Chapter 27

Veet means beyond, nisha means night.

The night is just ending, the dawn is entering. The night is taking itself away. We cannot do anything to disperse it; it comes and goes on its own. But we can do one thing: even when the morning is there, already there, and the sun has risen, we may not open our eyes; then inside us the night still continues. And just the reverse is also true: if you open your eyes, really open your eyes in the deepest dark, the darkness disappears. So all depends on whether you open your eyes or not. To remain with closed eyes is to remain in the night, to open your eyes and start seeing is the beginning of the day, the beginning of light, and the beginning of the divine. The word 'day' comes from divine.

So the night depends on each person's resistance to light, their fear of light. One feels cosy with closed eyes. To open your eyes needs courage because you may have to see things that you never wanted to see in yourself, outside yourself. Your dreams may be shattered; they are bound to be shattered because they can exist only with closed eyes, they can exist only in sleep. They may be beautiful, sweet dreams, and one wants to cling to those dreams. People have become so addicted to dreams that they don't open their eyes, they don't see the light of the day.

Let sannyas be the beginning of seeing. Seeing is light. Remaining with closed eyes is darkness.

That is the meaning of veet nisha: go beyond the night, open your eyes, see.

Deva means divine, martanda means the source of light, the sun - divine sun. You have very very active energy, sun energy, in you. You have to get in tune with the sun and with all that is sunny and sun-lit. That is your temple; the sun is your god: be a sun-worshipper. The moon cannot be the right thing for you. It is right for people who have passive energy, feminine energy. You are almost sitting on a volcano of energy. If you don't allow it to be creative it will be dangerous for you. It has to be released in great creativity, in exuberance. Bloom in as many flowers as possible, do as many things

as you feel like doing, don't shirk from doing and you will move from bliss to more bliss. But action will be your meditation. You cannot be a silent, passive meditator; you will find it almost impossible.

There is no need.

Meditations have two possibilities: one is of passive awareness, another is active awareness. One can sit silently and meditate. One can walk, run, jog, swim and meditate. The second will suit you, and it will bring great joy.

Das means servant, anudas means servant of the servants. The whole name will mean servant of the servants. God is invisible, the master is invisible, but his servants are visible. Man is visible, woman is visible, animals are visible. They are all servants of one master, of one lord. To serve the servants is the easiest approach... at least for you.

Don't be worried about the abstract god; look for the concrete god. The master is hidden in the servants. If you can serve the servant, one day you will discover that you have found the master.

. Jesus when departing told his disciples, 'Serve people, love people as I have loved you, as I have served you.' He touched the feet, washed the feet, of his disciples. They were feeling embarrassed.

He had never done such a thing before, and they asked, 'Why? You make us embarrassed.' And he said, 'So that you can remember that to serve the servant is to serve the lord.'

God is immensely visible if you don't look for an abstract concept. God is everywhere. You stumble into him every moment; you bump into him and he bumps into you every moment. Then you walk upon him and you sleep with him, you breathe him and you eat him. Life takes on a totally new colour, a new vibration.

So look into the servants and you will find the master because the master exists there. Servants are just his faces, many faces, many forms.

It means rainbow. Indira is the god of rains, clouds, thunder, and dhanu means the bow, so in India the rainbow is known as the bow of the god of clouds.

I am giving this name to you because it represents all the colours, the whole spectrum of life, and one has to live the whole spectrum of life. Never deny anything. The denied part will hang around you like a load; it will not allow you to grow. One can grow only as a total being. If some part remains stuck in the past, you cannot move. You can only pretend that you are moving. If one of your legs is stuck in the mud, the other leg, even if it is free, cannot move. Man can move only as an organic unity. So nothing should be denied; all should be lived in deep gratitude, in joy, prayerfully, lovingly.

Life should be thought of as a multi-dimensional opportunity to grow.

