Darshan 9 July 1978

[A sannyasin, who is leaving, says: It's one year today since I arrived here, and I'm leaving feeling that I haven't done enough work on myself here.]

It is never enough... and it is good that it is never enough. Growth has no end. It is not a journey with a destination - the journey itself is the destination. We are not going anywhere. We are just learning how to be here, and here has infinite depth. One can go on and on and on; it is inexhaustible.

So that feeling will always be there; it is a healthy feeling. It does not happen to people who have not done anything. In those who do something this feeling is bound to arise, because the more you know of life, the more a longing to know arises. The more blissful you become, the more doors open.

One always finds a higher peak challenging.

The mystics have called it the divine discontent. All the buddhas have been saying to people 'Don't be discontented with the world - be contented with the world - but with yourself, with the inner, remain in utter discontent.' Ordinarily people are doing just the opposite: they are contented with themselves and discontented with the world. It has to be put right-side-up: be contented with the world and remain in utter discontent with yourself.

If one becomes contented with oneself, that is death. Then there is no more. Then there will be sheer boredom and nothing else. What will you explore then?Just think of heaven - people who are utterly contented with themselves. A man of understanding will choose hell rather than heaven, because heaven will be utter boredom. Nothing will be happening there, nothing can ever happen there. It will be infinite boredom, timeless boredom. But the reality is that when you reach one heaven, another heaven starts calling you.

This is the beauty of life. It is perpetual movement, and mysteries go on opening up. You cannot come to an end.

Deva means divine, sadyo means immediacy - the immediate, herenow. That which is herenow is divine. That which is not herenow is unreal, undivine. God has no other tense except the present.

You cannot use tenses like past or future for god; you cannot say 'god was', you cannot say 'god will be.' You can only use one tense for him, the present: god is.

And all that is is god! In fact is-ness and god are synonymous, they mean the same thing. In love we call is-ness god, that's all. We personify it. We are more poetic in calling it god. Is-ness will be too naked, too scientific, too bare, unclothed, and will look a little dry; god is more human. But basically they don't mean anything different; they are synonymous.

And this is going to be your path, in fact, this is the only path there is. If one can be immediate, if one can live in this moment, utterly - with no interference from the past, no interference from the future, if the present can be lived in its purity, in its innocence, uncalculated, unplanned - that is meditation.

To be immediate is to be meditative.

Meditation is not an act; it is just a state of pure is-ness. It is not that you do, but that you are. Mm?

these crows and the train - this is all included in it.

And whatsoever happens always happens in the now, but our mind is never in the now; it is always somewhere else. It goes on desiring, dreaming, it goes on planning. It goes on having private destinies in the future. It thinks in terms of shoulds, oughts, and that's how we go on missing the real. The real knows no should, no ought - it simply is; it can't be otherwise. To relax into the present is to be free of all worry, is to be free of all mind, is to be free of all prisons, of all slavery, and such great benediction starts happening.

So your name is going to be a constant reminder to you. Don't start moving into the past and into the future. Whenever you catch yourself red-handed moving into the past and into the future, come back to the present immediately. Slowly slowly it starts happening more and more. And the joy of it is such that once you taste it it is bound to happen more and more.

A day comes when all time disappears, when you and the reality are no more separate - there is harmony. You breathe in it, it breathes in you; there is oneness. You vibrate in it. That is the dance the mystics have been talking about down the ages, the celebration.

[Osho explains the meaning of prem samyo: love is god.]

There is no need to have any other god. And all other gods are poor substitutes for god? Very poor substitutes. If all gods disappear from the earth, it will be a great day. If all other temples are dismantled and only love becomes the temple, only love is left as god, man will become religious for the first time. Because all other gods have become gods of hate. Behind those gods, hatred and violence is hiding. Hence the history of religion has been the history of wars, crusades. It looks so stupid, so utterly absurd, that religion has been murderous, that in the name of religion much blood has been shed - much more blood than in any other name. Man has become divided because of religions. All other gods have to be dropped.

And love is a natural phenomenon. It is not a theological thing. It is not out of theology that love is born; it is not a thought in the minds of philosophers. Everybody is born with it, everybody comes with the potential for love. If love grows, one grows; if love is hindered, then one's growth is hindered.

And the ultimate flowering of love is what Christ-consciousness or Buddha-consciousness is. That's what enlightenment is all about.

So worship love! And there is no need to create a ritual for it; one can be simply loving. One need not go to a certain place, one need not do a certain ritual. One can be simply loving, loving to one and all - just loving, to these clouds and the rains and to the trees and to the people and to the earth. For twenty-four hours a day one can be simply flowing in love.

Make it a point that even if you touch anything, touch it with great love, with sensitivity, caress it, because whatsoever you touch, you touch god, and with whomsoever you are, you are with god.

When you look in somebody's eyes, search for the god, and when you see a flower dancing in the wind, look for god's dance.

God is not a concept but a state of love. When love is flowing twenty-four hours a day for no other reason, for no other motive but just for its own sake - it is such a joy to be loving; there is no need for any other motivation - then one is religious and one's life is prayer. You will know all that is written in the Vedas and Tao Te Ching and the Bible and the Koran. You need not go into the Koran and you need not go into the Vedas and the Bible - you only need to go into more love, and love will reveal all the secrets of all the scriptures.

[A sannyasin, who is leaving, says he will miss Osho.]

Then start a centre! And wherever my sannyasins meet, I am there! Then you will not miss me so much. Should I give you a name? Just a small place will do - people can meet at your home, mm?

This will be the name: Anugraha.

