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‌CHAPTER 1

1 February 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

This will be your new name... and the end of the old life and the beginning of the totally new. Let it be totally new. Sometimes a thing is new, but not totally new – then it doesn’t work. Then it is just a modification of the old, a continuity with the past. Only the discontinuous works – absolute discontinuity with the past; only that is radical.

Sannyas is a radical change from the very roots... a decision to commit suicide as far as the past is concerned, and a decision to be born again as far as the future is concerned. It is a vital decision of tremendous import – but everything depends on you.

So be very understanding about it – that from this very moment your past is dropped, that it doesn’t belong to you any more, that it was fictitious, that it was a dream you were passing through, that it was a projection of the mind, that you are awakened from that dream.

And the new has to be totally new. Totally new means that which you cannot recognise. If you can recognise it, that means it is something of the old – otherwise from where will the recognition come?

So from this moment be a stranger, an outsider, as far as this world is concerned. Move in the world but don’t be of it. Remain aloof... remain alert.

And I am giving you a very significant name: Swami Veet Kalpu.

It means beyond imagination. Veet means beyond, kalpu means imagination. And it has to be understood, because it is not only a name – it is a code message, and your whole life will be needed to decode it.

Imagination is the only barrier. Because of imagination we cannot see that which is. But it is needed in a wayWithout imagination also we cannot live because life is so miserable. If there

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were no imagination man would have committed suicide long ago or would have gone mad. It is through imagination that we create buffers, shock absorbers. It is through imagination that we go on hoping against all hope. It is through imagination that we become capable of tolerance. Otherwise everything is ugly and. all is suffering and all around there is nothing but misery – what buddha calls ‘dukkha’.

Absolute misery is there all around – within, without. It is only through the trick of the imagination, the magical trick of imagination, that we don’t see it. Or even if we see it, we project something beautiful onto it.

For example, a man, a beggar, is dying on the road and he is hungry, but hindus are not affected by it. They have a theory, an imaginative theory of karma.

When a hindu passes by he is not aware of the misery that is happening just by the side of the road – a man is dying, hungry. He has a theory, a buffer. He says. ‘It is because of his past karmas that he has to suffer.’ He has an explanation – a very imaginative explanation – but because of that explanation india could survive. Three thousand years of poverty, slavery, of great sorrow, sadness and all sorts of diseases – but india has survived. It is through that imagination, it has created a buffer.

Each society creates its own buffers... and each person also. It is needed in a way, because otherwise the unawakened man will not be able to live at all. If you suddenly become aware of what is happening all around – of all the wars going on, the violence, the murders, the suicides, the neurosis, the psychosis, the madness – you, you will not be able to even breathe. You will die immediately, instantly. Your imagination creates a screen, it does not allow it to enter your being.

Now scientists say that only two percent of information goes in – ninety-eight percent is debarred. Only two percent of reality enters in you – ninety-eight is debarred. Imagination is needed in the unawakened state of the mind.

It is a friend in a way, but the friend becomes the enemy if you start growing. Then the very buffer becomes the barrier. For a man who wants to grow spiritually, for a man who wants to know what truth is, imagination is the only barrier. He has to break that barrier by and by, slowly, slowly. So a moment comes where you don’t have any hope, you don’t desire, you don’t have any dream to project... you simply see whatsoever is the case.

To become capable of that, to see reality as it is, without dodging in any way, to encounter it as it is, is the meaning of your name, ‘veet kalpu’. And once you have come to see that which is, without any imagination interfering in it, then there are two possibilities. If it happens accidentally you will go mad; if it happens through a certain growth method you will become enlightened, awakened. That’s why Nietzsche goes mad, Buddha becomes awakened.

Hence the need for a master and surrender to a master. If all alone you drop imagination, there is more possibility that you will go mad – it will be too much. A master is needed who helps you to become stronger, integrated, centred, and helps you to drop imagination only in the right proportion. It should never be dropped more than you can bear. It should be dropped very slowly, gradually, inch by inch. If it is suddenly dropped you will lose all control – you will not know who you are and where you are and what is happening. So a person working on his own is in a very dangerous state.

And that is what sannyas is all about: to be with a master who has passed through this dangerous point of either becoming mad or becoming enlightened... who has travelled on this hilly and dangerous track where there is greater possibility of losing the way than finding it.

Veet kalpu means – and it has to be remembered by and by – that you start dropping your imagination. What is, is, what ain’t, ain’t. Let that be your mantra.

