< Previous | Contents | Next >
CHAPTER 25
27 January 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
Prem means love; persephone is Greek, it means goddess of spring – love, the goddess of spring. And it is only through love that spring comes into man’s life. Without love, life knows nothing of spring; without love, it is a long long wasteland. Weeds may grow but roses are impossible. Without love, life is a desert, and the oasis exists only in a dream.
It is only through love that the oasis becomes a reality, and when the oasis is real the desert becomes unreal. They both can’t exist together; one’s reality is the unreality of the other. They are like darkness and light: co-existence is impossible. If life is love, then there is no desert at all; it is all oasis. If love is missed, then the oasis is just a consolation, a dream, an illusion, but life remains a long long, boring, dragging affair.
Prem means love. Richard is Teutonic; it means powerful, a king, a ruler. Love is powerful, but its power is very paradoxical, hence the beauty of it. Its power is not the power of violence, its power is not the power of conquering the other. Its power is not a conquest at all: on the contrary, it is the power of surrender, of being conquered, of allowing oneself to be conquered. Its power is feminine, not masculine.
Masculine power is basically violent; it is coercive. Feminine power is basically non-violent; it is persuasive. Up to now the world has been dominated by masculine power – hence so many wars, hence so much cruelty, hence the destruction of the whole earth.
The time has come to change the whole gestalt: now man should learn more the ways of feminine power if the earth is to be saved, if humanity is to survive. We will have to learn a new language. The old language has failed us; it has become our doom.
We have to learn the language of love, of persuasion, of invitation, of trust, of surrender. It certainly brings great power – in fact it brings real power. The power that you force on somebody is never
real because it can be revolted against, it can be sabotaged. But the power that love brings cannot be sabotaged; there is no way to destroy it, to rebel against it.
[The new sannyasin asks: Are we called here, or do we come through instinct, as a fish swims up a river?]
Life is such a mystery that all things happen and no single explanation is of any meaning. A few are called, a few come on their own. A few come only accidentally and then are caught, and a few have been searching for lives together and then they arrive.
It is not a single phenomenon. so no single answer can be given, and there is no need for one either.
In fact one should not ponder over these things. These questions are intellectual; how are they going to help? Even if they can be answered, they will not help your growth in any way.
In fact the mind is constantly in search of de-mystifying things.
If I say ‘You have been called’ your mind will feel at ease. In fact a subtle ego will arise in you that you have been chosen, that you are among the chosen few, that you have been called. that this is the call of destiny. that god is working through you, that you are a saviour that soon humanity will be saved through you. All kinds of things will come into your mind – that you are not ordinary, that you are special, that you are not accidental, that there is a great purpose in your coming here, that it is predestined, that god is behind it. But all these things only support the ego. I am not saying that you are not called: I am simply saying that the urge of the mind to know about such things is basically wrong.
One should learn to accept the mysteries of life. There is no need to poke your nose into every mystery, because once you have de-mystified it, you will lose much. The danger is that the ego may feel very gratified, and once the ego is gratified, strengthened, you start going farther and farther away from truth.
Truth is a mystery, and all explanations are against truth. Let this be a tacit understanding you have with me: truth is a mystery, and all explanations are against truth because they de-mystify.
The mind is incapable of wondering, so it wants to destroy all wonder. It wants to fix everything as it is, it wants to nail down everything. The butterfly on the wing is one thing, it is a wonder. When you catch hold of it and you nail it down on the board, it is a dead thing. All that was beautiful in it is no more there; life has left it. Butterflies nailed on the board – that’s what explanations are, all explanations, without any exception. Hence the whole effort of philosophy is rubbish.
Be here with me without any explanations. Be here with me in a mystery. This is a mystery school: be part of it but don’t ask for explanations.
All kinds of explanations are possible but no explanation is of any help. When the time is ripe I will tell you whether you have been called or you have just come on your own, whether it is destined or accidental, whether there is a grand design behind it or nothing, just a chance incidence. When the time is ripe I will tell you. And do you know when the time is ripe? When you are not!
When the ego is no more there functioning, then the time is ripe. Again that is a paradox: when you are not interested in knowing at all, I will tell you! When you say ‘Keep quiet! There is no need. Who cares?’ I will tell you.
Just wait – things are going to happen!
Veet Seiji... will mean: beyond conquering and beyond ruling. There is no need to conquer and there is no need to rule.
