11

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‌CHAPTER 11

11 January 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Prem means love. Love is god – that is the meaning of [prem theo], and that is the whole meaning of religion.

The moment that religion becomes a law it is no more religion. It has fallen; it is no more part of the world of light, it has already become part of darkness. Law is for the blind; law is needed because people are loveless. When there is love there is no need of any law. Love is enough unto itself; it is the law of all laws, the very foundation, the source.

Once it happened: a man asked Saint Augustine ‘Can you give me one word in which all the laws of all the sacred scriptures are condensed?’

Augustine had to meditate over it. For a few moments there was silence. He closed his eyes, and then he said ‘Love, and if you love then whatsoever you do is right.’

And the vice versa is also true: if you don’t love, whatsoever you do is wrong. Although it is right according to the law it is still basically wrong because love is missing. It is a corpse, there is no soul in it.

With love whatsoever you do is right, because love is intrinsically incapable of doing wrong. Remember it, and not only remember it: try to live it.

Yogino comes from the word ‘yoga’; yoga means union. Man lives in a kind of separation from existence, and that is his misery. Man lives almost as if uprooted, without roots in the soil; that’s why life is not flowing, is stuck, stale. And there is nothing green in man’s life, no foliage, no flowers; it is barren.

The whole search of religion is how to get back your roots, how to be one with existence again as you were before birth.

The child in the mother’s womb lives in a kind of union, in a state of yoga. He is utterly one with the mother, he knows no separation. Once he is out of the womb a great shock, the birth trauma, happens. And we don’t give him any chance to settle; we immediately cut the umbilical cord, immediately. He is not even able to breathe yet! And cutting the umbilical cord so fast, so quickly, is fatal, is dangerous. That remains like a wound deep in the unconscious. After that the child continuously feels that he is going farther and farther away from the original union. Life becomes more and more of a worry, a burden.

Yoga is the science of getting in tune with existence. Yoga is exactly, literally, the meaning of the English word ‘religion’. It comes from a root ‘religere’ which means to be united, to be united again, to be one with existence. This can happen now, not on the physical level; this can happen only on the level of consciousness.

And that’s what meditation is all about: a merging of oneself into the whole. It brings great benediction, it brings orgasmic joy, and such an orgasmic joy that persists, remains; it comes and never goes.

Unmila means the act of opening one’s eyes, the first thing that you do in the morning. But I am giving you the name as a metaphor for the inner opening of the eye; it is exactly the same. In the morning the moment you open your eyes, suddenly the darkness disappears, suddenly you become aware of the outer world – the birds singing in the trees, the wind blowing, the sun entering through the window and children playing on the road. It is sudden: just a moment ago the outer world had not existed at all; there was no sun, no wind, no children playing, there were no birds. There was nothing of it; it was as if it had not existed. All was there, but for you it was not there.

The moment you open your eyes the whole gestalt of your being changes; and with that change the world suddenly erupts into existence, out of nowhere. And at the same time, something that was there inside – dreams, imagination, sweet or nightmarish – is no more found anywhere. A moment ago they were there, and were very real. You may have been enjoying a sweet dream or you may have been in a nightmarish torture, something horrible happened. It was so real! You may be still breathing hard, perspiring, because of the nightmare; something of it may be still lingering in the body, you have a hangover. But now you know it was not there, and now it looks so ridiculous being so frightened of something which is not. But a moment before it was there; although it was not really there, still it was there for you.

In exactly the same way the inner opening of the eye. . . Whatsoever you have known about yourself up to now simply disappears. Again you find it nightmarish, a dream; you had imagined it, you had projected it. All that you had known about yourself was false, pseudo, a projected image, something imagined. Suddenly you become aware of the inner world of your own reality, of your inner sky and the inner sun and the inner song; and that is a totally different world.

Meditation is the key to open the inner eyes. It is the art of learning how to close the eyes to the outer world and to open the eyes to the inner. And once you have learned the art it becomes so easy, like in-breathing, out-breathing. You can come out whenever you want to and enjoy the beauty

of the world; and you can go in whenever you want to and can enjoy the beauty of the inner world – which is far superior, far more splendorous, far more infinite. The outer beauty pales before it and outer joys look very ordinary; the outer simply loses all the meaning that it had before.