Do all meditations that are available here, but I am giving you a special meditation too: a zazen method.

Every day at least for one hour, sit silently anywhere – go to the river, or to the garden, or here in the ashram, somewhere where nobody is disturbing. Relax the muscles of the body; don’t strain. With closed eyes, tell the mind, ‘Now go on. Do whatsoever you want to do. I will witness and I will watch.’

And you will be surprised – for a few moments you will see that the mind is not working at all. For a few moments – sometimes just for a second – you will see that the mind is not working at all, and in that gap you will have a feel of reality without imagination. But it will be only for a moment, a very small moment, and then the mind will start working.

When the mind starts working and thoughts start running and images floating, you will not become aware immediately – only later on, after a few minutes, will you become aware that the mind is working and you have lost your way now. Then again hold your attention; tell the mind ‘Now go on, and I will be just a witness’ and again the mind will stop for a second.

Those seconds are tremendously valuable. Those are the first moments of reality... first glimpses of reality, first windows... very small. Just small holes and they come and go, but in those moments you will start having the taste of reality.

So continue other meditations, you have to do a few groups, but this is a special method that you have to do on your own. And slowly, slowly, by and by, you will see that those intervals are bigger and bigger. They will happen only when you are tremendously alert.

When you are tremendously alert the mind does not function, because the attention itself functions like a light in a dark room. When the light is there, darkness is not there. When you are present, the mind is absent – your presence is the mind’s absence. When you are not present, the mind starts functioning. Your absence is the mind’s presence.

So when you are present there is no imagination. When imagination is there, you are not there – and you both cannot be together. That has never happened and cannot happen by the very nature of things.

So just do this method on your own, and as I told you, this name will take your whole life to decode... because if you can come to know reality as it is without imagination, you have come home! Then there is nothing else to be achieved.…

Geet means a song, and abha means light – a song of light. So these two things to be continuously remembered: create a singing quality to your energy... let your whole life be of the quality of a song. Don’t allow it to become prose – help it to remain poetry. And these are two different dimensions.…

There are a few people who have the quality of prose – prosaic people, logical, systematic, clever, calculating, cunning, the worldly, the extroverts. They succeed in the world... but they miss the inner. They miss the really valuable.

The really valuable is available only to the other type – the poetic, the non-logical, intuitive, feminine, the introvert.

So let that quality of poetry be spread all over your life, and when I say that I mean exactly, precisely, what I am saying. A person can walk in the way of poetry or can walk in the way of prose. When you go to the office your walking has the quality of prose. When you just go for a walk it has the quality of poetry. The appearance may not be very different but the inner feel is totally different.

The poetic is significant but may not have any utilitarian purpose. Its significance is intrinsic – it is not a means to some other goal. It is not a means to some other end... it is its own end in itself.

So when a person has just gone for a morning walk he is not going anywhere. Whether he goes to the south or the north does not matter; whether he goes one mile or two miles does not matter. From where he turns back does not matter. These are irrelevant things, because he is not going anywhere – the whole purpose was just to enjoy the walk. Mm? that is the quality of poetry.

Poetry does not mean anything; its meaning is not that of prose. In a way it is meaningless. It is beautiful, it is significant, but it is meaningless.

I have heard about a great poet whose wife was studying in the university. There she had to read one of his poems. It was a difficult poem and the professor could not explain it to her exactly.

So she said, ‘Don’t be worried – I will ask my husband.’

When she asked the husband, he said, ‘Yes, I will tell you... Let me go through it.’ He went through it... and the wife was puzzled, because his face became absolutely blank.

He said, ‘Now I have to tell you the truth – when I wrote this poem two persons knew the meaning; now only one knows.’

The wife said, ‘You must be the one!’

He said, ‘No, I am not that one. (bhagwan chuckles) God and I knew the meaning when I wrote – now only god knows! I don’t know what it means. It is absurd – but it is beautiful!’

Because of university courses many poems are destroyed – because the professors try to show you the meaning and they don’t have any meaning... or even if they have any meaning, that is the very third-rate approach towards them. Their highest possibility is not that of meaning but of significance. They have a taste of the mysterious.…

So each activity of life can be either like poetry or like prose. You can greet a person in a very matter-of-fact way; you can hold the hand of a person in a very calculative way. In a very calculative way it has to be done – he is your husband or your friend and you have to hold his hand; then it

has no significance. So duty is fulfilled but there is no contact and no warmth; there has been no communication, there is no communion.