All the religions in the past have been teaching people denial, rejection, negation. They have not accepted life in its totality. They have been choosing, they choose only so much. That's why humanity has remained stuck, childish, juvenile. All the so-called progress is just a noise, an empty noise. Man has not been progressing at all, and because man is not progressing he tries to improve upon things, and thinks that if you have a car instead of a bullock cart this is progress. This is not real progress: the real progress is to grow in your interiority, in your subjectivity.What does it matter whether you have a bullock cart or a car or an aeroplane? It doesn't matter really. How can it be

your evolution? Maybe it adds comfort to life but it does not make life intense, deep; it does not give heights to you.

Man has to be freed from the past; he has to be given a new vision of life of total acceptability, a life- affirmative approach. Nothing has to be denied, everything has to be transformed. Even that which looks apparently evil, that too has some function to perform. Anger has to become compassion; anger denied, the person will never have any compassion. Sex has to become samadhi; sex denied, that man will never know what samadhi is.

So body, mind, soul, the whole trinity has to be lived. The whole spectrum, all the colours of life have to be lived. And when one lives all the colours of life a moment comes when all those colours melt and merge into one colour. This is white. It represents holiness, purity.

There comes a new quality of awareness; man becomes pure white, becomes pure light. But that is possible only when all the seven colours meet. Deny a single colour and you will never know that purity of white.

Prem means love, pavitra means purity - love brings great purity. In fact only love can bring purity; other kinds of purity are cultivated, artificial. Love brings spontaneous purity, it comes on its own accord; you don't do anything about it. When you are in love, purity surrounds you like a fragrance.

I teach that purity.

I don't teach the religious kind of purity; that kind of purity is just a practised thing, it is a mask. Deep down you remain the same, or you become very skilful in empty gestures. That purity is phony.

The real purity has not to be practised, cannot be practised: love brings it. One has to go deep into love and suddenly the gift comes. The gift is purity! The risk is love; purity is a gift. One who risks, gets it. It is a reward from heaven. It is not managed, it is grace.

[A sannyasin hands Osho a note which he reads, and says that she is taking herself too seriously, that she needs to allow herself to commit a few mistakes now and then. Learn to accept yourself, he says; in rejecting yourself, you are rejecting god. Misery is created by non-acceptance of oneself and conflict created through non-acceptance of misery itself. Start accepting misery and you will see there is some beauty in that too. There are people who remain miserable in joy; they cannot enjoy joy either.]

I used to stay in a home, in Poona itself, while I was travelling. The woman of the house would be so happy. I would come only once in a year for three days, four days, and she would be so happy that she would forget to eat, she would forget everything; she would be simply dancing.

In another town I used to stay with another family. Whenever I was there the woman would be continuously miserable for four days, and the reason - I searched into it - was the same: that woman was miserable because she said, 'Whenever you come, you bring so much joy so the day you enter in to my house I start feeling "One day is gone, now two days are gone, three days are gone and after four days it will be over; then again I will have to wait for one year." I become miserable. I cannot stop crying, because there are only four days and they will be fleeting; then I will have to wait again for a year!'

The other woman would say, 'I feel so happy in these four days that I can wait for one year; that is enough. It brings such deep contentment to me that I can wait for one year; it is enough for one year.'

Now, the situations are the same but the interpretations are different. The miserable person will find misery in it and the other woman will say, 'I wait the whole year and I am so happy that a few days have passed, now one month has passed, now two months have passed; now you will be coming! I remain happy the whole year round because you will be coming.'

It depends on you. Start loving yourself from this moment and try life my way for three months, mm?

You have tried your way so many years and it has failed; now give me a chance!

[A visitor says: I don't feel ready to take sannyas yet.... I just feel that I've made a lot of deep commitments and they've gone wrong. I feel afraid to commit myself again.]

Mm mm! All those commitments were nothing; for the first time you are close to a commitment! A commitment with god is the only commitment; all others are just mundane. Even if they are fulfilled, nothing is fulfilled. A commitment with god, a date with god, is the only commitment worth going into.

Only there is your mettle proved, nowhere else. In fact all other commitments are just a preparation for the final commitment. In love you commit, in friendship you commit; those are just preparations, small steps towards the final commitment. You have passed through small battles, they were battles; now comes the final battle. And why be afraid? If you have been successful in your commitments, if you have fulfilled your commitments, why be afraid? - this will also be fulfilled.