Prem means love, yatren means a journey: a journey of love, a pilgrimage of love. Life is significant only when it is a journey of love; and it is a journey. Those who start settling somewhere miss it. One has to remain a wanderer, one has to remain homeless – I mean metaphysically, I mean spiritually. One should not allow oneself to settle anywhere, because wherever one settles one’s life starts dying.

It is said in a Sufi story about Jesus... Sufis have a few beautiful stories about Jesus which are missing in the Bible. One of the stories is that Jesus went to meditate in the mountains. He found there a very very old man with no roof over him, no shelter, just sitting under a tree. Jesus was puzzled a little bit. He asked the old man ‘How long have you lived here?’ The old man said ‘Near about one hundred years; I am two hundred years old.’ ‘But where is the house?’ Jesus asked. ‘Where is the shelter? How do you shelter yourself when the rains come and the sun is hot?’ The old man started laughing like a child, and he said ‘Lord, prophets just like you who preceded you, predicted about me that I am going to live only seven hundred years; that’s why I have not bothered about making a house. What is the point?’ he said. ‘Just seven hundred years and then I have to go. So why make much fuss about a house and a shelter?’

This is a beautiful story. It is said that after seeing this old man Jesus came down from the mountains and said to his disciples: Life is a bridge. Pass through it, but don’t make a house on it.

Life is only when it is a constant flow, when it goes on moving. It is a river from nowhere to nowhere. It is not a purposeful phenomenon. it is not business; it is just a wandering in wonder.

The spiritual man is really a gypsy of the inner world; and that is the meaning of your name: love pilgrimage.

Unmad means mad, but mad with a method, mad in love, mad for god.

The world is full of mad people: somebody is mad for money, somebody is mad for power. Those are lower kinds of madnesses. There are higher kinds of madnesses too: somebody is mad in love, somebody is mad for god.

The only thing that is needed for a sannyasin is to transform the lower madness into a higher madness. to focus oneself on the beyond. to put one’s total energies into the search for the unknown.

Even if we can get money, nothing is found, it proves only a vain effort. And the life that we put into gathering, into accumulating, money, is gone down the drain, it cannot be reclaimed. Even if one becomes very powerful politically, finally it proves to be only a toy. And once you have it, it is meaningless; its whole meaning consists in not having it. When you don’t have money it is tremendously significant; when you have it, it is utterly meaningless.

The higher kind of madness brings you to things which are meaningful only when you have time; that is the difference. Love is meaningless if you have not loved; when you love, only then is it

meaningful. Money is meaningful only when you don’t have it; when you have it, it is meaningless. That is the criterion to judge which is lower and which is higher: the higher is meaningful when you have it, the lower is meaningful when you don’t have it. Hence the lower is only in the hope. It can exist only in the future; it cannot exist in the present.

The higher call exist in the present; and when you have it then you know its beauty, its tremendous blessings. If this criterion is understood then, slowly slowly, one can start changing one’s life from the lower to the higher, dropping all toys and searching for the real.

Unmad means the higher kind of madness; and the higher kind of madness is the only sanity there is.

Prem means love, madak means intoxicating – love that intoxicates. Love is love only when it intoxicates. If it doesn’t intoxicate, it is something else. It may be sex, it may be greed, it may be the desire to dominate or to be dominated, it may be possessiveness or the desire to be possessed. It must be something else; it cannot be love.

Love is a natural intoxicant, and because love is missing from the world people go on inventing new intoxicants, from alcohol to LSD. In different ways, through different chemicals, down the ages man has tried to drown himself in some kind of forgetfulness. But everything is harmful, except love, because love is not an unnatural intoxicant. It is part of your inner chemistry: it arises in your very being, it circulates in your blood. It makes each cell of your body new, rejuvenated, young. It is a god-given gift.

All other substitutes are dangerous, harmful, ugly. In the first place, not to be able to love is already a great fall. Those who can love don’t need any intoxicant: love is enough. It has no hangover, it creates no addiction, and slowly slowly it takes you deeper and deeper into egolessness.

