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‌CHAPTER 1

1 December 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Samvad means communion. Man is living as an island, and that’s from where all misery arises. Down the centuries man has been trying to live independently from existence. That is not possible in the very nature of things. Man can neither be independent nor dependent. Existence is a state of interdependence: everything depends on everything else. There is no hierarchy, nobody is lower and nobody is higher. Existence is a communion, an eternal love affair.

But the idea that man has to be higher, more superior, special, creates trouble. Man has to be nothing: man has to dissolve into the totality of things. And when we drop all the barriers, communion happens, and that communion is a benediction. To be one with the whole is all. That is the very core of religion.

Deva means divine, anando means bliss. Bliss is something which descends from the beyond. It cannot be manufactured, man cannot make it. There is no possibility ever. No technology, no methodology, can help man to create bliss; bliss is beyond human creativity. But still, man can receive it; and the whole art of being blissful is the art of being receptive. One has to be in a kind of let-go, then it comes. One has to be almost absent, then it pours in from all directions and fills you to the full – not only that, it starts overflowing in you. Happiness is human, can be created. Bliss is divine, cannot be created. It is always a gift from god, it is a grace; but man has forgotten how to receive.

He has become too much of a doer and he feels that he can do everything: he can go to the moon, he can make atom bombs and he can reach the secrets of nature. For the first time in the history of human consciousness man has fallen deeply into the dream of being a doer. He has lost track of something immensely valuable that can only be received. That’s why a few values are utterly missing.

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Love is disappearing, because you cannot produce it. It happens, it is not an activity. And there can never be a science of love; there is no way to cause it to happen, it is not part of the world of cause and effect. It is something mysterious – it happens.

But if we become too much of a doer then we are closed to that happening. Slowly slowly those windows, those doors, become too tightly closed and slowly slowly we forget that they ever existed. We have become focused on doing. The doing can do many things, but not all; and whatsoever can be done by man is bound to be mundane. All that is great only descends. Great poetry is not man- produced: man becomes a vehicle for it. Great works of art are not man-made: it is god working through man, man becomes possessed. Love, meditation, all that is great, all that is sacred, comes only from the beyond. Man is at the receiving end. And to learn it, to be alert about it, is to be a sannyasin.

The sannyasin is not a doer. To be a sannyasin simply means to be in a relaxed state where the mind no longer functions. One is just open, with no defences; one is simply vulnerable, available. One has to become like a dry leaf in the wind: wherever the wind blows, the leaf goes with it. One has to leave oneself to the river of life; and the river is already going to the ocean, you need not swim. You only need to trust and let the river take you.

This is the difference between science and religion. Science is action, religion is inaction. Science is doing, religion is non-doing. Science is male, religion is female. Science is aggressive, religion is receptive. Science tries to conquer, religion surrenders. And the miracle is that the more you try to conquer, the more you are at a loss, and the more you surrender, the more you are victorious.

Amiyo means nectar, elixir. Down the ages man has been searching for it, the whole search of the alchemist was for it: to find something that can make man an immortal. But all those searches have failed, they were bound to fail, because man is already immortal, there is no need for any nectar to make him immortal. At the very core of man’s being there is nectar. All search is futile and bound to be frustrated.

Man is deathless, as everything else is. This whole existence is nothing but an ocean of nectar. Nothing ever dies. Death is only a change of garments. One changes bodies, and that is beautiful because one becomes tired of one body. And the body has limitations; it becomes exhausted, spent, and one needs a new body, a new garment. That’s what death is: a change of garments; but nothing ever dies. The body never dies because it is already dead. It is made of matter; matter cannot die. And the soul never dies, because it is life. So all that happens in death is a disconnection between the body and the soul – that’s all that happens; they become untied. The soul starts searching for a new body, the body may wait for a new soul, and the game goes on.…

Search within yourself for the point which is deathless. That’s what sannyas is all about: an enquiry into one’s own being for that which is deathless. And unless one knows it, one remains in a fear, one remains in trembling. Soren Kierkegaard says ‘Man is a trembling’, and he is right! How can it be otherwise when there is death? Trembling is natural. You can hide the fact of death, you can keep it at the back, but it goes on coming again and again; it goes on exploding. Somebody dies and suddenly you are aware of your own death. Even a withering flower can remind you of your own death.