But then suddenly one day you feel to hold somebody’s hand. You are throbbing with some unknown message. Language cannot deliver it and there is no way to say it, so you hold the hand and you say it that way – then it is poetry; then there is communion.

So whatsoever you do, remember that it has to be in the way of the poetry. Significant, certainly, but don’t bother about its meaningfulness in the ordinary, mundane world. In the world of utility it may not be of much use.

Lao Tzu says again and again, ‘Truth is known only by those who have come to know the usefulness of the useless.’ Mm? that’s what poetry is: the usefulness of the useless. And that is what a song is, so let singing be your very climate.

And the second thing is ‘abha’. It means a very diffused light – as it is sometimes seen around an enlightened master. It is not ordinary light.

In sanskrit we have many names for light, connotating different qualities. ‘Abha’ is a special name for that light which is shown around the face of one who has come home – the peace, the serenity, the tranquility, the stillness... something like nectar showering. One needs to have certain qualities to feel it; one needs to have a certain receptivity to see it; one needs to have a certain type of vision to see it. Everybody will not be able to see it – it is no ordinary light.

And you will always find that whenever somebody is in a poetic mood, the light will be there.

A master is continuously in that mood – a poet, sometimes; a mystic, always – a painter, sometimes; a saint, always – a singer, sometimes; a buddha, always – a dancer sometimes. That’s why I have great respect for arts – maybe painting, dancing, music. I have great respect for them, because they come closest to religion.

Science is farthest... the arts are very close. And arts like music and dancing come very close. Dancing comes to the very threshold. A dancer is almost a saint... just on the threshold. A little jump, a little push, and he will be totally floating in a different world.

‘Abha’ means that light which comes around the face and the body of a man when he is in tremendous poetry, when he is a harmony, when all his parts have fallen together into a whole, when there is no conflict and no friction and everything is fused into oneness, when all your energies, inner energies, have fallen into one whole and you are not a crowd and not falling in all directions. Then you will feel a light arising around you, surrounding you – that is ‘abha’. It is a very diffused, subtle light; a spiritual light you. can call it.

So let the quality of singing and poetry and painting and dancing be your climate. And whenever you see somebody in that moment, look for the light. Soon you will start having the eye, because it comes to be seen only when we start looking for it – it is very subtle. Unless you are really looking for it, you will miss it. While listening to me every day, look for it – that is more important than what I say. The day you are able to see it there will be a great transformation... and that day will come soon.

Whenever you can see it surrounding me tremendously – almost as if I have disappeared and there is only light – that day you have to come immediately... That day you will enter into a different world. This name will function as a key, so go on looking for this light.

And sometimes when you are in that poetic mood yourself, just close your eyes and feel the light around you. Soon you will feel the warmth of it. It becomes so real one can almost touch it.…

[A sannyasin says that is she is with somebody who’s in ecstasy, she feels very destructive and if she sees someone in misery she feels more comfortable. She asks Osho to help her.]

A good insight.That is the situation of almost everybody – maybe more or less, degrees differ; but

that is the situation. People feel very happy when somebody is miserable. They may even cry with the miserable person but they feel happy because now they are superior and they can do something to help the other. The ego feels very good when it is helping somebody. Your hand is upper and somebody is in the situation of being a beggar.

So whenever somebody is in a state where sympathy is needed the ego always feels very good... and there is a subtle enjoyment – that at least you are better. You may not say so verbally but that is the inner experience.

Whenever somebody is really happy you will feel jealous. You will feel a sort of put-down, inferiority. You would like to destroy his ecstasy or to prove that this is all nonsense, or that this is madness, or that he is just pretending, because it is very difficult for the ego to concede that something is happening to somebody else which is not happening to you.

Friedrich Nietzsche says, ‘I cannot allow god to be there, because if god is there, who am I?’ If there is any possibility of there being a god, friedrich Nietzsche is the first person to be that – nobody else can be that! And he is very honest – he says it clearly: ‘I cannot concede that god exists, because then I am number two... and I will never be number one! So all doors are closed!’ Hence he says, ‘God is dead, and from now man is absolutely free. The freedom of man depends on the death of god.’

Very peculiar logic, but he is honest, sincere: ‘Man cannot be free if there is god; you will always be secondary. You can never be the creator; you will always be the created. So the first thing is to destroy god so that you can be free.’

