7

< Previous | Contents | Next >

‌CHAPTER 7

7 February 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Prem sarvesh. The meaning is: the god of love and totality. Prem means love, sarv means total and esh means god – and that has a message for you. Two things have to be remembered: love and totality. Both help each other, because it is only love that can be total. It is only through love that one can come to feel what totality is. Everything else has become contaminated... everything has become artificial. Love remains yet something of the natural. Man has not yet been able to manufacture love. He has manufactured everything else, but that will be the last day of humanity when man becomes able to manufacture love. Then there will be no humanity, because then everything will become artificial and arbitrary.

Love is still something which you cannot do. When it happens, it happens; when it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen. It is beyond you – the only thing that is beyond mind, the only thing that cannot be manipulated, controlled, the only thing that knows no discipline, the only thing that is free and has the flavour of absolute freedom.

That’s why love is not allowed. No society has been able to accept love in its totality – and love can exist only when it is total. So whatsoever exists in the name of love is not love. The society has created pseudo-coins, substitutes. All the societies have been afraid of love for many reasons.

One: if love is beyond control, love can be dangerous. Society trusts only that which can be controlled. Society is always afraid of god, so in fact no society has yet existed which is religious. Society by its very nature has to be irreligious – whatsoever the pretensions. The society may pretend it is religious – that too is a trick to avoid religion. That’s a camouflage, a deceptive mask. But no society has yet been religious, because to be religious means to allow love and to allow love unconditionally. Then wherever it leads, it leads; whatsoever happens, happens.

Society says, ‘Instead of love, think of marriage.’ Marriage is a substitute, a false coin. And society is never cooperative if somebody is in love. It brings so many laws, conditions into it, that the whole

weight makes it impossible. But if love becomes possible society will have to go through a radical change.

If people are allowed to love there will be no war possible. Politics will lose all charm. Politicians will look mad, stupid... at the most, neurotic. If love is denied, war becomes very important – war is just the opposite of love. If love is denied the politician becomes very important, because politics is just the opposite of love. Politics is competition – cut-throat competition, violence, aggression, destruction. Love is creativity... Love is non-competitive. Love believes in delight and love knows no future... Love knows only the present. Love is non-ambitious. It has no plans for the future, it is tremendously content with this moment.

Society cannot allow love because society has to drive people into a certain type of slavery so that they live for the future and they don’t live in the present... so that they become ambitious. Their love-needs have to be frustrated. Once their love needs are frustrated they are ready to be forced into any army. Then they are ready, because they have energy and no outlet. Love is the natural outlet, the natural flowering. When love is denied, energy is there, one is boiling within, and there is no natural outlet, so it has to go somewhere. Then you can force a person to work for money, to work for the country, to work for christianity, hinduism, to sacrifice for the future.

[Osho said that society exists through the perpetuation of the idea that one should sacrifice for the future – and no one ever gets around to actually just living in and enjoying the present.

This idea creates a subtle slavery. With one’s energy one either has to fight or become famous and successful in the eyes of society.]

The dropout is condemned. The dropout is saying, ‘I am not interested in the future – my interest is herenow. I would like to live herenow.’ That’s why I say love is the only thing that is total, because totality can be only herenow. The time for totality is now and the space for totality is here.

And remember this distinction: society wants you to become perfectionists – never total; they never talk about totality. They talk about perfection. Perfection is in the future; it is a goal.

Totality can be herenow – it is not a goal at all. It is a tremendous conversion, a great radical revolution – not future-oriented at all, just a great understanding. You can be total this moment, because there is no other requirement for it except the very decision that one wants to be total, that’s all – no other requirements.

Just sitting in front of me, this moment can be total... is total. There is no going anywhere, one is just here.

The idea of perfection is a neurotic idea – it drives you crazy. And it is never fulfilled – it cannot be fulfilled. I am against perfection and I am all for totality.

Totality means each moment lived without any past and without any future... each moment lived unconnected with the past and unconnected with the future... each moment lived atomically... each moment lived in such a way as if this is the first and the last... as if there was no time before and there is going to be no time after.

