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‌CHAPTER 16

17 December 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Sangit, means music; and music is something that is the most spiritual, religious, and the most expressive of the existence of god. Where words fail, music succeeds. Words can only describe god: they go round and round. Music can represent; it is very symbolic.

So become more and more musical in your being. Life has to be treated as a musical instrument. Only do things which don’t create disharmony in you, and you will be surprised that if you can keep alert, you will become virtuous without ever trying to become virtuous. The person who lives in disharmony cannot be wise... Cannot be wise, because the moment you do something wrong, the others may be affected later on but first you are affected, your harmony is disturbed.

For example, if you become angry it will take time to reach the other, and if the other is alert, aware, he may not even receive your disturbance, he may ignore it, he may not take it in. He may not be disturbed by it, but you are already disturbed. The moment you become angry you lose your musical quality.

Let music be your criterion to judge what is right and what is wrong. Whichever helps you to be more and more in harmony, in accord, is good, is right; whatsoever goes against it is wrong. And you will be moving towards god slowly slowly without ever becoming self-conscious about it. Otherwise the virtuous people become very righteous, they become very self-conscious, and then a subtle ego arises in them – the ego that gives them the idea of holier-than-thou.

To me virtue is a shadow of being musical.

Geet, means a song... with the same approach, with the same attitude.

The song is more manifest than music. The song is more earthly than music. Music is a very illusive quality – it is like fragrance. The song is like the flower – you can touch it, it is tangible. The

song is the meeting of the earth and the sky: music is pure sky. In a sense music is tremendously significant because it is pure sky. In another sense, a song has its own splendour because it has all the beauties of both the earth and the sky. A song is a manifestation of music; music is a hidden, unmanifest song.

So be musical and help him from the very beginning to be more and more of a song, more and more celebrating, happy, joyous. Teach him to be joyous, don’t make him serious.

That’s what parents go on doing with the children: they try to enforce things on them and the children become serious; and the moment a child becomes serious you have killed him, you have disconnected him from his own source. All that a real parent will do is to help the child to be more and more playful, to be more and more joyous, celebrating. And the parent should help the children to keep that quality intact for their whole life; the child should never disappear. It should not be imposed on by other things: the child should remain an undercurrent always flowing there.

And remember: to remain a child your whole life does not mean to remain childish. To be childish and to be childlike are contraries: they don’t mean the same thing. They are polar opposites.

The childish person is stuck, unflowing, retarded; the childlike person is growing in innocence every day. And if a man can die as a child, then he dies as a saint.

Parami means perfection – but perfection not as an ideal, not as an ideal or goal: perfection as a declaration of your isness.

It is not that you have to become perfect but that you are. We have to live it: we are already it. And the whole tradition of teaching people to be perfect has simply driven them neurotic.

The perfectionist is bound to become a neurotic, he is on the way. Never be a perfectionist, and the only way not to be a perfectionist is to declare ‘I am perfect as I am.…’ With all the flaws and all the limitations you are perfect. In fact all those flaws and all those imperfections and all those limitations add to your richness. Otherwise perfection will be very dull. It will be very very grey, it will not have colours.

To accept oneself as one is, is the first declaration of being a sannyasin. I teach acceptance, total acceptance. In that very acceptance the future disappears and this moment becomes all-important. In that very declaration you stop torturing yourself – to be this, to be that – and the moment you stop torturing yourself, bliss arises. Bliss is a shadow of acceptance. And when a person accepts himself, herself, then he or she accepts everybody else as he is, she is, and compassion arises, love arises.

The people who have great ideals are always condemnors, are bound to be. If they have a great ideal in their life, they cannot forgive anybody who falls short of that ideal; they cannot forgive themselves, they cannot forgive anybody else. These are the people who have created the idea of hell. In fact there is not much difference between the people who create hell on earth and the people who create hell somewhere after death; their mentalities are the same.

Adolf Hitler creates hell on the earth – he is more of a realist – and your saints go on creating hell after death; but the desire is the same: to torture people. They are all sadists. And the best way to

torture people is to give them ideals. They will never be able to fulfil them, because an ideal is an ideal only when it is impossible. They will not be able to fulfil it, or if they try too hard to fulfil it they will become inhuman.

So there are two possibilities: once you give ideals to a man either you will drive the man neurotic or you will drive the man into hypocrisy. If he is a sincere man he will become neurotic because he will sincerely try to achieve it and he will fail. He will fall into a great depression and frustration and he will think that something is wrong with himself; nothing is wrong with him. Or, if he is cunning, he will become a hypocrite; he will have double standards: one to talk about and one to live.

My sannyasin cannot be a hypocrite, because I don’t give any ideals. And my sannyasin can never be neurotic, because I don’t give any ideals.

You are perfect as you are – rejoice in it!

Anand Moses. That is the quality that is missing in Moses – anand, blissfulness. He is too strict, a law-giver. Love is missing; and that’s what Christ has to be. Moses is law; Christ is love.