In destroying god, he destroyed himself – he went mad! The day he declared, ‘God is dead and man is now free,’ he lost control. He went mad.he destroyed himself.

So when you are destroying somebody else’s ecstasy, deep down you are destroying yourself, your very possibility – it is suicidal.

In fact, if somebody is ecstatic, you should feel happy that ecstasy is possible and that it is humanly possible. It is happening to this man – it can happen to you! Now there is no barrier; this man is a proof!

Then your whole outlook and attitude will be very creative. You will not try to prove that this man is wrong or insane or pretending or a hypocrite or something.You take the hint that it can happen. It

can be found so it is not impossible. You will feel great joy arising in you.

If somebody else can laugh, you can laugh. If somebody else can sing, you can sing. We are not so different... deep down, at the very innermost core, we are all one. So if buddha can become a god and jesus can become a god. You can become a god! There is no problem now. Other human beings have arrived at that stage so the door is open and the way is clear – you are not groping in the dark.

But you will have to change your attitude – and it can be changed deliberately and consciously. Then next time you see somebody unhappy, miserable, try to destroy his misery... and see the difference.

Ordinarily, the so-called do-gooders are not interested in destroying the misery – they are more interested in being a help. They are not interested in destroying the misery; in fact, they have great investment in it. They would like the misery to continue so that they can always help and they can always remain the do-gooders and the great saints.

There is a chinese parableA great crowd had gathered on the shrine of a saint; it was the annual

fair. A man fell in a well and started shouting from there, ‘Save me!’ but the crowd was so big and it was so noisy that nobody would listen.

Then came a buddhist monk, and of course he was a meditator so he could hear. Mm? he was more sensitive. So he looked in the well and the man was there, crying and saying, ‘Save me!’

The buddhist monk said, ‘What is the point of being saved? Misery is everywhere.’ Mm ? he gave a great sermon: ‘Misery is everywhere. Birth is misery, life is misery, death is misery, and you will have to die anyway, so what is the point? Why are you shouting and making so much fuss ? It must be your past karma – that you had to fall in the well. So it is okay, accept it!’ And he walked away.…

He delivered a great philosophical sermon, but he walked away. The man could not believe it: ‘Is this the moment to give me a sermon?’ But the monk was a great preacher and he knew only one thing: how to preach.

Then came a confucian monk. He looked into the well and the man shouted, ‘Save me! I am dying and nobody is hearing me!’

The confucian, the follower of confucius, said, ‘Don’t be worried! This will never happen again. I will go to the king. Bigger walls should be raised around the wells. This well has no wall around it – that’s why you have fallen in.’

Now, confucius believes in society, structure, improvement, progress. The monk said, ‘Don’t be worried – nobody will ever fall again! We will make a great movement and great protest.’

But the man said, ‘I will die!’

He said, ‘That is not the point! The society has to be saved; individuals come and go.’

Then came a christian missionary. He immediately took a rope out of his bag, threw it into the well and brought the man out.

The man said, ‘This is real religion! But how come? How is it that you were carrying the rope in your bag? The buddhist came, he talked great things and the confucian came and he said he would create a great revolution in the world, but they were not interested in me.’

The missionary said, ‘I am also not interested in you. My master has said, “Serve humanity,” because that is the only ladder that goes to heaven. You did well that you fell in the well – I have earned great virtue. That’s why I am carrying... I carry everything in my bag – one never knows what is needed, where. And remember to teach your children also, so that they can fall in the well and missionaries can come and take them out – otherwise nobody will go to heaven!’

They are not interested really in destroying others’ misery – they are enjoying it; it is a subtle pleasure. And they are enjoying the hell that they can give, that they can afford.

Next time, don’t be sympathetic – rather, try to destroy the misery. And don’t enjoy the effort that you are doing. Start from this, then you will be able to do the other. When somebody is ecstatically blissful, hold his hand, dance with him, laugh with him. Ask him, ‘Brother or sister, how have you attained? Tell me something about it – give me the good news! Allow me also to become part of your happiness, your ecstasy... let me dance with you!’

Participate... feel joyful that somebody has a glimpse. Just a few times effort will be needed and the old pattern will be broken. It is just an old habit that you had imbibed. Mm? just do the reverse. Always remember: habits can be broken only by doing the reverse. Create the reverse habit and they will negate each other and you will be free.

Try it. It will go – nothing to be worried about.

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