It is not only a forgetfulness but a remembering too; that is the paradox of love. No other chemical can do that. Chemicals can help you to forget yourself, but that forgetfulness is not going to help much. Tomorrow you will be back to all your miseries, all your tensions, all your anxieties. In fact tomorrow they will be there more, because in these twenty-four hours that you were drowned, they were accumulating in the underground. in the basement of your being. Suddenly after twenty-four hours they will be more, they will explode over you. This is not the way to get rid of them.

Love, on the one hand, intoxicates you; on the other hand, it helps you to remember yourself. It is a double-edged phenomenon, a double edged sword: on one side it cuts all that your ego is creating around you, all the clouds; and on the other side it helps your inner energies to well up. When these happen together you become so alert that even when you are drowned in love, your alertness becomes the basis of your being. And that alertness prevents the creation of more miseries, more worries, more anxieties. It cuts the very roots of all worrying. In fact, in the moment of love one is not even afraid of death; even that does not create a worry. So how can life create worry when even death cannot create worry?

I teach you love, and I teach you to be so utterly intoxicated with love that a self-remembering arises in you of its own accord.

But in the past, religions have been denying people love and they have converted the whole earth into a very irreligious phenomenon. Love has to be infused into humanity again. It is urgently needed, otherwise man cannot survive. It is almost like a patient who is dying and needs oxygen. So is the case with man: man is on his death-bed and needs oxygen. Love is oxygen for the soul.

[The new sannyasin asks: Where do I find love? I have the feeling I’m not able to.]

Everybody is able; you just have to drop the idea. If you can breathe, you can love; if you are alive, you can love.

This is asking ‘Where can I breathe? Where can I find myself alive?’ You are. It is just that the idea is there and that idea is hindering you. Drop the idea! It is just a wrong programme in your head.

Start! In the beginning it will be ‘as if’ – let it be so. It is like a person who is not paralysed but believes that he is, and lying down on the bed he is saying ‘How can I walk?’ We tell him ‘For a moment get up and think that you can walk – try.’ He will be surprised because he can walk.

It has happened many times. Once it happened: a man had been bedridden, paralysed, for five, seven years, and doctors had declared that nothing could be done any more. Then one day, in the middle of the night, his house caught fire, so everybody ran out of the house. People could not believe their eyes: he was also coming out, running! For seven years he had not left the bed; they could not believe their eyes. He had really forgotten that he was paralysed, that’s all. It was such a dangerous situation: you cannot afford such luxuries as paralysis, etcetera! When people shouted at him ‘What are you doing? You are paralysed!’ he fell then and there on the ground. Again the idea caught hold of him.

It is just a wrong idea; you have to erase the tape. It is not a question of ‘How can I find love?’ The only question is ‘How can I drop this idea that I am not worthy of love, I am not capable of love.’ Everybody is! Everybody who is born, is born with the inner capacity to love and be loved.

Just start! In the beginning your mind will prevent you: ‘What are you doing?’ So let it be a game of ‘as if’. Soon it will become the reality, because it is the reality.

Come here again. If you cannot manage it there, then we will work on the idea here. Come back! We will uncondition you. But make a few efforts there too. Trust me – I say you can love: try! And if you don’t, then only some day when your house catches fire...

This will be the name [for the meditation centre]: Upadesh. Upadesh means the teaching, but with a special flavour to it: the teaching that does not really teach, the teaching that imparts, communes, the teaching that has no commandment in it, no should, no ought, a teaching which is simply the overflowing consciousness of a master. It is not a sermon in the ordinary sense, it is not sermonising. It is not a mission, it has no dogma, no creed; but it has a fragrance in it which is available only to those who are receptive, sensitive. It is not expressed through words: it is a transmission beyond scriptures.

Literally the word ‘upadesh’ means to sit close to the master – because that is the only way to receive the teaching. I say again and again ‘Truth cannot be taught but can only be caught.’ Just as

diseases are infectious, so is health. And whenever someone is full of light, his light is infectious; when someone is full of love, his love is infectious. All that is needed on the other end is a sympathy.

When the disciple comes for the first time he is not more than any student: the student needs a kind of sympathy. Slowly slowly he changes into a disciple. To be a disciple means changing from sympathy to empathy. Sympathy means a very friendly attitude, not antagonistic. Empathy means almost merging and becoming one, feeling as the master feels; then it is empathy.

