Chapter 22
[A couple and their baby are present. The mother says: I feel much more relaxed. In the last ten days or so I realised how much tension I usually carry and I just keep telling myself I need to relax more and more.]
Mm, if one starts taking note of the tension it starts disappearing. Tension can exist only when you are unaware of it; it is part of unawareness. The moment you start becoming alert that you are carrying some tension, you have moved in the right direction. Nothing else is needed to be done: just becoming fully aware of the fact that the tension is there, is relaxing. There is no need to practise anything to relax it, because that will create a new tension. That never helps, mm? To avoid one tension you create another tension. Just watch it. And there is nothing to be done about it; all doing is undoing. Let it be there, befriend it, start co-existing with it, and then one day suddenly you awake in the morning and it is not there. It is really beautiful when the tension goes on its own accord. Then it leaves a benediction behind it. If you manage to relax, that relaxation will remain full of tension, and somewhere in the background the tension will go on continuing, will wait, so that once you forget to be relaxed it can come back upon you, and it comes with a vengeance.
That's good! But remember only one thing: don't become too fat, because that happens when you start relaxing.
You have gathered weight.... Particularly if an American woman relaxes she will become fat, because that is part of tension: not to become fat. So that you have to be aware of, otherwise it will create new problems. If you are relaxed, eat less. A tense person can eat more and will not gather fat. A relaxed person can eat less and still can gather fat, because the relaxed person digests more. A very tense person can go on eating, stuffing, and will remain lean and thin. So with relaxation that has to be remembered.
And it almost always happens after a woman becomes a mother that she starts gathering fat, because motherhood is relaxing. The very idea that you have given birth to a being is a great fulfillment deep inside. Every cell of the body feels at home. The child around you, the caring for the child, the caressing of the child, and the child's love towards you growing every day, all creates a warm atmosphere. The mother is completely absorbed in the child. That's why husbands automatically start feeling that they are no more so close to the woman as they used to be, because the mother's whole attention starts moving towards the child; the child becomes so important. And there is a love affair with the child that is very relaxing. So keep it in mind: eat less, otherwise that will create trouble.
[Osho explains the meaning of veet megha - beyond all paths. Truth is beyond all paths; it is here, it is within you. One need not go anywhere to find it. Going anywhere is the sure way to miss it. There is a Chinese saying: The first step is the beginning of the journey of a thousand miles. But I say to you: Even the first step is not needed.
Without moving a single inch, the journey of one thousand miles is complete!]
Prem means love, anusiddha means very very close to the goal. The goal is just around the corner, any small thing can trigger the phenomenon. Siddha means one who has arrived; anusiddha means:
who is just on the boundary, arriving. The goal is not far away, and just the remembering that the goal is not far away makes a lot of difference. Sometimes we go on and on, moving very close to the goal but looking in some other direction. Sometimes we come very close to god, and miss him.
The original root of the Hebrew word for sin is to miss. That's a beautiful word, but in English it has lost the whole mystery of it. In Hebrew it means to miss the target. And everybody goes on missing.
In each one's life there are moments when just a small knock on the door and the temple would have opened, but either we are unaware of the door - we see it and yet see it not - or we don't think it is a door, we don't recognise it as a door. We are so occupied in our thoughts that we by-pass it, brooding, stewing in our own miseries; or we are looking for something else - for money, for power, for prestige. But god comes to every life in many many moments and remains unrecognised.
From this moment become more alert, and you will be surprised that these kind of opportunities have been coming to you for your whole life but you have not used them. Once you use them you will understand that you have passed this door many times. So god was not unjust and god was not hard on you; it was only that you were unaware. You never knew that this was the door, you never knew that you had to enter this door. And all that we are searching for can be found only in god.
Jesus says, 'Seek ye first the Kingdom of god, then all else shall be added unto you.' All else comes easily, on its own accord. Let the master come, let the lord come, and all things follow.
[Veet Seemo - reality is unbounded, that all boundaries are false and arbitrary.]
