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‌CHAPTER 12

13 December 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Niro means the element water. And water is very symbolic, symbolic of flow, symbolic of non- resistance, symbolic of let-go. And these have to become the qualities of a sannyasin.

One should never become stagnant, because life is a process, a constant process; the moment you stop the process you are dead. Life is a river, on-going, from infinity to infinity. The moment you start clinging to something, you become attached to something, obsessed with something, you are stuck. Then a rock has come in the way and the process is no more beautiful. Slowly slowly the movement stops. Then one is a stagnant pool, no more a river; and to be a stagnant pool is to be in misery, is to be in hell.

So the first thing for a sannyasin to remember is: always remain flowing. Nothing is more valuable than the flow itself. Nothing should prevent you, nothing should be allowed to obstruct the flow of life. Go on dropping yesterdays so that today remains flowing. Don’t plan for tomorrow, otherwise you have already obstructed it.

And the second thing: don’t resist life, don’t fight with it. Be friendly: don’t create any antagonism with life. We are part of it; to fight with it is simply stupid. But that’s what has been taught: for thousands of years man has been taught to fight, to become a fighter. Life has to be conquered, it has been said to people. Who is going to conquer life – we are part of it. A ray of the sun is going to conquer the sun? A wave of the ocean is going to conquer the ocean? It is utter nonsense, but that nonsense has become such a long tradition that nobody thinks about it. And when you resist and you fight, you lose; life loses nothing. You simply become separated from it, isolated from it; hence you start feeling lonely. Otherwise there is no loneliness.

Nobody can ever be lonely: life is always around you. Even if you are sitting in a Himalayan cave you are not lonely because the rocks are there, the birds are there, the trees are there and the

rivers are there. Maybe there is no human being, but just the presence of human beings does not make company. One can be alone in a crowd; people are alone in crowds. And not to be in human company does not mean aloneness if one knows how to remain non-resistant, not to fight.

The third thing is always to remain in a let-go, relaxed, as if you are not going anywhere. We are here, we have been here always and we will be here always and always; there is no hurry, there is no haste.

Then one can taste each moment in its radiance, in its utter benediction.

Veet means beyond, vivado means argument – beyond the argument. There is something which cannot be dragged into argument. That something is truth or god or whatever one chooses to call it. It cannot be proved, it cannot be disproved; there is no way to argue about it. Either it can be experienced or not experienced. It is a question of experiencing, not discussing. Philosophy discusses: religion experiences. Philosophy goes on and on, round and round, never arriving at any conclusion. Its very premise is wrong: it is arguing about something which cannot be argued about. Its first step has gone wrong, and when the first step goes wrong the whole journey goes wrong; then you can go on ad infinitum.

Five thousand years of philosophising has not given a single truth to man, a single conclusion. All problems remain the same; in fact, they have become more complicated. The more we have argued about them, the more complexities we have created. Philosophy is a dead-weight: religion is an unburdening. Exactly what science is for the outside world, religion is for the inside world; it is a science. Just as science believes in experimentation, observation, not in argument, religion also believes in experimenting, in experiencing, not in argument.

Nija means one who is one’s own self. That is the most difficult thing in the world, to be one’s own self, because others don’t allow it. They have a vested interest in not allowing you to be yourself: you can be reduced to a commodity only when your desire to be yourself is crushed. You can be coerced into anything once you forget who you are. Then everything is simple. Then anybody and everybody can manipulate you, control you; and all those who are around you are interested in manipulating you, even those who say that they love you. Their love is a very sweet way of manipulation.

It is very rare to find a person who loves you and does not allow his love to become politics – politics to control, politics to dominate, politics to destroy the other. Whenever one wants to be powerful over the other there is politics; and all our relationships are fully political.

So nobody wants you to be yourself; everybody wants you to be according to him or her. So only you can work it out; nobody is going to help, everybody will hinder it. But it is a question of life and death to you. You will have to find ways. You have to be intelligent, you have to be rebellious, you have to be courageous. You have to create strategies so that nobody can manipulate you, so that slowly slowly you can grow into that which you are meant to be.

And only when we have grown into that which we are, is there fulfilment. Remember it! This is the beginning of sannyas.

Ajija means the friend. Create a kind of friendliness in you which is not addressed to anyone in particular. Friendship should not be a relationship: it should be your flavour. It should be more a

state of your being than a relationship with somebody. Then many relationships can happen, but your friendliness remains a quality of you. If you pass by a side of a tree you are friendly to the tree. And to be friendly to existence is to be prayerful. I don’t know any other prayer which can reach to god, except friendliness.

This is the highest quality of love: unaddressed love. Then there is no motivation. When it is unaddressed it creates no attachment. When it is unaddressed it has no expectations, hence it never feels frustrated.

Friendliness is the purest form of love. That is the meaning of ajija.

Madhupran. It means sweet soul. Madhu means sweet, pran means soul. The moment love arises in one’s being, one becomes sweet from end to end. And that sweetness arises out of your core, your centre, and spreads towards your circumference. It becomes your whole life.

