need even to say it. In fact to say anything is to commit a crime. You are alive – you can say something about life. Even if you say something about death, basically it will be something about life. You cannot say anything about death.death remains a mystery.
So all that you can do is while you are alive at least know what life is, because soon life will disappear and then you may die and may start thinking about what life was; then it will be too late. Life is here
right now, so a man of understanding, awareness, will try to know what life is: while it lasts, let us know it totally. If you have become capable of knowing life totally, that very capacity will help you to know death too, because death is part of life. When it comes, we will know.
It is almost as if a small child of three or four years asks ‘What is love-making, what is orgasm?’ Now, how can you explain to a child of four years what orgasm is? And whatsoever you say will be just absurd, because he has no experience of it and he cannot have any experience of it. He can listen to your explanation, your description, but he will have to trust it. He will know only when he becomes capable of love-making.
The same is the case about death: only when you die do you know what it is. Then too it is not necessary that you know. If you have been very very unconscious in life you will not know even death, because you will remain unconscious. Your whole life’s pattern of being unconscious will keep you unconscious while you are dying.
So the only preparation that we can make for death is to live so consciously that whatsoever happens we will be able to see it. When death comes we will be alert and see it. If we disappear, we disappear; if we survive, we survive – and in both the cases I don’t think there is any problem.
If [you are] no more after death then what is the problem? Why be worried about it? So [you are] no more! Or if [you] remain then where is the problem ? And the possibilities are only two: either you disappear or you continue in some way. Both ways are okay. The problem of death becomes so important because we are not living our life very very deeply; we are missing it.
This missing of love, life, joy, delight, makes us afraid that we are not enjoying, we are not loving, we are not dancing, we are not singing, we are not celebrating, and death is coming! And who knows? [You] may not be here again. This whole life is going out of the hands, just slipping out, and you have not lived it. Tomorrow death may come, tomorrow morning you may not be at all.
This fear of death arises because of unlived life. The only way to face death is to live life totally. And don’t philosophise about death; all is philosophy about death.
At least one thing is good about death – that nobody has been able to really philosophise about it, that one thing remains uncontaminated by the human mind, remains pure. Death is pure; no words, no books can be of any help. You will know it when you will die, so if you are really interested in it, then keep one thing in mind – to become so alert that when death comes, you can die consciously. You can watch, slowly disappear into it, watching.
Right now your watchfulness is not so much that you will be able to watch death. You will become immediately unconscious. So the whole concentration of energy has to be focused on more awareness. Love, try every possibility that life opens, look into every nook and corner and enjoy as much as you can. Drop all negative attitudes – for example, this love affair.
If you become jealous you will not be able to enjoy. For the whole time you will remain obsessed with it – what to do? If you force love-making, then you don’t enjoy; if you don’t force love-making – your wife goes to somebody else and then you feel miserable – so any way you continue to be in misery.
Drop all negative attitudes so each moment becomes a crystal-clear moment of joy. Don’t miss a single opportunity to be joyous. And because of this many times you will start thinking to drop sannyas, to leave me, to go away, this and that – and that too is because of your egoI wanted to
talk about it.
You have a very very hidden current of ego that persists and which will come again and again. Nothing is wrong in dropping sannyas. You can drop it, that is not a problem at all. But that will not help you: your ego will continue. This sannyas is also just an opportunity made available to you so you can drop your ego. Before you drop sannyas, drop the ego – then you are at ease: you can drop the sannyas any time.
And.[your mind] comes again and again, and it is a restriction – even its coming.
Just see that it comes, see why it comes, from where it comes, and don’t help in any way so that it becomes more and more strong. Start removing supports from it. Sometimes we know that something is not right but we go on supporting it in such subtle ways that on one hand we go on watering the tree, and on another hand we say that it is poisonous and we don’t want it.
One part of your mind goes on doing things and another part of your mind goes on condemning it. Then you are in such a state where nothing can happen, only confusion.
So just watch and look at the reasons, and don’t support those reasons. Once the ego is dropped you can drop the mala any moment; then there is no problem.
And dropping the mala is not difficult at all, it is so easy. Dropping the ego is the problem.and one
should take that challenge because only that will make you more alive, more joyous. Dropping the ego, your fear of death, your constant worry about death will also disappear, because it is only the ego that dies.