For example, if this moment you become aware that you are going to die in the next moment, this moment will be total because there will be no future. And if, in the same way, there is no past, your whole energy dances herenow... then you vibrate. Because there is nowhere to go in the past or in the future, you don’t spread out. A great intensity arises – you become an intense flame.

Rosa Luxemberg has said that a man lives only in such moments when his torch of life burns from both ends. So when you burn so intensely from both ends that you are not saving yourself for the future, that you are ready to lose all and all – because who knows, next moment may never come – then there is a metanoia, there is a conversion, a transformation, a mutation. Then suddenly that very intensity of energy becomes aflame, and the very quantity of the energy becomes a qualitative change.

This is the meaning of your name, ‘prem sarvesh’. So remember it: love is the door towards totality – the only door left, the only door that has survived, which has not yet been completely destroyed. So love, and let love be your religion, your meditation.

[A visitor said she had been doing Interpretative Therapy along Freudian lines. Osho, with a chuckle, said she would have to get out of that, and that a few groups would be helpful.]

Psychoanalysis and things like that are more of the head. They help a little, but not much, and they make much fuss about nothing. They never touch the real problem. The whole effort is more or less to help the person to be readjusted with the society – and the society itself is neurotic. So to be really healthy in this society one has to be a little abnormal, because normal people are not normal, they are all abnormal.

[See ‘The Passion for the Impossible’ August 21st, where Osho talks to a psychotherapist about people needing to strive beyond simply adjusting to society.]

Freud and Jung and others, deep down are in the service of the status quo; they are in the service of the politician. Their revolution is very superficial. They are against all revolutions. They try to bring the person back to the fold, to the herd, to the crowd.

And the crowd is itself terribly ill – insane. Hence, the real problem is not how to adjust the individual to the society but how to make him strong and courageous enough to be himself – centred and rooted in his own being.

Individuality is health, and individuality is sanity and maturity. And remember that only an individual knows what is happiness. Individuality means independence, and when you are no more dependent on the herd mentality, when you can think on your own and you can take the risk of being yourself – maybe it looks abnormal, maybe the whole society is against it, but a man needs courage to be happyOtherwise one can never be happy – the society is so ill and so unhappy.

These unhappy people do not like a happy person at all, because the happy person becomes a condemnation to them. They don’t like a real individual, because his very presence, and they start feeling that they are missing something. They want to destroy such an individual – that’s why they crucified jesus. And if you ask the freudians jesus seemed to be neurotic; he must be living in hallucination and he must have some sexual perversion.

They poisoned socrates – he was too much of an individual. Freudians will think he was obsessed or they may even think.Because in the last moment the court told him that if he stopped talking

about truth, he could be released and forgiven, but he had to make a promise that he would never talk about truth – that he would stop teaching people.

Socrates laughed and refused. He said, ‘Then what is the point of my being alive? If I cannot talk truth there is no point in being alive.’

If you ask the Freudians, they will think that he was a little suicidal.

They had given him one more option – that if he could not stop talking, he could promise to leave athens; he could never come back – he could go anywhere and do whatsoever he wanted, but he could not come back to athens. If he did this he could be forgiven.

Socrates said, ‘That too is not possible, because I am not an escapist.’

Freudians will think that he was ‘death-obsessed’, that he wanted to die. And that’s what they will say to Jesus too – that he wanted to die, that he wanted to become a martyr, that ‘thanatos’ – the death wish – was too much in him. They will not say that the jews were responsible in killing, they will make Jesus responsible – that he wanted to be killed; he created so much trouble that he forced people to kill him.

They help the same rotten, insane society.…

These groups have a totally different orientation. They are not in the service of the society – they are in the service of man. They are not in the service of any past – they are in the service of the future. And they are not trying to make any compromises. They are very uncompromising, very radical, and their whole orientation is that to be happy is the goal – everything else is secondary.

Freud has divided human orientations into two divisions, two classes. One he calls the reality principle, and another he calls the pleasure principle. His own analysis is based on the reality principle – these groups are based on the pleasure principle.