Reality does not begin anywhere and it does not end anywhere. It cannot be encompassed by any definition, any boundary, it hasn't any finitude. And the only thing that has to be dropped from the mind is the constant creation of boundaries.
The mind is very clever in creating boundaries. It lives on boundaries, it feeds on them: the boundary of a nation, the boundary of race, the boundary of colour, the boundary of man and woman, the
boundary of man and animals... boundaries upon boundaries. We go on creating boundaries and naturally, w e become very very tiny, suffocated. Those boundaries hang around us, we are caught in the net of boundaries: the creed and the church, the political and philosophical ideology. We become smaller and smaller, each boundary makes us smaller, then finally there is the boundary of the ego which destroys us completely.
Stop creating boundaries and start dropping boundaries. The bigger is truer, and when you have come to the total it has no boundary. Trees and mountains and man and animals are linked in one existence. The black and the white, the Christian and the Mohammedan, the Indian and the Chinese, all meet, all disappear into one cosmos.
Remember the one which is beyond the boundary; that's what god is.
Deva means divine, satsanga means in the presence of - to be in the presence of the divine. And the divine is everywhere; one just needs to learn how to be in its presence. Seeing a tree, don't just see the tree but see within - the life, the green life, the green juice; not only the flower but the hidden beauty, the immaterial part of it - and you will be in the presence of god. Listening to music, don't only listen to the music, listen to the silence too, because there are things which can be expressed by sound and there are things which can be expressed only by silence. There are things which can be seen only with eyes and there are things which are invisible to eyes; they can be seen only by an inner eye.
So go on digging everywhere for the divine, for the hidden. In everything that we take for granted, god is hidden - in the stone and in the stars; one just has to learn how to decode them. The message goes on impinging on your being from every corner, from every direction. God goes on calling you. You just have to become a little more receptive, a little more silent, a little more passive, a little more feminine: that makes satsanga. Then you are in the presence.
An open heart, a ready heart, a welcoming heart; that's what satsanga is all about. It is one of the most precious words in the East. When a person sits in the presence of a master it is called satsanga. When a person goes and meditates in the temple it is called satsanga.
Sat means truth and sanga means with - being with the truth.
Sat means being, samudaya means arising. Up to now you have lived as a becoming, as a desire:
doing this, doing that, trying for this, trying for that. You have never given yourself any rest in being.
Becoming is a struggle, becoming is future: some day it will happen and then everything will be okay. It never happens. Becoming drives people crazy. But everybody lives in that; becoming is the world, what in the Last we call samsara, the world. And the world is too much with us and we are too much in the world. From the very childhood everybody drives us crazy to become this, to become that - a doctor, an engineer, a scientist, a millionaire, whatever, but go on becoming. The end is somewhere in the future. It never comes; death always comes before it.
Being is herenow, it is what you are right now, and if the being is allowed, joy explodes: one simply bursts into many many flowers. Becoming is heavy and goes on killing the being. One need not be anybody else other than whom one is; one is perfectly good as one is. When this message strikes deep into the heart, when one simply relaxes and drops all nonsense of becoming anything,
suddenly one is a child again, collecting seashells on the beach or running after butterflies or resting under a tree. Life is again innocent, life is again a benediction..
That is the meaning of sat: being. You are already that which you always wanted to become, and you could not see it because you were so interested in becoming. You could not see what is already the case. And samudaya means arising.
Sannyas is a sunrise; hence the colour orange - it is the colour of the rising sun. And the sun is the being. When one starts allowing the being to arise out of the clouds of becoming, one has attained.
That is what Jesus means by Kingdom of god, that's why he insists that it is within you.
[A new sannyasin asks about the words in a sufi song, 'Follow the beast, follow the flowers, and follow your heart in a natural way'. He says that when he listens to his mind he always 'gets it'. But when he listens to the natural way, to the heart, he doesn't hear anything. He asks: How to get what the natural way is?]