And remember one thing: the ordinary commitments of life, even if unfulfilled, do not matter much, and a commitment with god, even if not fulfilled, matters much. If you fail in your ultimate thirst, even that failure is far richer than all the successes of this life. At least you have the consolation that you tried. Mm? the task was impossible but you tried, you groped, you risked. And my feeling is that if one risks, one finds. It is only the people who don't risk, who lose.

But if you feel that you are not yet ready, wait and think about it, meditate over it. My feeling is that you are ready, your life has prepared you. But one always hesitates for the ultimate commitment; that hesitation is natural. It is not that you are not ready; the hesitation is natural. And remember:

whenever you take sannyas the hesitation will be there. You will not be able to lessen it in any way; it may become even more. The more you think about it, the more you can hesitate.

Something like a foolhardiness is needed to go into it; thinking is not of much help.

[She answers: I felt I had made a commitment to god many years ago, but.... ]

You must have been thinking that time too, and hesitating. Now the moment has come! And it is simple to make a commitment to god because god is invisible and it remains a private phenomenon; nobody is going to ask you.... Unless you encounter god, nobody is going to ask you, 'What happened to your commitment?' To commit yourself to a master means that somebody is there to whom you become responsible, to whom you are answerable. It is very easy in your silent prayer to commit yourself to god; it has no risk in it. Mm? it is monologue, the other side is not present.

When you come to a master the other side is present and commitment is public, not private; then the real risk!

But you can hesitate a little more if you feel like that. It is not going to help at all; it will simply make you more and more worried. But sometimes one needs to lose sleep and become worried and hesitate, and think over the pros and cons.

My feeling is that you are ready. If you listen to me, become a sannyasin. If you want to think, think.

What should we do?

Prem means love, mani means diamond. All other diamonds are false, mere stones. The value is only projected; there is no basic difference between other stones and the diamonds. The value is imparted by the human mind, the value is not intrinsic there in the diamond. Love is the only real diamond - the value is so intrinsic. Love is the only valuable thing in life. To fulfil love is to fulfil all.

And love has to grow from the smaller to the bigger, from the finite to the infinite, from the visible to the invisible. That's really the search for god.

God is nothing but the search of love for the ultimate object of it. Love is not satisfied with ordinary objects. One can play and pass time and one can have a few joys with them, they are fun, but sooner or later one is tired of one toy and one starts looking again for another object. This can go on and on, life after life. Finally the moment comes when one understands that no object is going to fulfil one's love, then the search for god starts. God means: that which is going to fulfil one's love, that unknown object, that invisible object which will fulfil one. So remember love, and let the diamond of love grow in your heart. Good, mani!

Prem means love, viraga means non-possessive, nonattached. Love is true only when it knows no attachment. Love is profound only when it has no possessiveness in it. Love gives freedom, and when you give freedom, you get freedom too. If you possess the other, he starts possessing you.

Love dies when possession starts.

Millions of people live a loveless life because they don't know that love cannot live with attachment.

One can only survive at the cost of the other: either you can love or you can possess. So learn non- possessiveness, and bring a totally different kind of love into your being which gives unconditionally, which enjoys the sheer giving.

[A sannyasin who has done many ashram groups and just completed Individual Primal Therapy says: It was very strong... but my sexual energy is still blocked, I don't know what to do.]

Then you accept your sexuality as it is; don't try anything any more. Just accept. If it is to come, it will come; if it is not to come, forget about it.

[He asks: What about the energy for growth? Mustn't it come through there?]

No, you have the energy. It does not come from anybody; you have the energy. Sex is not a must. In fact, millions of people have tried to go into meditation without sex, because sex also takes energy.

And if it is not coming to you naturally, why bother? - you may be a born monk! Perfectly good!

You have energy, and the energy will be saved because it will not be wasted in sex; it will all go into meditation. Simply forget about it. Enjoy being non-sexual, be a celibate. Mm?