Man is here to rejoice and celebrate, and one should not care for anything else. Nothing is worth more... nothing is higher than joy. For Freud, reality, and what is reality? – an understanding that society has come to agree on; that is reality. And one should concede to the reality of the society; one should follow the society.

So these groups are really anti-Freudian, anti-interpretative, anti-intellectual... more existential. So it will be a good experience.

[The primal therapy group is present. One member says: I don’t recognise the person in the group – it seems that it’s not me. Something totally new happened. I can’t even think about it properlyI

can’t even formulate a question.]

Yes, I knowI understand. It is really not you, that’s the whole point. It really went deep in you. So

whatsoever has happened and whatsoever is going to happen and whatsoever is happening, none of it is happening to you – you are the witness of it all.

For example, if a childhood memory comes – that your father was angry, and you felt very hurt – if you really go into it, suddenly you will see that you are not the person who felt hurt; you were the witness of the whole thing. The father was there, the child was there, and somebody was there: a witness; you are that. You can see your father hitting the child – and you are the seer of it all.

But this is the whole point, the basic point – to come to such a deep insight where you come to know that all that has happened, has not happened to you; you are aloof, untouched, transcendental. So just be a witness to it all – as if it is all happening in a dream or you have read it in a novel, or you went to the movie and you saw it there; it is unrelated to you.

The group has really gone deep in you – that’s why. And it is very frightening in a way, because it is very confusing: to whom has it happened?

... And you feel so aloof and so far away, so distant from all this that is happening, that it seems meaningless... but this is the whole meaning. This group really went in – the group succeeded.

If the identity can be broken, then the group has succeeded. That’s the whole work, the central work – to break the identity.

Ordinarily we think of ourselves as the doer. If we can feel ourselves as the seer, the identity is broken. Ordinarily we feel ourselves to be part of the world of events. You were a child – this is an event. Somebody loved you, somebody hated you, you were defeated, you were punished, conditioned, thousands and thousands of things happened – these are the events. Ordinarily you are too much identified with these events.

Somebody insulted you and you still feel the pain because you are still identified – as if you have been insulted. If this identity can be broken then you can see that, yes, somebody was insulted but you were not that one. Even when the insult was a present phenomenon, you were just an onlooker... by the side of the road you were standing and seeing.

It happened that when Alexander came to India he wanted to take a sannyasin with him to Greece, but the sannyasin was not willing. Alexander was very angry and he went with a naked sword and said, ‘Will you come with me or not?’

The sannyasin laughed – he was a naked man standing on the bank of the river. He laughed, he laughed very madly, and he said, ‘You are a fool! You cannot order a sannyasin. The day I took sannyas my freedom became absolute. You can pray to me, you can invite me – I may decide to come or not to come – but you cannot tell me to come, you cannot order me.’

Offended, Alexander took his sword and said, ‘I will kill you! In a second your head will be thrown away from your body.’

The sannyasin said, ‘Very good! You do it, and when the head falls on the ground you will see it falling and I will also see it falling – because I am separate. Do it! There is no need to wait!’

But Alexander could not do it – the very presence of the man was such. To kill this man.Alexander

had never known such a beautiful man.

The sannyasin said, ‘Yes, you can do it. You will see the head falling and I will also see it! Because right now I see myself as separate. There are not two persons here – there are four persons. You may not be aware but I know we are four persons: you who think that you are alexander the great, with a sword, and deep inside you there is a point of which you are unaware, where there is one who is watching all this nonsense; and I am standing before you – this body, this mind, the person who is talking – and somebody is just standing behind me. We are four persons here, not two, sir.’

When the identity is broken you will feel like this. That is the meaning of the hindu concept of ‘maya’ – that the whole world, the whole life, is a dream; we are just onlookers. Nothing matters really, this way or that; nothing matters. Only this witnessing is significant.

Continue to have this quality. It will be very disorienting – it will uproot you and you will feel a little confused, chaotic, clouded, but don’t be worried. This is only because the old habit is broken and the new will take a little time to settle.

Always remember, only out of chaos is the new born. Only out of chaos are stars born. So this is a chaos you are just passing through – accept it happily!

< Previous | Contents | Next >