If you get it, it will not be natural any more. It is not something to be searched for and found. You are natural, all this is natural - this confusion too, these voices too! The moment you start thinking about how to be natural you will get into trouble, because whatsoever you do will be really unnatural.
The natural needs no doing. The natural means exactly that which is there on its own accord; it needs no help from you. Whatsoever is, is natural, so accept it, even when sometimes contrary and contradictory voices are heard; that is natural. Man is a contradiction; man has to be a contradiction, because man has an animal past and a divine future. Man is a meeting point of two diametrically opposite worlds, matter and consciousness, the body and the soul, the animal heritage and the divine destiny. Man is pulled apart between these two.
A dog is not pulled apart; he has a very simple nature, non-contradictory. A dog never thinks about how to be natural. He is natural, because he has a single nature. Man has a double nature. That is the glory and the anguish too, because man has a double-planed being. Man is a double-decker bus, a double-storied building, and both the stories are not only different but diametrically opposite, two polarities.
Live this contradiction, live these contrary voices, enjoy this confusion; don't try to decide.
Whatsoever happens is good and whatsoever does not happen, that too is good. Accept your being as it is. It is vast, it contains contradiction. The problem is arising because you would like to have a very consistent life, one voice. That is not possible. Either you have to become an animal - then that is possible, one voice - or you have to become a god, then that is possible, one voice. But you are between the two. Man is just like a tightrope walker between two mountains in the abyss, hanging between the two polar extremes. Accept it, and don't be in a hurry to decide.
The thing that goes on resounding in your mind - you call it Sufi - is just a mind idea. Follow the flowers and the birds: that is just a mind idea. How can you follow the flowers? You are a man! No flower ever bothers to follow man. Would you really like to become a flower? Just think of it and you will shrink away. Man is far richer than any flower. A flower is very poor really; what has a flower got? What, compared to human consciousness? The human being and human consciousness is the greatest flowering on the earth, the highest flowering. I will not say to follow the flower, because that will really be unnatural for you. If you were a flower you would have been a flower. You are not
a flower, you are a man. You have to live all the agony of man, all the pain of being a man. You have to pass through that pain to the ecstasy that is available only to man and to no flower.
In fact in saying to follow the flower all that is said is to accept whatsoever is the case. A flower accepts: if it is sunny, the flower accepts it; if it is windy, the flower accepts it; if it is raining, the flower accepts it. The flower has no rejection for anything. One moment it is windy, another moment the wind disappears. The flower does not say, 'This is inconsistent. One moment it was cloudy and the next moment the sun bursts forth'; the flower does not say, 'Now, this puzzles me.' The flower accepts all that happens. That is the real meaning of following a flower. You can't become a flower, you need not become a flower, you should not become a flower; but whatsoever is, enjoy it, accept it. And man is multidimensional.
That idea that has got into your mind will disappear by and by. Don't pay much attention to it, otherwise it can drive you crazy. But sannyas will do many things. Sannyas is a deep acceptance of life as it is - natural, unnatural, no effort to improve, no effort to change... just an utter relaxation into as it is. It will become possible.
[A visitor, who is the founder of the 'Samata' movement, says he just wanted Osho's blessings. Osho blesses him. The visitor then says that he was with Osho in a previous life.]
You were, that's true. And (chuckling) you are going to be with me again - that is even more true!
Your work is good, it is moving in the right direction and it will grow; so help people. There is nothing more valuable in life than to share your love, your meditation and your understanding. That's the greatest gift we can give to people.
Buddha has said, 'The greatest gift is to give religion to people.' The word that he uses for religion is 'dhamma'; it is far more meaningful than the English word 'religion'. Because the word 'religion' gives the idea of Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, but dhamma simply means the ultimate law, tao. Share tao with people. And the only way to share tao with people is to share your being with people.
[Osho gives him a box.] Keep this with you. And whenever you need me just put it on your heart.
It is an empty box; it represents my emptiness, nothingness, nobodyness. But nothingness is not nothingness, it is fullness. And come back whenever you can.