That has been the calamity; man has suffered much from it. Now the time is ripe for love. War has to disappear from the earth. Now there are only two alternatives: either war will disappear or humanity itself. Both cannot exist together any more. Up to now it was possible because war was partial; now it is impossible because we have invented total war. Within fifteen minutes the whole earth will be dead – not only man, but animals, birds, insects, trees, all life. Just fifteen minutes is enough. It will be a total conflagration.
In a way this is good, because man changes only when such great challenges have to be faced. I don’t think man is going to decide to commit universal suicide. Man invented war for survival. Now he has refined war so much that it is no more in the service of survival; it serves life no more. Now it will serve death, and that is a great hope. Man is bound to drop this whole approach towards life of fighting, conquering, ruling.
A new vision is going to possess the human soul: the vision of love, trust, celebration. Life can become a paradise, and now we have all that is needed except the absence of the old mind to make it a paradise. The old mind is a hangup, and my effort here is to destroy the old mind. Once the new mind has started working, then this is going to be the greatest age of man ever.
So I am not only changing your name: change your approach too. Go beyond conquering and beyond ruling. Move into a new dimension of love, song, dance.
[The new sannyasin says he has been teaching yoga for seven years. He asks about Osho’s statement that yoga leads to tantra, and would tantra be good for him.]
You have to go into Tantra.
Tantra is a higher stage of Yoga. Yoga is more or less physiological; Tantra is deeper than your physiology. And Yoga is a forced cultivation; Tantra is more fluid. Tantra is closer to Tao, spontaneity. Yoga works on your physical energy, Tantra works on your sexual energy. Physical energy is the lowest form of energy. Sex energy is life energy, and sex energy is the ladder, the ladder to god.
So when you come next time, remind me first, then I will give you groups that will help you to go into Tantra.
Prem Elke... will mean: love which has no meaning.
Meaning is not very meaningful in itself. Meaning is mundane, utilitarian. Meaning belongs to the market-place. The higher you move, the deeper you go into existence, meaning starts evaporating;
and as you reach the peaks of life, meaning becomes irrelevant. Beauty has no meaning; it simply is. Life has no meaning; it simply is. Love has no meaning; it simply is.
Meaning means that something is being used for something else. Meaning means that something is used as a means to some end. If somebody asks ‘What is the meaning of a car?’ there is a meaning. It is a vehicle, it can transport you from one place to another; that is its meaning. What is the meaning of a sword? It can cut somebody, it can murder, that is its meaning.
But what is the meaning of a rose flower? It is not a means to any end; it is an end unto itself. What is the meaning of a starry night? There is no meaning in it; it simply is there in all its grandeur.
What is the meaning of god? There is no meaning at all, because god is the ultimate peak of existence. So god is the most meaningless concept. Even to ask ‘What meaning has god?’ is sacrilegious. God is the end of all, and means nothing else; god exists for god’s sake. Love comes very close to god. Jesus says ‘God is love.’ Love is very very proximate, very intimate – maybe just one step more and you are in god.
Remember it: all that is truly significant has no meaning. And all that is meaningful is not truly significant; it is only utilitarian, mundane, ordinary. The sacred is beyond meaning – and love is sacred.
[The new sannyasin says: I am a biologist and I came not to come to Poona but to a congress in Bangalore. It was by chance that I came.]
That’s very good.
Biology remains half-hearted unless you start having glimpses of some spirituality. Biology is only the beginning of moving towards the spirit. It is still groping, groping for what life is. Yes, a few glimpses have started happening, but they are only glimpses. If biology really goes deep, it is bound to become part of mysticism, because biology contains the door to mysticism.
Sooner or later, biology is going to become the foundation of real religion, because religion is the search for life and life’s truth. And that’s what biology is trying to do in a very rudimentary way. Of course science has to move very cautiously and very slowly so that no error is committed.
Mystics take quantum leaps, mathematicians move with the pace of a snail; but both are needed. What mystics knew centuries before, biologists are going to know sooner or later because if it is truth, then it has to be discovered, and if it is truth then science will also be able to know something of it. Maybe in knowing it, science itself will change. And that’s what is happening.
Science is no more the same as it used to be. Just one hundred years before now, science was utterly materialistic; now it is not so. In fact matter has disappeared; now there is no matter at all. Science is moving more and more into the non-material.
Eddington is reported to have said that in the beginning the world used to look like a machine; now it looks more like a thought, less like a machine.
Marx used to say that consciousness is a by-product of matter. Now he will be in much trouble if he comes back, because there is no matter left. He will have to change his whole attitude: he will have to say now that matter is nothing but a by-product of consciousness.
My effort here is to create a bridge between East and West, to create a bridge between mysticism and science, to create a bridge between the illogical and the logical. I need as many scientists as possible to be my sannyasins. Take the message to more and more biologists need them!
