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‌CHAPTER 18

19 December 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Veet means beyond, charitro means character. I don’t teach character: I teach consciousness. Character is a false phenomenon, imposed from the outside. It is fulfilling others’ expectations about you. It is not growth, because it has not arisen out of your own spontaneity. It is a conditioning, and all conditionings are slaveries, subtle strategies of the society to manipulate the individual, to destroy the individual.

Consciousness is something that happens at your core. It is not your circumference; it is your centre. And once consciousness has started arising, your character changes on its own accord – not according to others’ expectations but in response to your growing consciousness. A great responsibility arises but that responsibility has nothing to do with the social morality. It may go together with it, it may not go together with it; it may even go against it.

The society is very much against conscious people because they are capable of disobedience, they are capable of rebellion. They will go only so far with the society – if their consciousness allows, only then. Otherwise they would like to die rather than to live; they will not compromise. They will live according to their inner law and that law is god-given.

The society lives with arbitrary laws: consciousness lives with absolute laws. Sometimes they coincide, but only very rarely. Other times they run parallel, never meeting anywhere, and some other times they go just in diametrically opposite directions.

To be a sannyasin means to start living not according to others but according to your own conscience, your own consciousness, your own being. And then whatsoever the cost, it is worth it.

Prem means love, imano means religion. Love is the highest religion; everything else is a little lower, even truth. Everything else is just a ladder to it; all values, from the lowest to the highest, are just

rungs of the ladder. But when you have arrived, when you have reached, only love remains; all else dissolves into it. Love is the ocean, all other values are like rivers: they all reach and get lost in the ocean.

Remember, anything that goes against love is irreligious, and anything that goes with love is religious. Let that be the criterion, because that is the only criterion there is. Always use love as a touchstone: if love approves, it is gold; if love disapproves, it is just useless rubbish.

Go on dropping that which is not part of love, and slowly slowly the space is created in which only love blooms. Become a lake in which the lotus of love blooms.

[Osho gives sannyas to a woman called Teresa.]

Just close your eyes and feel something from the unknown descending on you, feel that a great energy is pouring in you. The energy is full of light, luminous, a torrent of luminous energy. If anything starts happening in the body, allow it...

This is your initiation into being a real Christian.Up to now you have been just a Christian formally:

you have worshipped Christ, you have loved Christ, but it was because you were told to. It was not something that happened in your heart; it was something in the head, because anything that is told remains in the head.

Only the heart can know god. The head can go on thinking about it endlessly, infinitely, but all that thinking is utterly meaningless. The glimpse happens in the heart; it is a by-product of love.

The truly religious person in one sense is Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, Buddhist – altogether. In another sense he is none: neither Christian nor Hindu nor Buddhist nor Mohammedan. The really religious person is concerned with the essential core of religion, not with the formal garb, not with the garments, rituals, but with the essential spirit, and that is one!

Buddha embodies the same spirit as Jesus embodies. The bodies are different, but to pay too much attention to the bodies is to be a materialist. And that’s what I see in people: somebody has become too attached to the body of Christ. Then he will not understand Christ, because Christ is not the body; the body is just an abode. His body consists of as much of earth and water and air and sun and sky as your body does. Bodies are material. The real question is: who is residing within? And it is the same spirit! It is always the same god that manifests in many many forms.

One who understands this never becomes attached to any particular manifestation. He never thinks of the lamp; he thinks only of the light within. The lamp may be manufactured in India or in Germany or in Japan. It may have this shape or that, this paint or that paint. It may be made of gold or may just be of steel; it doesn’t matter at all. All that matters is whether it is lit, whether it is radiating light. And this is stupid – to become too concerned with the lamp, so much so that one tends to forget the light.

The essential core of all the religions is the same. You will find it in the church, you will find it in the temple, in the mosque, and if you understand it you can find it in your own home. Just sitting silently you will find it in your own self.

It is not difficult to attain to Christ-consciousness. The difficulty arises because one becomes a Christian, formally, and the more important the form becomes, less and less do you pay attention to the core. The centre is almost forgotten and the circumference becomes all.

