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‌CHAPTER 19

19 March 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Veet means going beyond, transcending, andre means manly strength. There are two possibilities open to man: either he can move in search of manly strength or he can move in search of womanly strength. The manly strength is gross, aggressive, violent; the feminine strength is subtle, non- aggressive, non-violent. Politics remains in the first, religion moves into the second.

To be strong is good, but in the feminine way. The rock is strong in the masculine way, the water is strong in the feminine way, and ultimately the water wins over the rock. Hence Lao Tzu says: My message is, follow the watercourse way. In the beginning the rock seems to be so unconquerable and the water so humble, so polite, so liquid. But in the end, the rock will be gone, it will turn into sand, and the water will still be there.

There is a strength in a big, strong cedar; that is manly strength. And there is also strength in the grass; that is feminine strength. When the strong wind comes the Cedar will resist and the grass will bow down. The Cedar can fall because of its resistance, and once it falls there is no way of getting up, but the grass will be back again when the wind is gone. The wind has not done any harm to it, on the contrary, it has been a blessing because it has taken all its dust.

Again, Lao Tzu says: Be like the grass – don’t be like a proud cedar – bending, surrendering, liquid.

Prem means love, geraldine means a spear – love’s spear. Love penetrates the heart like a spear, it goes to the very core of your being. And only love goes to the core of your being; everything else remains on the circumference. Money, power, prestige, ideologies, philosophies, systems of thought – they all remain on the surface. They cannot move in your depth, they can exist only in shallow water.

Only love has the courage to dive deep into the very core of your being, hence love is the door to the divine. Once the spear of love has penetrated into the heart the door opens. k is painful, yet the

pain is very sweet. It is painful, yet it brings great blessings with it. The pain is not to be thought of as a pain at all. It has a totally different flavour to it; it is very joyful. To be pained by love is a joy, it is a blessing.

Deva means divine. christine means one who follows Christ – a divine follower of Christ. But the follower has not to be an imitator. Following is totally different from imitation – not only different but diametrically opposite too. The imitator has no understanding; he simply acts, pretends. He is ritualistic, formal. You will find those people in all the churches, in all the temples, of the world; the so-called saints are almost all imitators.

To follow Christ is dangerous; to imitate is very comfortable, secure, safe. The Christian priest is respected, has respectability. Christ was not respected; he was condemned, condemned to death! He was not a conformist; he was a rebel, the greatest the world has ever known.

The imitator is not really in love with Christ; he is using Christ. He is imposing his own idea upon Christ. He is clever, calculating and cunning.

But to follow is totally different. To follow means, the first thing, to understand, because following can come only out of understanding. Following does not mean clinging. It means understanding the very spirit of a Christ or of a Buddha. And one who understands the spirit of Christ will understand the spirit of Krishna, the spirit of Buddha, naturally, because at that level of understanding there is no difference between Krishna and Christ, no difference between Christ and Buddha, no difference between Christ and Lao Tzu. At that ultimate peak all the awakened ones meet, they become one.

Understand, don’t believe! Try to enquire with great trust but without clinging to any belief, and slowly slowly you become a light unto yourself. When a person has become a light unto himself, Christ is born in him.

[The new sannyasin says she has had pain and tension in her body for two years, and what attitude to take to it? Osho suggests body work... ]

And then take some Acupuncture and three sessions of Samadhi (tank).

It will go. No problem, nothing to be worried about. You will not need any attitude towards it; it will go!

Anand means bliss, victor means victorious. Bliss has to be conquered, but the way to conquer bliss is very paradoxical; it is that of surrender. Only those who surrender to it are capable of conquering it. It is absurd, it is not logical, but that’s the way it is: if you try to conquer it you will go on missing. You cannot directly attack it. It is not available in that way; that is not its mode of being available. One has to go indirectly: rather than attacking it, one has to invite it. Rather than being aggressive, one has to be receptive. Then it comes, and it comes like a flood. It drowns you and it crowns you!

Victory is possible but it is possible only through surrender.

Dhyana means meditation, michael means one who is godlike. It is only in meditation that one comes to know that one is godlike. Meditation means a state of no mind, a state of no thought, a

state of no desire. When thinking, dreaming, desiring, all have ceased and you simply are, not even a ripple of mind left, your pool of consciousness is completely silent, calm. In that utterly timeless moment, in that undisturbed space, one understands one’s inner nature, and that is godlike.

Our innermost core is divine: we are gods in disguise. To know it is to know all, and to miss it is to miss all.

Prem means love. Love is the essential core of religion. The word ‘religion’ means, in the root, to be connected. Man has become disconnected from god. Religion means to be connected again, and the only way to be connected is love. the only bridge.

Thinking cannot connect, even great philosophy is useless. The whole of theological speculation is utter nonsense: one can be lost in the jungles of words but they cannot help. The only hope is the possibility of love; love immediately becomes a bridge. Wherever love is, there is connection, and wherever connection is, there is religion. The word ‘religion’ is really beautiful. We are missing god, not by miles, just by inches.

Let your heart expand a little and you start touching god. Let your heart sing a song and suddenly you are in tune with god. Let your heart he full of love and suddenly it is full of god too.

I teach only one thing: be blissful. Wherever bliss is, god is. Remain surrounded by bliss, carry bliss as an air around you, a climate, and then you are always walking on holy ground and you are always surrounded by the celestial, by the divine.

The so-called saints have become too sad and religion has fallen into wrong hands. It has fallen into pathological hands that are basically afraid. Their god is a by-product of their fear, their prayer is full of paranoia. Their god is not out of their blissfulness, out of their love; and the real god is always born through love, through blissfulness, through gratefulness, never out of fear. Fear is a barrier; love is a bridge. And only the blissful person can love, because only the blissful person has something to give and share.

People want to love but they have nothing to share, hence their love efforts turn into great failures; they end in frustration. Before one wants to be in love, something is needed, absolutely needed, so that one can give it as a gift. And what can be given as a gift except bliss? Everything else is mundane.

So my concept of religion is that of bliss, celebration, rejoicing.

[A sannyasin leaving for the West asks where to draw the line between being understanding and making concessions that would hurt him. Don’t be worried about the West, Osho says]

I am in your heart and I will take care. Just go without worry and any fear. Once the East has settled in the heart the West cannot disturb. And it has happened; you need not worry!

Just go happily and help my people there!

[A sannyasin asks about her parents and their acceptance of her leaving them to be here forever.…

]

Don’t be worried about your parents! They will be happy, very happy. Just go and dance and sing and let them know how crazy you have become!

[A sannyasin says: I had a strange two weeks in Germany and I don’t know what happened to me. I really felt ‘Oh, I’m going to be mad; I can’t control myself.’]

You have come to the right place! You’re going mad – nothing to be worried about! But here we do madness with a method. Don’t be worried: madness is the highest form of sanity; just wait and experience!

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