Anand means bliss; lee is an Anglo-Saxon word, it means living in the open or living in a meadow. The full name will mean: living in the open space of bliss.
Bliss is an open space, misery is a closed space. Misery keeps you detached from others, unrelated, unbridged. Misery creates a wall around you and you go on shrinking; misery shrinks you.
Bliss is the experience of expansion. One expands; one wants to destroy all walls and all barriers. Misery creates walls. Bliss creates bridges; one wants to relate, one wants to share. Bliss is an adventure, a tremendous search for more and more open spaces; one will be satisfied only when the whole sky is one’s own. Misery is suicidal, it kills you; it reduces you to such a tiny thing that you start feeling suffocated. Bliss helps you to become god.
The really blissful ones have declared ‘Aham Brahmasmi, I am god’; ‘Ana’l haq, I am truth.’ This is the ultimate expansion, when one becomes totally one with the whole. And that is the true way to live – to live under the open sky, to live with the winds and the rains and the trees, and to live with people and to live with all that god has made available.
It is such a fantastic world and people are living closed in themselves. They are missing a god- given opportunity. God will not ask you what sins you have committed and what sins you have not committed. He will ask you only one thing: ‘Why didn’t you live?’ Only one thing: ‘Why were you not open to life?’ To me the only sin worth calling sin is to be here and to remain so closed that life cannot happen to you. Not allowing life to happen to you is the only sin, and the only virtue is allowing life to happen to you in as intense a way as possible. To live passionately is virtue, to live totally is virtue.
Deva means divine, rose marie is from Latin; it has two meanings to it. One is the flower, the rose; the other is a dew-drop. Both are beautiful – a divine rose or a divine dew-drop.
The divine rose symbolises the ultimate flowering of consciousness. Man is also a rose bush, but there are very few fortunate people who bring flowerings to their bushes. It takes great care, it is a great art, to bloom; it does not happen of its own accord. Life is given to you, but to make a rose flower out of it you will have to go deep into your consciousness. You will have to cleanse your being, you will have to learn the ways of meditation, prayer, love. A mind full of thoughts can never become a rose. The constant traffic of thoughts destroys all energy. Thoughts are parasites, they suck your blood – and roses can bloom only when you have too much energy, overflowing energy.
When you cannot contain the energy, then roses bloom.
One has to learn how to drop thinking and how to move into spaces where thoughts don’t interfere. That’s what sannyas is all about.
And the second meaning is also beautiful, a divine dew-drop – because a dew-drop only looks small; it is not.
Don’t be deceived by its appearance, because it contains oceans in it. It has all the secrets of the ocean in it. If a single dew-drop could be understood in its totality we would have understood all the secrets of all the oceans. And man is a miniature universe if one can know oneself, one has known all.
[A sannyasin who is leaving asks how she can overcome her greed and envy and resistance which she has had since age ten.]
One very fundamental thing to be remembered: all these things are negative, and it is absolutely futile to fight with anything that is negative. You can never win, because in the first place the negative exists not. It is like fighting with darkness: never fight with darkness, otherwise you will never win. What can you do with darkness? It is non-existential. Something can be done with light, but nothing can be done with darkness. So rather than fighting with darkness and wasting your time, kindle a light – which is far easier and far simpler – and once the light is there, darkness is gone.
Now, greed, envy, jealousy, possessiveness, resistance, are all negative things. You can go on fighting and fighting, and you will be defeated1 you cannot win – because the negative cannot be approached directly; you will have to approach it through the positive. So don’t think of greed1 think of love. Greed simply shows that love is still not enkindled in the heart. Once love arises in the heart, greed disappears. A loving person cannot be greedy – impossible. A loving person cannot be envious either. And how can a loving person resist? Love is the key.
So change the whole idea. Don’t make problems out of greed, resistance, envy, otherwise you will be looking in the wrong direction. Forget these problems. Your problem is one, a single problem – and this is not only your problem, this is the problem of every human being, more or less – and that is love.
Become more loving, and it is far easier... Rather than dropping greed, be more loving and you will be surprised: when you are more loving you will not find greed arising at all, because love knows how to share. It can give – and when love gives, it does not make the other feel obliged either; it simply gives out of the sheer joy of giving.
And love is never envious – because love is such a tremendous contentment inside, how can you be envious? In that contentment, envy cannot arise. Love knows how to trust, so resistance disappears.
It will change; don’t be worried. Just change the whole emphasis from the negative to the positive. Good!
< Previous | Contents | Next >