My work here consists of changing your focus, your attention, from the periphery to the centre. So I say to you, in a sense you will never be the same Christian as you have been up to now. In another sense, for the first time you are being baptised...

Teresa is a beautiful name. Prem means love, and love is the secret of Teresa too. She lived a life of tremendous love: love for Christ, love for god. There have been very few women who can be compared with Teresa.

Loving Teresa, that is the meaning of your name.

Deepan. It means a lamp, a small lamp. We are all lamps. If we remain unconscious we remain unlit; if we become conscioUs we become lit. The only difference between an ordinary man and a Buddha is that much: one is an unlit candle, Buddha is a lit candle. And everybody has all that is required to create light... just a little arrangement, just a looking in to find things which are scattered and putting them together, is needed.

It is as if you have flour, you have butter, you have salt; you have all that is needed to make bread. The fire is burning and all the things are ready but you don’t mix them. You are hungry, but you need not be!

Meditation is just an art of mixing all the ingredients that are already given. Meditation does not bring anything new into you, it simply puts things together; and once they are together, the light arises. The bread is ready; it can fulfil your hunger.

And everybody is hungry for lighter everybody is hungry for truth, everybody is hungry for god. That hunger is in-built, and it will persist till you fulfil it.

Religion is not something accidental. It is a very essential need. It cannot be destroyed on the earth; people will find it again and again. Even in Russia, where religion is no more accepted officially, religion goes on existing, underground. People pray, people meet together, in seclusion. It is an anti-government activity, it is dangerous, but still it continues: the hunger is such. No government can destroy it; at any risk people are going to find god.

Remember that all is already given. So the only question is to arrange it in a certain way so that light can be produced. And that’s what sannyas is all about: giving you a new arrangement of all that you already have. It does not add anything to you; it simply teaches you the art of putting things together. And once you put things together their quality immediately changes.

You can eat flour, you can eat the butter, you can eat the salt, but you will not be satisfied; you may even become ill. Rather than nourishing you, they will become poisonous to your system. First they have to be put into a certain arrangement, then only you can digest them, absorb them. They will become your blood, your bones, your very marrow.

We are creating that space here. It is one of the greatest experiments that is going on the earth. It can be known only by the participants, and by becoming a sannyasin you are becoming a participant in something which is hidden, something which cannot be made public, because people do not understand; rather they misunderstand. There are things which can happen only in privacy and secrecy. There are secrets which can only be imparted in deep communion.

Sannyas is getting in communion with a master.

Deva means divine, arifa means wisdom – divine wisdom. Knowledge is human: wisdom is divine. Knowledge is worthless. It is manufactured by us. It is guesswork, it is out of our ignorance. It has no light in it, it cannot have any light in it; its sole purpose is to hide our ignorance. It helps us to pretend that we know. Without knowing anything, it gives us a false confidence that we know; it is a false security. But man cannot live with nothing, so anything is better than nothing.

We go on clinging to knowledge. It is always borrowed, and because it is borrowed, it has no truth in it. Truth is untransferable. Only words are transferable; the meaning is not transferable. We can collect many words, clever words, very very articulate arguments, but deep down there is nothing but darkness; it is just a facade, a face to show to others, but behind the face there is all ugliness, the ugliness of ignorance. This is not wisdom.

Wisdom is something untouched by human hands. It is not manufactured by us; it is only received. It descends, it comes from the beyond. It only comes to those people who are ready to be open to the sky. It is sky penetrating into the earth. It is the invisible coming to the visible. One has to become utterly empty of knowledge, then wisdom happens.

So it is not only that knowledge is not wisdom: knowledge is the barrier that does not allow wisdom to happen. The knowledgeable person is the farthest from god. Hence the rabbis could not understand Jesus. They were knowledgeable people, they were great priests, they knew all the scriptures.

Jesus was not knowledgeable at all. He was utterly uneducated, the son of a carpenter. Nowhere is it mentioned that he ever went to any school. He must have helped his father in his workshop; he may have carried wood from the forest. But wisdom happened to him! He opened himself to the unknown.

