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‌CHAPTER 8

8 January 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Anand means bliss, and Francis represents a few things. One: the childlike quality, and that is the most fundamental requirement for going into truth. The knowledgeable never enters; he goes round and round. Only the wondering heart can penetrate to the core of reality, only innocent eyes can see truth. The more learned one is, the less is the possibility of knowing: the more knowledge there is, the less knowing.

Francis represents the childlike quality. Not only that. he also represents the quality of a fool; and that is one of the most beautiful things about Saint Francis. Only the person who is foolish enough can enter beyond the known. Those who are clever, the so-called wise, never go beyond the boundary; they are so afraid, they cannot risk.

Francis used to call himself ‘God’s fool’; but god is only for fools. The fool means one who can risk all, who is a gambler, who can sacrifice the known for the unknown, who can sacrifice all worldly cleverness to go into the dark night of the unknown and the unknowable.

The third thing that Francis represents is love. After Jesus there have been only very few people in the Christian tradition who can be compared to Francis, so few that you can count them on your fingers: Eckhart, Boehme, Teresa – just very few people. Christianity has not produced a long chain of enlightened people. Francis is one of the greatest flowerings that has happened in the Christian tradition. He is pure love, unconditional love, love for all, love for eXistence itself. He rejoices in his love; that is his prayer. The whole existence is his home. The trees are brothers and the fish are sisters. It is a family, it is a love affair: everything is related in deep communion.

I am keeping the name so that you can imbibe these three qualities, and where these three qualities meet the ultimate is bound to happen.

Sugato is one of the names of Gautam the Buddha. It means well-gone. We call the person well- gone who will never be coming back, one who has lived his life so totally that there will be no need any more of coming back into the womb.

One has to come back again and again in life because one has not yet learnt the lesson. Life is a school, the real school; all other schools are just creations of man. They give you information but they don’t make you wise. In fact they burden your being with so much knowledge that you become incapable of living; and it is only out of living that wisdom arises. One who lives totally dies totally; and a total death is the greatest thing that can happen to a person. A total death means no more coming back.

That is the meaning of sugato: one who has gone so well that he will never be coming again. People who live half-heartedly will have to be thrown back into the body again and again. They will have to pass through many more sufferings, because it is only suffering that purifies. But suffering gone through unconsciously does not purify. Only when one goes into suffering consciously is it a purification. Life has many sufferings, many joys too. My sannyasin has to go into all those sufferings and happinesses consciously.

The deeper you go into your sufferings and your happinesses, you will be surprised: they are not separate, they are one phenomenon, two sides of the same thing. Once this is understood, the coin, the whole coin, drops from your hand. You no more cling to your happiness because you know it is nothing but suffering, and you no more avoid suffering, because you know it is the other side of happiness. The greed for happiness disappears at the same time as the fear of suffering disappears: it is a simultaneous phenomenon. In that very moment one is free – rather, one is freedom, and that freedom need not come back again into bondage.

Veet means beyond, pramad means unawareness. One has to go beyond unawareness; only then one is. Remaining unaware, we are not yet born. Just as the child in the mother’s womb is alive but unborn, so we are alive as far as our souls are concerned, but unborn. We are in a kind of womb, a dark womb of unconsciousness.

Real life starts only with the second birth. The first birth only gives you a physical life, the life of the body. The second birth gives you a spiritual birth, then you are born as a soul. And when body and soul are both there great music is created out of their meeting. Something of the beyond immediately starts happening. Just as when a man and a woman meet in deep love and there is orgasmic joy, exactly like that but a millionfold more when the body and the soul meet there is an orgasmic joy which is infinite, which is unbounded.

But we live as the body and we have completely forgotten that another birth is needed. That’s what Jesus means when he says to Nicodemus: You will not enter into my kingdom of god unless you are born again. All the initiative processes of religion are nothing but processes of rebirth.

Nobody can give you this rebirth except yourself. Help can be given, support can be given, a supportive atmosphere can be given, but still the central thing has to be done by you. It can only be done by you; it cannot be done by anybody else on your behalf.

The master functions as a midwife. That’s what Socrates used to say to his disciples: I am a midwife. The midwife can help, can make it easier, but still the birth has to be given by you. It has to happen

at the innermost core of your being, in the recesses of your being. And the gestalt that has to be changed is from unawareness to awareness.

Socrates has said: An unexamined life is not worth living. That word ‘unexamined’ is not the right translation from the original, and because of this word – a single mistranslation – the whole of Western philosophy took a wrong turn.

