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‌CHAPTER 7

7 January 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Prem means love, amal means pure. Love is love only when it is pure, when there is no other motive in it, when it is just itself, when it is not caused by anything, when it is not a means for something else but the end itself. Love is pure when it has an intrinsic value, when it serves no purpose but is a joy unto itself, when it is a simple overflowing exultation, when it is not part of the world of business – motive, profit, gain, goal – when it is so simple like a rose flower, exulting, exuberant, overflowing, for no other reason, for no reason at all. Then love is pure; and when love is pure it brings freedom, it brings salvation. When love is pure it is god.

But what we know as love is something else. It does not bring us closer to god; on the contrary it takes us farther away. It does not even bring us closer to human beings; it is more a conflict than a harmony. It is more or less something else: a power-trip, the desire to dominate, the desire to exploit, the desire to use the other as a means.

Sometimes it is hatred camouflaged as love; sometimes it is simply greed; sometimes it is simply jealousy; sometimes it is simply because you are not capable of being alone so you have to move into some kind of relationship. It is an occupation, it keeps you engaged: then it is an escape from yourself. Rather than bringing you home, rather than bringing you more and more self-awareness, rather than giving you more and more integrity, it simply creates a chaos, a mess. It creates dependence rather than independence.

If one can go on purifying love, dropping all other foreign elements from it. . . That’s what purity is: when only love is, with nothing attached to it, not even in the unconscious, then love is prayer and then love is god.

That is the meaning of your name. Let it become the meaning of your life too.

Veet means beyond, pramado means unconsciousness.

Sannyas is a process of going beyond unconsciousness. It is the alchemy of transforming the unconscious into consciousness, of transforming darkness into light, of transforming death into eternal life.

Man lives in unconsciousness, and that is the root cause of all misery. There is no other cause for misery except that we are walking with closed eyes and so we stumble. We hurt ourselves, we hurt others. We are not born blind, that is the irony: we have eyes but we keep them closed. The sun rises but it never rises for us. The sky becomes colourful but never for us. We go on living with closed eyes. We have learnt, we have been forced to learn, the way of the blind man.

Every child is born with eyes as pure as the eyes of a Buddha, as transparent as the Buddha’s, but we start teaching him the ways of being blind. Sooner or later the eyes become closed, because open eyes don’t get any nourishment from anywhere but every kind of punishment, and closed eyes are rewarded, supported, appreciated. Naturally, just to survive, the child learns the trick. But once you have learnt it, it goes very deep; it becomes automatic. Later on you need not keep your eyes closed, they remain closed; you simply forget that you have eyes.

It is like a bird who has been encaged from very early childhood. He has never known the joy of being on the wing, he has never moved above the clouds, he has never left his nest. He has been encaged; he will not remember. How can he remember that he has wings? – he has never been allowed to be on the wing, he has never known the experience. Slowly slowly the wings will just be an unnecessary burden and the bird will be unable to understand why they are there at all. He may find some rationalisations for why they are there. But he cannot find the real reason unless some other bird who is outside the cage seduces him to experiment.

And that is the whole function of a master: to seduce the disciple into seeing that you have wings, that you are meant to attain the ultimate, that you need not be in a prison, that the prison is just a habit, that you need not remain blind and unconscious, that light is your birthright.

[The new sannyasin says: I didn’t come here to go to groups: I came here to be near you, Osho. I have been through many groups.]

Just be here, just be here. Dance and sing and forget the whole world for these days that you are here. Let me be your whole world for these days. And then it is going to remain your world forever.

Anand means bliss, namazi means prayerful. Prayer is not an act, it is a state. You can- not do prayer, you can only be in it. Those who go on doing prayers go on missing the whole point, because whatsoever you do is on the periphery. The act never happens at the centre, the act is possible only on the circumference, just as waves are possible only on

thesurfaceoftheocean, notinthedepth.Thedepthremainsutterlycalm, quiet, nostorms, nowaves.Onthes

Action is a wave; it cannot exist at the very core of your being. So prayer, if it remains a doing, remains superficial; you go on doing something empty. You can bow down, you can say something to god, but that is all just meaningless – unless you learn to be prayerful, unless you learn how to be pregnant with prayer. Then something starts happening at the core, at the very centre of your being. And only that brings transformation.