Love is the most important phenomenon in life. Without love a man remains bitter. Without love the poison of your being cannot be transformed into nectar. Love is the alchemy to change poison into nectar, to change the base metal into gold. And it is re- ally a taste of sweetness. Each breath is sweet when you are full of love, and each experience has its own beauty and sweetness and its own bliss. And life then has

thousandsofsurpriseseveryday.Oneachstepyouareencounteredbyanewmystery;wonderandawesimplyg

But the man who does not know love, knows nothing of the mysteries of life. He is locked in a dark cell; he knows nothing of light. He knows nothing of all that is happening around. It is tremendous! It is unbelievable, but it is happening, it is true... once you open your eyes. And only love can open your eyes, because love gives you maturity, integrity, sincerity, authenticity. Remember it!

To forget love in life is to make the whole of life futile; to remember love is to make it meaningful. Love is the poetry of life, the sweetness of life.

Deva means divine, anunado means echo – echo of the divine. And that’s what we are: echoes of god, far away echoes of god; reflections of the moon in the lake. Hence the search for the real. We have seen the real only as an echo, but the echo has created a desire to know the original. It is as if we have seen somebody in a dream and fallen in love and now the search starts. We have heard somebody singing but we have not seen them; now the search starts! We have a feeling that somebody is present, we are utterly certain of the presence, but the presence is not tangible, it is not material. We cannot grasp it, we cannot hold it in our hands, but still we can feel it. It touches and moves our heart and the longing arises to know the truth.

Our whole life is an echo, and the fortunate people are those who know it is an echo, because then they can start searching for the real. The unfortunate are those who think this is the real. Those who take this life for the real miss the whole point.

Remember it: this life is only an echo of that. This is only a finger pointing to that. Use the finger – it is beautiful – but don’t cling to it. That has to be realised.

Virat means the great; it is a name of god. We carry the great in our beings. We may be seeds but we carry great trees in our being. And we may be just a drop but we are hidden oceans. The drop is an unmanifest ocean and the ocean is a manifest drop.

Man is small and yet not small; both things have to be remembered simultaneously. It looks like a paradox: it is not. Man is small; it has to be remembered, otherwise the ego arises and the whole of life becomes poisoned by it. And man is great too; that has also to be remembered, otherwise man forgets that which is hidden in him, and to forget it is to go astray. We are small, like atoms, and yet we are carrying the great energy of the divine, the infinite energy of the divine. As man we are small, but there is something in us which surpasses us, which transcends us. We are not only man: we are also divine.

That’s why Jesus goes on saying again and again ‘I am the son of man’ and ‘I am the son of god.’ He uses both expressions. He has puzzled theologians for centuries. If he had used only one expression things would have been very clear-cut. One day he says ‘I am the son of god’; another day he says ‘I am the son of man.’ What does he mean? He means both together.

Apparently we are man; in a hidden way, in a subtle way, we are gods. Obviously he is the son of man, but that will be only half true; it will be true only about the periphery, it will not be true about the centre. To remind us of it he says ‘I am the son of god’ too. But that is the story of everybody else too. Remember it!

[A sannyasin says: I am in beautiful love with a sannyasin here but sometimes I feel very much that I need my own space, I need to be alone. And I don’t understand if it is good or if it is because I am afraid to be more deeply in love.]

Nothing to be worried about.

You need that much space to be alone. It is not a question of escaping: it is your need. So whenever you feel like being alone, be alone. Don’t force yourself to do something which is not happening naturally. One needs a few moments to be alone. To be together for twenty-four hours is dangerous. It starts being an encroachment on the other’s space, and the other starts encroaching on your space. Then one feels suffocated; this is a sure way to destroy love.

Love can exist only when two persons are capable of coming closer when it is happening naturally, and then withdrawing. This is the rhythm: coming closer, going away, coming closer, going away; this is the day and night of a love affair. If you remain far away too much, again love will be destroyed. There is a need of a great balance – to go away and to come and to go away again – so each time you come close it is again fresh. Again there is passion, joy, much longing to be together.

This is a natural rhythm; there is no question of escape. Simply follow your natural feeling.

[A sannyasin says: Since I’ve come out of groups, many changes have been happening. I find that I’m aware of my mind but the old mind comes back many times.]

This is how the old mind goes, slowly slowly. It comes back many times. Just remember not to be a victim of it. This is natural: it cannot go easily; it will come back many times. It will try in every way to catch hold of you. You have remained a slave to it so long; how can it simply leave you alone? It will go one day, but it will go only when it has tried in every possible way to dominate you and has failed.

So just leave it – nothing else can be done. Just don’t support it any more. When it comes, remain indifferent. Just tell it ‘I know your tricks and your trips and I am not going to be carried by you. You can come and go but I am indifferent.’ Keep aloof, keep cool, and slowly slowly, it will come less and less. It will become more and more meaningless for it to come back; it will be an uninvited guest. One day it simply disappears and never comes back; but it takes time.

The process has started, so feel happy that a new thing has started happening. Now it is a question of time and your awareness.

[A sannyasin says that sometimes she feels a lot of shaking in her belly. Osho gives her an ‘energy darshan’]

It is not a block: it is just that the energy is arising for the first time. It is a good sign. It will spread all over the body, and once it has spread all over the body you will not feel it. You will feel it only for a few days till it spreads all over the body. It is there too much and it is trying to spread. It is going in ripples; soon it will over-flood the whole body and then you will feel a totally new life. All the dead parts in your body, in your mind, will disappear through it; so love it, respect it, and when it shakes you, co-operate with it.

And something good is going to happen!

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