Sometimes small things can have effects for centuries. It is not really an unexamined life that is not worth living, it is an unaware life that is not worth living. If you think of an unexamined life then you start analysing it: rather than becoming aware, you go into analysis. That’s how the whole of Western philosophy went into analysis and became just logic-chopping: analysing and analysing and never arriving anywhere.

The Eastern philosophy has moved in the right direction: from unawareness to awareness. The life which is lived unawarely is not worth living, it is true, because you don’t live: you only pretend to live.

This word ‘pramad’ is of immense significance. Keep it as a key and transform each act of your life from unawareness into awareness. Reclaim yourself from the darkness of unconsciousness as much as you can; become more and more conscious.

This is what sannyas is all about. Nothing else has to be changed: only something in the inner world, the inner approach, the inner light. The whole world remains the same. I don’t teach renunciation, that you have to leave this and that. You live the same life, you live in the same life, you live in the same world, but if you bring awareness to your acts your world is transformed. It is not the same world, although it is the same. Anything to say to me?

[The new sannyasin says: Very deep in my heart I feel a great love and longing for children, yet I’ve been unable to stay in relationship for any length of time with one person.]

And would you like to stay with one person? The desire is there?

I think you should not force that desire on yourself. Go on the way you have been going on, with a little more awareness, that’s all. If you force yourself into a certain relationship you will feel very suffocated, imprisoned. You are not the type who can easily live in one relationship.

There are different types, and one has to listen to one’s own type. Of course the opposite type always has some attractions. There are some beauties when you go on moving into new relationship again and again. There is great thrill, adventure, and each time that a new honeymoon starts you are again on the peaks. But again there is frustration: each time a relationship ends, the frustration, the misery, the anguish. Everything is shattered again and you have to put yourself together again. So the joy is when you start a new relationship and the misery is when it ends.

If you live in one relationship the joy is of being intimate, of being more secure. But you will not find the thrill, you will not find the adventure. You will find closeness, intimacy; and there is some beauty in some intimacy, because there are a few things which grow only in intimacy. Roots grow in intimacy. You come closer and closer and the relationship starts taking a new turn. It is not so sexual, sex slowly slowly withers away: it becomes more and more affection, friendship. It takes on

a totally different quality which is very very fulfilling. But then you will miss the honeymoons again and again and you may feel bored.

If you go on changing your relationships you will feel tired but never bored; and if you live in one relationship you will not feel tired but you will feel bored. So both types of life styles have their joys and their miseries. Naturally when one is feeling tired one starts thinking of the other kind, and when one is feeling bored one starts thinking of the other kind. That is the natural tendency, to think that the opposite may be far better, because you don’t know the opposite. Rather than deciding in this way one should watch one’s own type and one should relax with one’s own type.

As I can see you, at least for the time being, don’t decide, just go on moving. It may happen: one day you may find somebody with whom both things can happen together, then only will you be able to settle; somebody with whom life can remain a constant adventure, then your type is not starved; and somebody with whom you can also stay together, and with whom the intimacy grows. But for that you cannot immediately decide, you have to wait, you have to learn patience. It can happen some day, but it has to happen; it has not to be forced to happen. If you force it you will be more miserable than you are. It will be simply changing from one misery to another; and the other will be far more destructive because it will not fit with your type.

Up to now every society has decided in favour of one type, so every society is miserable because the people who do not belong to the same type... and fifty per cent don’t belong. Fifty per cent of people are monogamous and fifty per cent of people are polygamous. That’s always the balance everywhere, in everything: fifty per cent this way, fifty per cent just the opposite.

So if the society is monogamous – for example in the East, in India, or as it has been in the past in the West too – if the society is strictly monogamous then the non-monogamous type suffers tremendously. It is a very very mountainous weight on his heart. The non-monogamous type is the adventurous type, the type who explores, not only sexually: he explores in every way. So the society which remains monogamous becomes non-explorative, uncreative, because the creative person is crushed, is given no chance to grow.

The monogamous person is an uncreative person. He wants security, safety, he wants to live a cosy life. He is not a vagabond, he is not a gypsy. In every way he is not a vagabond; not only physically but spiritually, psychologically, he is not a vagabond. He would rather insist on the old and the familiar than on the new. He is not interested in the new, because the new always brings difficulties: you have to settle again, you have to change yourself with the new. Every new change and again you have to disturb your life. So monogamous societies become unscientific, superstitious, static, dull, dead.

The non monogamous society becomes very adventurous, alive, flowing, but very tense, very tired. It brings science into existence, it explores new ways, because the whole spirit is that of the wanderer. The new is loved; the old, because it is old, is hated. Everybody is ready to drop it as fast, as quick, as they can manage.