So remember, prayer cannot be done. Remember, prayer is not a set formula that you can repeat. Remember, prayer cannot be taught by others. It has to be spontaneous, it has to be your own, and it has to be your very being, not an act.

Then prayer and meditation are the same, there is no difference at all: meditation is prayer, prayer is meditation. To be silent, to be utterly silent, grateful, thankful, for just the sheer joy of being alive, and to say an unspoken thank you to god – unspoken, not even verbalised, just a heartfelt, unspoken thankfulness – that is being prayerful. And to be prayerful is the greatest experience there is.

Prem means love, vidhano means discipline – discipline of love. The word ‘discipline’ simply means learning; hence the word ‘disciple’: the learner.

The only thing worth learning in life is love. Life is an opportunity to learn love; life is the school. If you miss love you have missed all education: if you have learned the ways of love your schooling has been fruitful. And it is unfortunate that very few ever become fruitful, because very few ever learn the ways of love.

The ways of love are mysterious and the ways of love are almost contrary to the ways of the world.

For example, in the world, if you want to have something more, you have to accumulate it. In the world of love, if you want love more, you have to distribute it, you have to give it. Only by giving it will you be able to keep it. It is a totally different law; it is just the opposite from the world of economics.

Money follows one law: if you want to have more money you have to accumulate it, you have to exploit, you have to become miserly; only then will you have more. If you go on sharing you will not have more.

The law of love is just the opposite: if you go on keeping love it dies, it goes sour. The creative energy that was involved in it becomes destructive; it can become murderous, it can become suicidal. The very energy that would have been a blessing can turn into a calamity for you and for others. The very energy that was meant to become nectar becomes poison. Hoard it, and immediately it becomes a poison. Give it, let it flow, and it remains nectar. And the more you give, the more you have it.

It is a very different world. One has to learn, and one has to learn on one’s own because society is not interested in it; in fact it is against it. It prevents it in every possible way, so that one never knows what love is, because once one knows love, the whole society and its structure looks absurd, ridiculous. Once you have known the beauty of love you will never be ambitious; and the society exists through ambition. Once you have tasted love you will not be obsessed with money and power. That is the obsession of the person who has not known love. That is a substitute for love – money and power and domination and prestige and respectability. Those are just poor substitutes; because you have missed real nourishment, now you are searching for some artificial nourishment.

The world is based on the law of hate, so nobody is going to teach you – your parents, your teachers, your priests – nobody is going to teach you the way of love. In fact, even when they teach about love they teach only hatred and nothing else. In the name of love they create more hatred amongst people; in the name of love they divide the Hindu from the Mohammedan, the Mohammedan from the Christian. the Christian from the Buddhist. In the name of love something else is the game. You will have to learn it on your own: the society will not support you.

Being initiated into sannyas means you are moving into a totally different world. It is as if one has lived in the desert and suddenly one has found a small oasis. The oasis has different laws. The world of sannyas is an oasis. Its fundamental law is love.

Anand means bliss, prakash means light – a blissful light or a lightful blissness. They are always both together, they are indivisible: in fact they are two names for the same phenomenon. Bliss has the quality of light and light has the quality of bliss. They are both intrinisic to your nature, in-built; they have not to be created, they have not to be invented. Just a little digging inside and you will find the mine of diamonds, the kingdom of god.

Once you have seen the inner light all darkness disappears. Once you have seen the inner blissfulness all slavery disappears. You need not depend on anybody else for your bliss; for the first time you feel on your own. It does not mean that you will not relate; in fact only now can you relate, you have something to share.