For example: if your friend has a headache you sympathise, you understand, you take care of the friend. But if the friend has a headache and suddenly you start having a headache, then it is empathy. It is not only a question of caring: you have become part of it, you have imbibed it; you have started experiencing it the way the friend is.

Lovers also start with sympathy, but unless they reach empathy their love remains a little un-grown- up, stuck somewhere.

Upa means close, desh means the place: sitting very close to the space of the master. That is the literal meaning; but the metaphysical meaning is the teaching, the teaching which cannot be taught, the teaching which cannot be verbalised.

So let this small centre grow there, and you be my vehicles. Let my love flow through you, let my presence be felt by the newcomers. If you allow, it is going to happen. And it will not be only a blessing to others, it will be a far deeper blessing for you.

[A sannyasin therapist returns from the West. Osho had previously told him to give as much love to everything, including rocks... He has been assisting in groups and trying to do that but feels more messed, and more negativity.]

In fact you have been overdoing your positivity thing. Don’t overdo it, otherwise you will always fall into the trap of the negative. Remember the golden mean: if you go too far into positivity, forcibly, trying to make it, then sooner or later you will have to go to the other extreme, into negativity. That’s how life keeps its balance. If you don’t want the negative then don’t enforce the positive too much. Remain more tranquil, cool, in the middle: neither positive nor negative.

And in fact that is the whole meaning of being compassionate: it is neither hot nor cold, it is very cool. Then you can give love, but it will be very cool. You will not feel exhausted and you will not need any move to the other extreme.

The positive is also part of the mind, just as negativity is, and slowly, slowly, you have to learn how not to be part of the mind. You have not only to go beyond the negative, you have to go beyond the positive too. Only with that transcendence that is beyond both does life have serenity; otherwise it is tiring, it can be very tiring. And when you are too tired you have to lean to the other pole, otherwise you will not be rejuvenated.

So these are the two possibilities: one is, don’t impose your positivity too much. Remain in the middle, and then you will not need the negative. The negative comes only via the positive and the positive comes only via the negative. They are partners: they do business together and you become the victim; you become a battlefield between these two polarities.

So the first thing is... one alternative, the best, is to remain in the middle. Or the second thing, which is second best, is to go on moving from the positive to the negative. Then allow both, don’t repress the negative; allow both. The second best is what Western psychotherapeutic groups are based on. The first is the best, but if you cannot do it, then the second.

So choose. First try the first. If it is very difficult... because to be cool is very difficult; the mind likes to be hot and cold, because of the excitement. The hot is exciting and the very cold is also exciting; love is exciting and hate is exciting. Compassion has no excitement in it. It is just a cool lake, a calm lake, reflecting the whole firmament with all its beauty, but there is no excitement, not even a ripple. And the mind lives out of excitement, it is a constant search for sensation, entertainment.

But you have to be aware: if the first can be done then do the first; otherwise the second is good. Then don’t be worried: go on moving from one to the other. And make it easy; the movement should not be hampered, stopped, should not be done in a reluctant way. Go very easily from one to the other, just like the pendulum of the clock, with no problem; don’t make a problem out of it.

In the West, particularly in these fifty years, much positivism has been taught, even in the name of religion. Vincent Peale and people like that, have always been teaching the positive philosophy, not being aware at all that the more positive you make the man, the more negative his unconscious becomes. And you are creating a rift in a man; rather than helping him, you are poisoning his being. What Vincent Peale, Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill and company, say appeals to people because it seems ‘How beautiful it will be if I am absolutely positive’; but you cannot be absolutely positive.

To be absolutely positive you will have to allow absolute negativity. Then in the conscious you will be a Buddha and in the unconscious you will be an Adolf Hitler, and you will be pulled apart, continuously in a battle inside yourself. And that battle is very destructive.

I don’t teach positivism; I don’t teach negativism either. I simply teach an understanding of this polarity, and through that understanding slowly, slowly going beyond both, going into exactly the middle. From the middle the door opens. Once you have seen the beauty of the middle, the unexcited beauty of the middle, the ecstasy without excitement – once you have tasted of it then both lose their meaning. Then neither hot nor cold is significant. Then you remain in a new space which can be called cool if you think in comparison with cold, or can be called warm if you think in comparison with hot. It is a cool-warm space: from one side it is cool, from another side it is warm. It is very cosy and very refreshing.

Try it!

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