But that society will miss the calmness, quietness, cosiness, safety, the warmth, of a home. It will always remain in a kind of camp-life: one day you are here, another day you are somewhere else. Of course there is the joy of the new, new territories, and the exploration, but the trouble is also there: you are never settled, you are never at home anywhere.

My vision of a new community is that we will allow all types of people in each society; we should allow. All kinds of people have to be given total freedom to be themselves so that those who want to remain in a deep, intimate relationship, can; those who love the same taste again and again, can have that. They should not be condemned; they should not be worshipped either. And those who would like to change their whole style of life – their relationship, their love, their friendship, their place, their job – every day, every once in a while, have also to be allowed. Both are good.

Then the society will be more balanced. It will not be Eastern, it will not be Western; it will simply be one whole, one earth. But this has not happened yet. If we respect one, we condemn the other; we Cannot respect both polar opposites.

My suggestion for you is that you do a few groups and you remain as you are; there is no hurry to change. Soon you will be able to find somebody with whom your type, and the longing to have some intimate deep-going relationship, will be fulfilled. But for that you will have to wait. If you are in a hurry and you decide, you will feel very suffocated.

And rather than being bored being tired is better. The tired person has some hope; the bored person has no hope. Wait!

Arpan means one who is offered to god. And we have only ourselves to offer; offering anything else won’t do.

People are ready to offer everything except themselves; and that is the only thing that we really have. We come empty handed and we go empty-handed, so what can we offer to god? We can offer our emptiness, our empty hands: that is the only offering. But in that very offering the ego disappears; and the moment the ego is not, god is. God is only when you have known him, but you will know him only when you are not. If you are too much then your very presence is a barrier; if you are too full of yourself then there is no space for god to enter in you.

By offering I mean that you simply surrender yourself, and in that moment when you are just an offering, surrendered, a great silence descends. Following that silence comes god: the experience of the ultimate meeting with existence.

So this is your work: go on offering, disappear. That is the only way to attain to real being. The choice is not between to be or not to be; not to be is the only way to be.

[Osho gives sannyasin, saying:]

Just raise your hands, close your eyes and feel like a tree. Forget the human body. These hands are your branches spread out. It is raining, it is windy, and the tree is dancing, swaying. Just feel like a tree. Feel the wind, feel the rain, feel delighted. And if something starts happening in the body – moving, swaying – go with it.

Prem means love, sakino means an aura – the aura of love. It is only love which gives you an aura of light, which creates a small climate around you of light, of beauty, of joy. But at the very core of it all is the flame of love. Once the heart is full of love you will start radiating light. Lovers become luminous; and those who are in great love with existence, their luminosity is infinite.

All over the world we have made auras around the heads of saints; that is very symbolic. That simply shows that a flame, which we cannot see, is burning in the heart, but at least we can feel the aura around the head – of Buddha and Christ, and Mahavira and Zarathustra. That is the only thing which we have done all over the world: we have made a light surround the people who have arrived. We have depicted them, painted them, with the aura of light.

But the light is possible only if the flame is there in the heart. Without the flame there can be no aura. That flame is love. Create love and your life will be a life of light and not of darkness.

Darkness is death, and millions of people live in death. They live in death, they die in death. It is very rare to find a person who lives, who is really alive, vibrantly alive. And whenever you come across a person who is vibrantly alive you will immediately feel some light radiating from him.

Create love, become more loving. You can, that’s why I am giving you this name: you can radiate the light of that secret, hidden flame of love.

And when I say love, I don’t mean that you have to love only human beings or only this person, that person. By love I simply mean a state of love. One has to be in the state of love continuously, for twenty-four hours. One has to be simply loving, that’s what I mean – not love as relationship but the quality of loving. Even if you are sitting alone, be full of love. Even if you are arranging furniture, be loving, to the furniture. It is not a question of what you are doing, whether you are dealing with things or with persons; the question is to remain continuously in the state of love. Only then does the light arise one day.

That light is the ultimate experience that life makes available to people. That light is called god, another name for the same light. Once you have known that light you have known life eternal. Then there is no death. Death happens only in darkness: when there is light there is no death. Death is an illusion then, a myth, a lie.

[A sannyasin, leaving, asks Osho to bless her work in the west.] My blessings are always with you.

And work forgetting yourself completely so that I can work through you, because whenever you think that you are working, you start hesitating, you become uncertain; and that is natural. If you leave it to me, all hesitation will disappear, all uncertainty will disappear. If you leave it to me, miracles are possible.

So this time just let me in and don’t disturb things at all.

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