That’s why Christ was not liked by the Jews, because love seems to be dangerous. People who have learned to live according to law are always afraid of love. Law is repressive: it creates control, inhibition. Love gives you total freedom. And the people who live through law think of freedom as if it will create indulgence. It never creates indulgence; a loving person is never indulgent. Only a repressive person becomes indulgent, because repression, only repression, can create the polar opposite.

If any time the pendulum moves – and it is bound to move one day or other – then the repressed person will become indulgent; he will go to the other extreme. Extremes are always together. A loving person is neither repressive nor indulgent; he is exactly in the middle, the pendulum has stopped in the middle. And that moment, when the pendulum stops in the middle, is a moment of bliss because time disappears, the clock stops. Whenever time disappears you are in bliss, or whenever you are bliss, time disappears: time and bliss never meet.

Law is a temporal phenomenon; it is needed. Moses did his work; it was needed in those days. People needed a kind of discipline, people needed commandments, people needed a certain way of life to live – rules, regulations. It was needed, he fulfilled a certain need, but that is a very primitive need. Society has grown out of it. Now society needs something more than law: it needs love.

Moses gives character; now society needs consciousness, not only character. Unfortunately Jews rejected Jesus, otherwise Judaism would have become one of the most perfect circles. Without Jesus, Moses is only a half-circle. And without Moses, Christianity is also a half-circle. That schism, that division, drives both the communities schizophrenic; the word ‘schizophrenic’ comes from schism.

Whenever you are half, you hanker for the other; and you cannot go to the other: the other is the enemy. You prohibit, you inhibit, you repress it. It is a strange phenomenon, a paradox, but life is full of paradoxes, truth is paradoxical. A man who knows what law is and also knows what love is, is a perfect man.

[A sannyasin says: I love you, Osho!

You love – that’s why you are a sannyasin. Becoming a sannyasin is possible only if you love me, because I don’t give you any ideology; I can only give you my love. And you can get it only when you are in love with me; there is no other way.

Sannyas is a love affair... and it is going to grow every day. Something immensely beautiful is going to be born out of it. Each love affair is creative, in fact only love is creative.

Anand means bliss, and kaba is the sacred place of the Mohammedans. Your full name will mean: the sacred temple of bliss.

Man is a temple. There is no need to go anywhere, no other temple is needed: the kaba is within you. One has to go inwards, and to go inwards is to go upwards. Similarly, to go outwards is to go downwards. Outwards and downwards are synonymous; inwards and upwards are synonymous.

This has to be your work on yourself: you have to go so deep in yourself that the body is left far behind. Then the mind is also left far behind, then the heart too is left behind. And finally, only pure consciousness remains. That pure consciousness is god.

[The new sannyasin says: I have wasted thirty years.]

Now you have come! Now the fire has entered you! It will burn your past and it will give birth to a new being in you. It will burn all your masks, your personas, and it will give birth to your original face. Yes, you have waited long and you have been searching, but now you have come. So forget all the troubles of the journey and don’t think of all that. Simply forget all about it.

Shahido means beloved. The beloved is within you; don’t seek him anywhere else.

Those who seek him somewhere else, seek in vain. The farther they go in the search, the farther they are away from the beloved; because the beloved is not the sought but the seeker himself. To remember this is to become enlightened. All that is needed is just a change of your attention. We are focused outwards, we have to become focused inwards. The moment your attention starts falling On yourself, god is revealed.

Anand means bliss, paramo means ultimate. Bliss is the ultimate state of consciousness. There is no going beyond it, there is nothing beyond it; everything is before it and everything is a step towards it. The people who have stopped somewhere before attaining it are lost. They have made their houses on the bridge, and the bridge is just to take you to the other shore; it is not a place to make a house. The other shore is the ultimate bliss.

Pleasures are just momentary things, happinesses are too; they are a little deeper than pleasure but still momentary, they come and go. Pleasures are physical; happinesses are psychological; bliss is spiritual.

The body is constantly changing, hence pleasures cannot be more than momentary. And so is the case with the mind. The mind is a chaos, it is a cloud, it goes on changing its form every moment;

so no happiness can be forever. And one wants something that should be forever, hence the misery. Hence after each pleasure one falls into a deep depression. After each happiness great darkness surrounds one because one is frustrated. One had hoped so much and when it came, one believed that it was going to remain; but it comes from this side and it goes from the other side. Happiness is like a bird that enters from one window in your room, flutters a little while, and then goes out from another window. Just a little flutter, that’s all, a little excitement, that’s all, a little forgetfulness, a little intoxicant, that’s all.

Neither the body can satisfy nor the mind. Contentment is possible only when the spiritual bliss has happened. That is called anand paramo – the ultimate bliss.

It is a Sufi word – it means the beloved. Sufis think of god as the beloved. It is their word for god: ‘mashuk’. We are all lovers; god is the beloved.

Sufis think of god as a feminine energy. The seeker is masculine energy; the sought is feminine energy. It is one of the most beautiful approaches towards god to think of god as mashuk, as the beloved. Then religion becomes poetry, then religion takes beautiful forms.

If you think of god as the father then religion becomes law, dry. Then religion is reduced to just obedience and nothing else. And the figure of father is not a very beautiful figure either. In the first place, the father is an unnatural phenomenon; it is a social by-product. It doesn’t exist in nature: it is a man-made institution, it is institutional.