So the trembling remains there. One can hide it, one can be very brave and repress it, but it is there. And the man who lives in fear of death cannot love, because love and fear cannot exist together. And the man who lives in fear cannot know god, because fear can never become a bridge to truth. Truth needs courage, not fear; truth needs fearlessness. Out of fear people believe in god – they don’t search for him. People become superstitious. One can be a Christian, a Hindu, a Mohammedan, but these are not religious people at all. They are just afraid people, in a kind of paranoia; they cling to any belief, to any consolation.

But god is not a belief and god is not a consolation. God is neither Hindu nor Mohammedan nor Christian; god is not even a person. God is this whole existence: this-ness is god, such-ness is god. How to know this totality that surrounds you, that is within you and without you? With fear it is not possible: in fear one starts shrinking. It is possible only when one starts expanding; then one can have contact with existence. That can happen only if you have found something immortal in yourself; then there is no fear. All meditations lead to it.

Meditation simply means a method to penetrate deeper and deeper into one’s own being. And one has to go on digging till one has arrived at the source of nectar. It is there. All that one needs to do is: one has to learn how to turn off the mind, how to stop the inner talk, the continuous talk, how to stop the inner chattering, how to get off the mind.

And the moment you get off the mind, great energy is released. Such tremendous energy is released that one is simply turned on. No psychedelic can do that, no intoxicant can do that. You are simply aflame with such vital force that it seems impossible that it can belong to you. It seems so huge, enormous, that you cannot believe that this is yours. It is yours. It is just as each atom carries infinite energy. Once it explodes then we will know what energy it has. If an atom of matter has so much energy, how much more has the atom of being, the atom of life, the atom of consciousness?

But the mind is a dissipation, it is continuously leaking your energy. Once the mind is turned off, once you are no more in the trap of the mind, no more a victim of the trips of the mind, when you get off the mind, you are turned on to a new reality, absolutely unknown to you, of immense vitality, of tremendous power. It is a great explosion, and only in that explosion does one come to know who one is, being is revealed.

Sannyas can be reduced to a simple message: turn on, get off and be! That being is deathless. It is always there, it has always been there with you for millions of lives, but you have never looked within. Now the moment has come to look within. And all that you have been seeking outside and have not been finding will be found. One who knows oneself has known all that is worth knowing.

[A new sannyasin says: Well, I am very much of a hesitating person... so, for instance, before I came to Poona I hesitated about it for about two weeks: yes, no, yes, no. I have that often, and I would like to change it because sometimes I feel so hopeless about it.]

One has to learn a few things, only then can the hesitation go. First is: there is nothing to lose. Hesitation is there because one is always afraid that one may lose something, but one doesn’t have anything to lose! Once this dawns in your consciousness, that you have nothing to loseWhat

have you got? We never look into it. We go on thinking that we have much to lose, so we are hesitant about whether to do this or not to do it, to be or not to be; and we have nothing to lose! So

in your hesitation you are wasting time, time that could have been lived, time that could have been of immense joy. Just see that you have nothing to lose, then every risk is possible.

Hesitation means that you are afraid of taking a risk. Maybe it is right, maybe it is wrong. There is nothing right and nothing wrong! There are no things fixed as right and wrong. One thing can be right in one situation and maybe wrong in another situation, so don’t be too worried about right and wrong. Rather than deciding whether it is right or wrong, see the appropriateness of it, whether it fits with the situation, whether it is an adequate response to the situation. Don’t be bothered about ultimate values of right and wrong; there are none. Every situation is momentary, and if you think of ultimate values you will be in trouble and you will go on missing life, because by the time you decide maybe the train has already left!

[Osho recounts the story of the german philosopher, Emmanuel Kant, who having taken three years to weigh the pros and cons of marriage, finally accepted the proposal of the woman he loved, only to find her married and the mother of a child.]

... Three years thinking... but that’s how many people are who go on hesitating, postponing, always afraid of making decisions. Life is momentary and each moment needs its own decision. If you wait, the moment is gone. And even if you decide later on it is to no point. But why does this always happen? – because we have been taught about the ultimate values. We have not been taught about the immediate adequateness, the appropriateness, of a certain response. We have been told what is good and what is not good, and what will take you to paradise and what will take you to hell. We have been told so many things, but nobody has been telling us to respond to the present with our total hearts!