There are two kinds of relationships in the world: one is that of the needy, hungry man; that is a negative relationship. He wants to eat the other. It is his need, a survival need. He pretends that he loves the other, he has to pretend – that is only a bait – but basically he is interested in fulfilling his hunger. Once the hunger is fulfilled the love will disappear.

Sigmund Freud became aware only of this kind of love and relationship. That’s why he says that love exists on repression. He says that if sex is allowed and is simply available, love will disappear from the world. Love, according to him, is nothing but the mental side of sex. If sex is repressed, then the repressed sex starts becoming a romantic fantasy in your mind and you start seeing beautiful women, beautiful men; you project your fantasy on them. The more you are starved, the more romantic you become.

He is right about this kind of love, but he is wrong too – because there is another kind of love of which he never became aware, he had no experience of the other love. He can be forgiven. He only knew this kind of love, the needy, in which love is nothing but a subtle kind of food, a nourishment. Naturally when you are hungry the food looks very appealing: the aroma, the flavour, even the sounds coming from the kitchen, have a beauty. Once you are contented, once you have eaten enough, all beauty and all poetry about food disappears. In fact if you are forced to eat a little more the same food will become nauseating, sickening; the same food which was so beautiful becomes so ugly.

Freud says that romance, love, can exist in the world only if repression remains. He was in a dilemma: he was against repression because repression is crippling human beings, it does not allow them natural growth, it cuts them from here, from there, it never allows them their totality; it creates neurosis. So he was against repression, but he was becoming aware, slowly slowly, that it is through repression that love, culture, poetry, music, dance, is there. If love disappears, all these arts will disappear; they are dimensions of love. And with the disappearance of repression he was afraid that love would disappear. So he was caught in a dilemma, and he could never decide throughout his whole life what should be done. If you choose one, the other creates a problem. Had he been aware of a totally different kind of love the dilemma would have disappeared.

There is another kind of love that happens not because you are hungry but because you are

overflowing, not because you need the other but just because you want to dance. There is so much; what else to do?

This is a totally different kind of love. It comes out of your inner richness. If the first is needy then this is luxury, this is utterly luxurious. You never become dependent upon the other, and you never try to make the other become dependent upon you. This kind of love enhances individuals in their individuality. It is non-jealous, non-possessive. But this love happens only when you are full of blissfulness, full of light.

The paradox is that when you are full of light and full of bliss you are capable of merging into the other without any conditions, and you are capable of accepting the other with all faults, all flaws, all limitations. A totally different world opens up.

To be a sannyasin means to become more and more blissful, to become more and more lightful. And both things are there; you just have to search within, look within. Then all the relationships. your whole life, starts taking on a new quality: that of luxury, grace, of sharing, of feeling tremendously joyful in making others joyous.

This is what I mean when I say that out of true selfishness, true altruism is born. [A sannyasin, leaving, says: I feel full of fun!]

That’s good. That’s what I want! Fun is religion to me.

[The sannyasin adds: I have left you a serious question though... in three parts: about living here or not, about leading groups or not, and about orgasms not happening.]

Nothing is serious about that. Lead groups, that’s perfectly good. Finally you have to be here but for the time being you can be in the West and lead groups. Then finish things there, come here.

And orgasm is nothing to be worried about. That is a toy for small children to play with. That too has to be taken very playfully. If it happens, good; if it doesn’t happen, perfectly good. Everything is good. That has to be the basic note, the basic flavour, that everything is good. Otherwise anything can become serious and heavy.

Now there are a few neurotics who want to attain peak experiences every day. They are just neurotics and nothing else! Now a new greed is their illness; a peak experience, an orgasmic experience, has become a must. Now there is again a new nightmare.

Just take life very easily. Nothing is important enough to be serious about. It is really playfulness that matters, that is significant.

So go and lead groups and then finalise things and come here!

[A sannyasin, returning, says: Well, since ’77 when I left, I did nearly all of the groups that are being done here.]

You have done all? Mm, you cannot do all, because they go on growing. Now there are sixty groups. It is difficult to do all. The person who is able to do sixty will become enlightened.

You do a few!

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