It is not just a coincidence that Christianity became the most organised religion in the world, the greatest institutional religion in the world. The reason is the idea of god as the father. Then obedience is virtue and disobedience is sin.

Because Adam disobeyed that became the original sin. Religion became legal, it looked more like a law code.

Sufis have turned religion into poetry. It is not a law code at all. Lovers don’t need any law: love is enough of a law unto itself. If love is there all is allowed. In fact in love you cannot do anything wrong, it is impossible to do anything wrong. Love takes care of it, and without any deliberate effort.

And when god is the beloved, the woman you love, naturally great poetry arises in the heart of the seekers. Sufis sing, dance, play music. It is a totally different vision. It is a very soft, feminine vision... delicate, aesthetic.

Deva means divine, masti means intoxicated, drunk – drunk with the divine, intoxicated with god. Less than that won’t do; no half hearted effort is going to succeed. If one is mad for god, only then does god happen; it is only for madmen!

People live in a lukewarm way, their whole life is lukewarm, so when they pray their prayer is also lukewarm; it reflects their whole style of life. When they love their love is lukewarm; and to live a lukewarm life is to drag a burden. One never comes to know the real mystery of it. The real mystery is encountered only when you have risked all, when you reach to the very end of your capacities, when you use your whole potential, when you come to the boundary of your being, to the optimum.

On that boundary the meeting happens. The known starts dissolving into the unknown, the river meets the ocean. But that is possible only for those who are madly in love with god, madly in love with life!

Prem means love, sunito means great virtue. Love to me is the greatest virtue, because all other virtues are love’s by-products. If you love you cannot be untrue; truth comes naturally. If you love you cannot be dishonest; honesty comes naturally. If you love you cannot deceive. If you love, all the virtues that have been propounded down the ages simply follow it like shadows.

If you love you cannot be miserly; it is impossible to manage both together. A loving person cannot be a miser and a miser cannot be a loving person. Love means sharing, and the miser cannot share. If you love you cannot be destructive because love is creativity. Whatsoever is touched by love is transformed immediately. Then small things become creative.

Your name means: love, and all the virtues will follow you. One can try to cultivate all the virtues, but love will not follow. That’s why your saints have all the virtues but love is missing; and if love is missing, all is missing. The saint is dead: you are worshipping a corpse. Although those virtues are there like flowers on a corpse, those flowers and their fragrance go on hiding the stinking corpse, that’s all.

So let that become your life: forget all about other virtues, commandments, great teachings. Just remember a single word ‘love’. It contains all!

Love is the only real scripture. It contains all the Bibles, all the Korans, all the Vedas, because it contains god himself.

Prem means love, shardo has two meanings: one is goddess, another is the most beautiful month in India, sharad.

In the month of sharad, India has the most beautiful moon. The sky is very clear, cool, and the moon comes the best. The full moon night of the month sharad is worshipped. That night is also the night of the goddess Sharda. It is thought – it is just a myth, but beautiful – that on that particular night, in a certain moment, nectar falls from the moon. In fact the moon is so beautiful on that night that it should fall. That night has been the night of meditation for centuries.

Just sit silently looking at the moon the whole night, just watching it, doing nothing, thinking nothing; many have been able to drink the nectar that falls from it. Buddha became enlightened on the same night. Buddha’s life is beautiful: he was born on the same night, he became enlightened on the same night, he died on the same night. He must have really loved the night.

And the night is so beautiful that love simply arises. You cannot resist; it is maddening. The moon has always been thought to have something psychedelic in it. It drives people crazy, hence the word ‘lunatic’; it comes from lunar, the moon. It drives the ocean crazy, and now scientists say that even the earth rises six inches above its normal level. Not only does the ocean rise in great tidal waves, even the earth rises six inches. We don’t feel it because the whole earth rises.

It functions as if it is made of rubber. The moon’s attraction is great. Poets have loved it, lovers have loved it, mystics have loved it. There is something that simply stirs the human heart and fills it with great joy and great love.

So one meaning is goddess of love: become one, be one. Everyone should be a god or a goddess of love. That is our birthright, and unless we are, there is no fulfilment. And the second meaning is: meditate on the moon around the year but never miss that particular moon. That may bring a sudden enlightenment to you: it has brought it to many people!

So while you are here, just enquire when that month comes, and that night, dance, sing and meditate and forget everything!

[A sannyasin says:: I became so silent inside, and my mind keeps fighting it, as if it’s not allowed to be silent, and it makes me sad.]

You have to accept it. It will disappear only through acceptance. If you fight it, it will remain with you forever; it will become chronic.

Sadness is perfectly natural. Sometimes it is cloudy, and sometimes it is sunny. Exactly like that, sometimes it is sadness, sometimes it is joy. We have to love all the moods of life and all the shades of being. If you are continuously joyous for twenty-four hours you will become tired of joy. You will commit suicide. (laughter) You will be bored to death! Sadness is good for a change.

Start accepting it and then see what happens!

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