And never be afraid of committing errors. If a person really wants to live, he has to be ready to commit many errors; they are natural. Nobody comes with a ready-made mind. The mind grows, and it grows through situations, challenges. The hesitant mind never grows, it remains retarded. But, again, we have been taught not to commit a mistake. We have become so afraid of committing mistakes that we hesitate.

Never be afraid of committing mistakes, and hesitation will disappear. In fact one should be ready to commit as many mistakes as possible. Remember only one thing: don’t commit the same mistake again, that’s all; but go on committing new mistakes, you will learn through them. Otherwise how is one going to learn? Learning is through trial and error. And there is no ready-made knowledge which can be given to anybody: everybody has to grow in his own way.

So it is not only a question of habit; it has many things around it. And rather than thinking how to drop it, simply drop it. From this moment start taking decisions. Many will be wrong – I am not saying that all those decisions will be right – but that’s how one grows. Sometimes one goes astray – it is perfectly natural to go astray. If Adam had not gone astray there would have been no world. Feel thankful that Adam and Eve went astray, otherwise there would have been no Christ, remember! The whole credit goes to Adam. There would have been no Buddha. There would have been nothing – the world would have remained empty. The serpent who seduced Adam and Eve into committing the original sin was the greatest benefactor humanity has ever known! He must have really been an adventurer. The original sin is not a sin at all; it is the way of growth.

So be ready to commit as many mistakes as possible. Life is small – commit as many mistakes as fast as you can so you can learn. And the more you learn, the more mature you become. Never waste time in too much thinking. Each moment needs your response. Respond! Whatsoever you have right now – your understanding, your preparedness, your maturity – respond with it totally and then whatsoever happens is good! Otherwise you will live a very lukewarm life, and to live lukewarm is not to live at all.

Live dangerously! Mm? that’s what Friedrich Nietzsche says ‘Live dangerously!’ Come back – I will teach you how to live dangerously!

Veet means beyond, chitten means mind. Meditation is going beyond the mind. In fact, that is exactly the meaning of the English word ‘contemplation’. The word contemplation comes from the root ‘tem’ – tem means cutting off. The word temple also comes from the same root ‘tem’, The temple is a place which cuts you off from the world, hence it is called a temple, and contemplation is the process that cuts you off from your mind.

We have become too identified with the mind. That is the only problem that one has to face and dissolve all other problems are secondary. And one should not get involved in solving many problems. It is better to cut the root, rather than to go on pruning branches and leaves.

That’s where Western psychology differs from Eastern psychology. Western psychology is still interested in cutting leaves and branches, pruning the tree, giving it a shape, making man adjusted to the society; and the society to which you are trying to adjust man may itself be insane. Whenever a problem arises, the Western approach is to solve it rather that going to the deepest cause of it. All treatments are symptomatic.

The Eastern psychology is not concerned with individual problems at all. It simply cuts the very root. The root is that we are identified with the mind; and we have to be separate from the mind, we have to know that we are separate, that we are a witness to the process of the mind – whether the mind is angry, greedy, sexual, violent, etcetera... whatsoever it is. It is not a question of how to solve violence. The question is how to become a watcher of the violence of the mind, how to be separate and aloof, how to stand by and just be a spectator of it. And a miracle starts happening: the moment you watch the mind, it loses all energy, because it is you who give it energy, and you can give it energy only when you are identified with it. When you say ‘I am the mind’ then you can give it energy. Only when you come so close can the mind take energy from you. When you say ‘I am not the mind’, the mind is there, impotent. The idea of anger will be there but it will be impotent; it cannot harm anybody and it will disperse soon, like smoke! Soon it will be gone.

Slowly slowly one has to learn the art of becoming aware, mindful, in each mood, in each state of mind. And once you have learned the knack of it, there is no need to go into psychoanalysis, no need to go into psychosynthesis either. By becoming separate from the mind you have dissolved all psychologies. And then Adler and Jung and Freud and Assagioli all look childish. Compared to a Buddha the whole modern psychology looks very childish, immature.

And the art of being a Buddha is very simple: become watchful of your mind. That is the way to cut yourself off – from the mind; that is contemplation, that is meditation. So this is going to be the method you have to work upon.

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