That courage is needed to open oneself in utter nudity, in utter helplessness, in utter insecurity. The moment you are not hiding and you are not creating any pseudo personality around yourself – the moment you are naked, empty, a nothing – instantly wisdom happens. That wisdom is called arifa.

Prem means love, sharabo means wine – wine of love. Love is a wine, it intoxicates; and nothing intoxicates like love. All other intoxicants are poor substitutes for it, and harmful too. Love not only intoxicates you, it also transforms you. It not only intoxicates You? it makes you more alert. That is the miracle of love. It is paradoxical: on one hand one becomes drunk; on the other hand, one becomes utterly conscious. It brings this paradox together.

One becomes unconscious of one’s self: one becomes conscious of the supreme Self. One becomes unconscious as an ego: one becomes conscious as a universal consciousness. One loses boundaries, one starts melting; definitions disappear. One is simply there, unlimited, unbounded, infinite: neither limited by time nor limited by space.

Love gives you the first glimpses of eternity, of deathlessness, of timelessness. And once love has stirred the heart, one lives a totally different quality of life. One lives without anguish, one lives without fear. One lives dangerously and one lives creatively.

Love releases a thousand and one qualities. It makes you authentic, it makes you sincere, it makes you creative. It makes you a celebrant. It brings unknown songs to you. It introduces you to new planes of being, to new plenitudes. Love opens the doors of all the mysteries of existence; and there are mysteries beyond mysteries, peaks beyond peaks. It is an eternal pilgrimage. But one needs guts to drink the wine of love. It frightens you because you will be dissolved in it; you will not find even a trace of yourself.

Kahlil Gibran says when a river comes close to the ocean it hesitates, it trembles, it feels scared. It looks back with great nostalgia for the mountains and the peaks and the forest and the plains and the people and all those that it has passed, all those beautiful cherished memories. It has existed up to now as an individual, it has a certain identity; now all is going to be lost. The ocean is vast: the river will be gone forever.

The same happens to a disciple. When a disciple comes to a master, a river has come to the ocean. The fear grips one. One would like to remain oneself, one would like to cling to oneself. But howsoever the river may hesitate for a moment, it takes the plunge: it disappears into the ocean. In one sense it is no more; in another sense it has become the ocean. The same is the state of a disciple, the same is the state of you, of every disciple.

Initiation means that you are ready to merge. Fear will come and there will be many moments of hesitation, uncertainties, doubts, but if one has courage enough. one overcomes all those.

[A sannyas couple ask about their relationship: we get confused and stuck around anger and sex.]

These are not really problems. These are part of the game of love, otherwise the game will be very monotonous...

These things keep it a little alive; otherwise what will you do? If no anger arises, no problem arises, you will get very stuck with each other.

These are just natural consequences of two persons being together, because each person is unique and different from the other, so clashes are bound to happen.

By and by, corners are rubbed and they disappear. And it is better to let them disappear in their own time. They can be dropped through understanding, they can be dropped through analysing them, but then the corners will remain and there will be no way to get rid of those corners. This clash, conflict, this constant running, slowly slowly removes the corners and the intimacy goes deeper.

Sex naturally creates fear because sex is the polar opposite of death; it reminds you of death. Sex is life, the source of life, and the other side of it is death. That’s why, down the ages, people who have been interested in eternal life all came to be against sex. There is a logic in it. The logic is: they came to understand that sex brings death, it is one part of death, so if you want to avoid death, avoid sex. But even if you avoid sex, death cannot be avoided, because basically it is not a question

of your avoiding sex. Sex has already happened in your birth, your birth was a sexual phenomenon. So your death is going to be there; whether you avoid sex or not does not matter at all. Death is going to happen because sex has already happened in your birth. One part has come; the other part will be coming.

Going deep into sex always creates fear, so there are a few alternatives. One is that of the monk. Out of fear he simply escapes from sex. But he lives a very ugly life: he lives a life of fear, of escape. And without sex he loses all contact with all that is beautiful, with all that is creative, because sex is also the energy that creates. The great poet is bound to be very sexual, so is the great mystic, so is the great scientist. The greater a person is, the more sexual energy he has, because it is the sexual energy that creates; there is no other energy. The monk becomes uncreative, desertlike. He has committed a suicide.

