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‌CHAPTER 21

22 March 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[March 21st was the Enlightenment Day celebration with singing and dancing in Osho’s presence.]

Yogadeva. Yoga means union, deva means god. To be in a union with existence is to know god. That union, that very union, is god. God is not a person; it is a principle – the principle of unity, the principle that makes the universe a universe and not a multi-verse. the principle that makes the universe a cosmos and not a chaos. The innermost harmony of existence, the running current of harmony in the whole – that’s what god is all about. God cannot be worshipped, god can only be lived. Only you can become the temple of him; no other temple will do.

And that is what a sannyasin is meant to be: a temple of god. Live god, forget worship. By worship man has not reached anywhere. Now we have to change the whole old pattern, the whole gestalt. Instead of worshipping, we have to move towards living.

Dharmadeva. Dharma means religion, deva means god. God is not separate from religion. God is the principle and religion is the life lived according to that principle. Religion is not theology, it is not a philosophy: it is a way of life.

Man can live in two ways. One is to live as if there is nothing more than that which is visible; that is an irreligious life. It is a meaningless life, because meaning always comes from the beyond. When you start reaching for the stars your life has significance. If there is nothing beyond, you live in darkness and you live in a futile way, and knowing that futility brings misery.

To live life focused on the beyond is the religious life. Religion means a constant surpassing of yourself, because you are more than you know, because you are more than you are and each day can reveal many more territories of your being. The inner space is infinite: one never comes to know

the whole of it. One is always knowing and knowing and knowing but the mystery remains. That’s why life is so beautiful – because it cannot be reduced into a theory, into a hypothesis.

Prem means love. Lee is Chinese; it means a very precious gem or a pearl or a diamond. Love is the most precious diamond. Nothing is more precious than love, and one who misses love remains poor. And remember, love is not in getting love; love is in giving love. Everybody hankers to get, and everybody misses it because from the very beginning they have taken a wrong step. Give and you will never miss; give and you will be getting more and more. Give for the sheer joy of giving it, with no conditions attached, with no expectations, and feel grateful to the person who receives your love, because he could have rejected. Never think that you have obliged; always think that you have been obliged because your love has been accepted.

Don’t make love an investment. It is not part of the business world but we have made it a part of the business world. We have made it a commodity, a bargain. We have brought it from the sky to the muddy earth. and when it is part of the muddy earth it does not satisfy. Then a very insane hankering arises in the mind, that ‘Change from this person, move to another person, because this has not been satisfying, so some other relationship may be satisfying.’ People are rushing, running from one person to another.

It is not a question of changing persons: it is a changing of something in you. It is a change of perspective, not of the person, not of the object of love, but of the subjectivity that loves, of the interiority that loves.

That’s my whole teaching: how to be more loving. And love comes a thousandfold. That comes according to a certain ultimate law; there is no exception to it. If it doesn’t come that means you must have put some condition – conscious, unconscious. You must have created a barrier. Rather than creating a bridge you must have made a wall.

So learn to love unconditionally and the whole existence pours love into you; it responds, it responds tremendously. In that pouring of love from every nook and comer of existence, one comes to know what god is – that experience of love pouring from everywhere towards you, that experience that you are intrinsically needed, that without you existence will miss something, that you are not an accident, that you are part and parcel, warp and woof, of the totality, that existence needs you as much as you need existence, that it is an interdependence.

That word ‘interdependence’ is synonymous with god. To know that interdependence not as a theory but as an experience changes one’s whole life. One starts living on a different plane – of course in the same world, but it is no more the same world because you are no more the same.

You have suffered long; it is time to get out of the old gestalt. And you are going to get out of it, because enough is enough! And even that suffering is not suffering, is not negative; it has prepared you for this jump into a new way of life. It has matured you to be a sannyasin. So one feels grateful for it too, for whatsoever life has been one feels grateful.

Deva means divine, cathy means pure – divine purity. There is a purity which can be called human – if it is cultivated, if it is imposed, if it is just a habit, a conditioning. That’s what the behaviourists are saying to the world: that people can be changed just by reconditioning their behaviour. But it will be

a change only on the circumference. Behaviour is not the soul. One can be pure in one’s character and may not be pure in one’s consciousness.

Character is human; consciousness is divine. When purity arises out of your consciousness, not out of your character, then it has something of the beyond in it. Then it has tremendous beauty and power; it has grace and splendour.

The human purity can be possessed by you. The divine purity can only possess you; you cannot possess it. Fortunate is the man who is possessed by something divine, something bigger than himself. It is possible; we just have to allow it to happen, we have to learn how to be in a let-go.

Character has to be cultivated; consciousness has to be allowed to grow. Character needs effort; consciousness is an effortless spontaneous flowering of being.

Narayandeva. It is a name of god. All names are god’s names, because except for god nothing exists. All forms are god’s forms, and to realise this is to live in a totally different world. That’s what it means to enter into the kingdom of god: the world remains the same, but your attitude. your vision, your perspective, is no more the same.

You see the same rose flower: it was just a rose flower, something ordinary a moment before, and now suddenly god has appeared in it, it is an expression of his beauty. It is the same rose flower, nothing has changed chemically. physically, materially – all is exactly the same, but nothing is the same any more. Now you can have a dialogue with the rose. You can fall into prayer. You can dance around the bush. It is a temple now! Your perspective has hallowed it, has made it holy.

Once you start seeing god in the trees, in the mountains, in the people, in the animals, in the birds you are living in a totally different world. It is no more material, it is divine. To be in that world is to be in bliss and to be in that world is to be in eternity. It has no beginning and no end. It is neither in time nor in space; it is a transcendence. But first the transcendence has to happen within you – a one hundred-and-eighty-degree turn of your vision. Eyes which are focused on the outside have to turn withinwards.

The objective vision has to become totally subjective. Then prose becomes poetry. then matter disappears and there is only consciousness. This ocean of consciousness – and we are nothing but waves in it – is what god is all about.

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