When there is no ego, who bothers? Whether I continue or not does not matter. The ‘I’ is the problem; otherwise how does it matter whether you were in the world or not before your birth ? Just think about it that way, from the other end. Are you ever puzzled or worried, anxious about whether you were or not before your birth? Nobody bothers!
If you are not worried about whether [you] ever existed before this birth, then why should you be worried after death? It will be the same again! Wherever you were before your birth you will go back there. That much I can say certainly – and it is not a guess. Mm? – it is so simple. Good.
[A visitor says that he has been meditating – sitting silently on the floor in a semi-lotus position and concentrating on the third eye – for forty minutes twice a day for the past year. Recently he has been experiencing some difficulty with breathing; it feels jerky and he has a sense of suffocation.]
My feeling is that you should try it on a chair. Sometimes sitting like this gives breathlessness to many people, because when you relax after a few minutes the whole pressure goes onto the diaphragm and the breathing is not in a natural state.
Either learn the full sidhasan and with that sidhasan many things go side by sideit is not just a
simple posture. Mm? – the stomach has to be very clean. There should be no food, no old food in the stomach, so there are many methods that yogis do to cleanse the stomach completely.
They do vomiting so the whole system is cleaned, and then they learn pranayama; it is a must. If you learn pranayama, and after practising pranayama you sit in this way, then naturally the body takes on a certain rhythm, the breathing takes on a certain rhythm. Then you will not feel this breathlessness, otherwise it is bound to come.
My suggestion is that you try it on the chair; sit at ease and relax, then the pressure will not be on the stomach. Once the pressure is not on the stomach there will be no trouble. And it has nothing to do with posture. The whole thing is that the body should be in such a relaxed state that you can forget it; that’s the whole thing.
If you can forget the body that’s the right posture. So in any way you find that you can forget it, that’s the right posture. So keep a pillow here (indicating the side), keep a pillow at the back. Just make yourself comfortable, as comfortable as possible. And drop the old traditional idea that if you are meditating you have to be somehow uncomfortable. Mm? – that is just foolish, just foolish. Just be comfortable and then rest.
And you are doing it perfectly alright – just do it the same way. If you can add two things more in it, the result will be far deeper.
[Osho tells him to massage his third eye, in the way he described to a sannyasin the night before – for three minutes.]
And then you have to actually visualise a small point of light just between the two eyebrows at the third eye centre. To have the feel you can put a bindi there, mm? just any woman’s bindi will do. You can put it there so you can feel where it is.
[A bindi is the small dot that indian women put on the third eye.]
And then close the eyes and look at that light spot: imagine a burning star-like thing, bluish...
And look upwards so that the eyes turn upwards. In fact that point is not important – the whole point is that the eyes should look upwards. When the eyes are looking upwards the body falls into a tranquility. That’s how it happens while you go into deep sleep.
When a person is dreaming his eyes are moving. You can see a man sleeping; if his eyes are moving, then he is dreaming. If his eyes are not moving and you can open the eyes and see that his eyes are turned upwards, then he is in deep sleep. That is the eye posture in deep sleep – the same eye posture helps in meditation. So this is just a device to help the eyes to turn upwards.
Turn the eyes upwards, and this way [in a chair] will be easier than sitting that way [on the floor]. And don’t cross the legs; just keep the legs both on the floor, flat on the floor.
And forty-five minutes are not enough. Sometimes it starts happening near about forty minutes, so sixty minutes is the exact time. Somewhere between forty and sixty minutes the thing happens. It takes forty minutes for you to move into that space, Mm? So at forty-five minutes sometimes you will be just moving in and then you finish meditating.
And never put on an alarm. You can just keep a clock there, and when you feel you can simply open your eyes, have a look and close your eyes; then that will not be disturbing at all. But never put on an alarm, never tell anybody to knock on the door after sixty minutes, because that comes as a shock and the whole system feels uneasy.
Use as loose clothes as possible – to be naked is best, otherwise just a long robe with no underwear. Anything pressing on your stomach – pants or something – will create the breathing difficulty.
And it will become okay; nothing to be worried about. Try it on the chair, mm?
... Make it one hour. If you can do it twice it is better, it is very good. If it is difficult to find that much time, then just once, but do it for one hour: the longer the period the better. Two sittings are not so important, mm? because it comes only in the latter stage. By the time you are really moving, you get up, and that’s not good.
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