The other alternative is never to go deep in sex; so you make sex a superficial thing. The polar opposite of the monk is the prostitute. She never makes it an intimacy; it is business. You can make love to the prostitute; she will not recognise you tomorrow when you come across her on the street, she may not even know your name. This is another possibility. The possibility of the monk has been dropped more and more in this age; the other possibility has come very much into use. Now people are making sex a very superficial phenomenon – without intimacy, without love. Then there is no fear. Then it is just a physical contact, a physical release, a relief, and you are finished. There is no commitment, no involvement, so there is no fear.

But both are ugly. The monk is ugly and the prostitute is ugly. And both are together, they are not separate. Monks create prostitutes; prostitutes create monks. The mind is the same. They say that the prostitute’s profession is the oldest. I cannot agree, because the priest must have preceeded the prostitute; otherwise who would create the prostitute? The prostitute’s profession can only be number two; the primary thing is the priest.

Between the two, exactly in the middle, is the real life. Neither become a monk nor become a prostitute. Get involved, go to the deepest layer of it, without any fear, because death is going to happen, so why be afraid of it? Accept it. The fear of death keeps sex non-orgasmic. Mm? you go on holding, and if you hold it never takes you to the peak where it can take you and can take you easily; it never becomes meditative.

Death is going to happen: monks die, prostitutes die, everybody dies. Death is such a natural phenomenon that one should not be afraid of death at all; it is unnecessary. It has to be accepted, and once accepted it is finished.

So be more conscious and go consciously deeper into lovemaking, and become more orgasmic. Let your whole body shake and tremble and dance and vibrate and pulsate. Go crazy in it! In fact in a better world, whenever two persons make love the whole neighbourhood will know because there will be dancing and shouting and screaming and everything will happen. It will be wild!

Then only can you touch its deepest core, and if you have touched its deepest core it is the same as meditation, because at the deepest moment of climax, time disappears, space disappears, ego disappears.

So don’t be worried – things will settle!

Anand means bliss, peter means rock. Jesus called one of his disciples Peter because he was the only one who could have become the rock on which the temple of Jesus was to be made. Deep down in one’s being one needs something crystallised so that it can become the fountain. People are like sand: nothing is stable in them, and when nothing is stable, life becomes a driftwood, it becomes accidental. Something, at least one thing, is needed to be the rock.

Let bliss become your rock, let it become your undercurrent: everything changes, but remain blissful. Even when there is misery on the surface, deep down remain blissful; accept the misery too, and there will be bliss. You have failed in something: accept the failure and you will find a deep undercurrent of bliss. In good times, in bad times, in love, in hate, in richness, in poverty, remember that one thing has not to be lost track of, and that is a blissfulness, a bubbling joy inside.

Slowly slowly that will become the rock, and on that rock the temple can be built. Either it has to be love or bliss or silence, but something is needed to become the rock, mm? Otherwise there is no foundation in life, and a life without foundation is a life which is going to remain futile, fruitless, a wasteland.

[Harisharan] It means at the feet of god, surrendered to god, lost in god. This is the ultimate goal. The name is given to you to remind you continuously again and again not to forget the ultimate goal. Everything else is a distraction. Don’t get lost in by-paths; there are millions. Keep your eyes focused on the star; that one has to reach to the very centre of existence. Don’t become too interested in toys.

If one can remember it, slowly slowly all that is non-essential drops from life and only the essential remains. And to live with the essential is to live in great joy. It is the non-essential that creates misery, it is the unnecessary that becomes the burden. The necessary, the essential, is never a burden; it is a nourishment.

God is the only nourishment, the only food, that one needs. If one can keep one’s eyes focused, one arrives sooner or later. In fact even to keep your eyes focused on the far-away star gives such bliss. Although you are far away still that light starts penetrating you, permeating you.

Harisharan means at the feet of god – remember it!

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