It means gratitude, and gratitude is of immense value. That is the closest door to the divine: to feel grateful for all that existence has done and is continuously doing. Its blessings are infinite, but man is so ungrateful, so miserly in his thankfulness, that even to say 'I am grateful', seems impossible. And unless one starts feeling gratefulness to existence one remains alienated, one remains a stranger Gratefulness becomes the bridge; then this is your home. The more grateful you feel towards existence, the more you are at home and at ease. The whole dis-ease of the human mind is because gratefulness has disappeared from the world. Never before was man so ill-at-ease, and the reason is: the modern mind, the modern man is the first on the earth who is utterly ungrateful. We have started taking things for granted.

Nothing should be taken for granted. All is so miraculous, so wondrous. All is such a mystery and it brings such benediction. But to see that one has to become a child again and to look with wondering eyes. Then life starts being alive again. Then trees are no more just trees: they are people - and mountains are no more just mountains: they arc gods. The earth is not just the earth, but the mother, and the sky is not just a bare sky but the father.

When Jesus used to call to god 'Abba', that is gratefulness. All prayer arises out of gratefulness, and when you are grateful, grace descends. In gratefulness man becomes receptive. The grace is always coming but we are not receptive; when we are receptive, we are fulfilled. It is just as there is a gravitation in the earth, and everything is being pulled downwards, there is another law, the law of grace: everything is being uplifted upwards. But that we have to allow to happen. In gratefulness that happens: one is uplifted, one starts growing wings. Instead of the law of gravitation, one moves into another law, the law of grace.

So this will be the name. Help people. And whenever my sannyasins meet, I am always there.

[A newly arrived sannyasin says: It s nice to be back but it s a little strange too.]

Both are true. To be in a growing commune is always strange, because new things are always happening. And one is never allowed to be settled, because to settle means to get stuck. I never allow my people to settle! They would like to settle somewhere; they would like to feel 'Now the work is finished' - but I never allow that. I go on goading them. The more you work, the more you are goaded. The more potential you show, the more tests you have to go through.

So it remains strange, a constant change. We are not accustomed to it. We have created a very false world of no change. It is convenient, it is comfortable, it is cozy. We have excluded all that is unknown, mysterious, from our world. We have made a small corner in the world, perfectly clear- cut, categorised, analysed, known, full of light, and we are very efficient in that small corner. But my whole effort here is to take you out of that comfort, that convenience, that security, and to throw you into the dark, into the insecurity, into the unknown. It is strange, but this is how, slowly slowly, one learns to live in danger. And the joy of living in danger is great. To live in convenience is nothing but a slow suicide. The real life consists of danger, of constant challenge, adventure. One has to be spiritually a vagabond, a wanderer.

So that's true, both feelings are true. Whenever my sannyasins come back, they feel good that they are back and they also feel strange, mm? because so much has happened and so much is happening, and now again they have to move into the turmoil of it all and the chaos.

[A sannyasin says: The day I asked for speaking darshan, I felt I ought to be having fantastic experiences here, and in a way, nothing is happening.]

Mm mm. Nothing is the greatest and the most fantastic experience. There is nothing to happen.

The very desire for something to happen is a disease of the mind, or rather, it is the disease called mind. Nothing is going to happen; all has already happened.

This constant hankering for something to happen, something fantastic, is just a way of avoiding the present. This hoping for something is nothing but creating a barricade between you and the present.

because whenever you think something fantastic has to happen, naturally you start moving into the future. You start creating dreams, and those dreams will never be fulfilled so you will always remain a pauper, a beggar, and you will always feel cheated by life. Nobody has cheated you. It is you and only you who have played the game upon yourself. There is nothing to happen. One has to relax and be herenow. All is happening.

Life does not consist of fantastic things. It consists of very small things, but when you have no expectation, those small things turn into fantastic things.

If you are searching for diamonds on the sea beach and you don't find them, you are frustrated.

But if you are not searching for anything in particular, you collect seashells which are immensely beautiful and red stones and coloured stones, and you are thrilled, and you are rich. Just collecting seashells and stones, you are rich. But the moment you start desiring the diamond and you don't find it... and the mind always desires things which cannot be found, because the mind exists only with things which cannot be fulfilled. The mind is a state of hunger. It never asks for the possible, because once the possible is fulfilled the mind will have to die. It always asks for the impossible; that is its way of surviving. It is an eternal beggar. So if worldly experiences are not happening then some spiritual experiences have to happen, but something has to happen. One cannot relax and just be and let things be. If one does then each moment is fantastic, unique unrepeatable. And we have not earned it - it is a sheer gift from god.

Drop this idea that something great has to happen. This is an ego trip. See the point, that all desire is stupid. Desire is the way of misery and hell. When there is no desire, in that very state of no- desire, everything is calm and quiet and cool and blissful. Nothing more is needed. That's what Jesus calls 'the kingdom of god'. It is within you and it is now, it is here, and no practice is needed to attain to it. You are not to go through any process to attain to it. All those processes are needed just to hammer the truth into your heart - that nothing needs to be done. All this doing is nothing but to bring the truth home that nothing needs to be done.

One day when you have seen the truth that nothing needs to be done - all is and all is perfect as it is - suddenly the fever is gone, the disease is no more, the mind is not found. The ego has been just your shadow and you have been trying to attain something which is impossible. It is just like jumping over your own shadow - just as absurd as that.

Just be here, meditate and sing and dance....

[A sannyasin says he is having problems with jealousy and possessiveness in a relationship. It seems to be connected very much with a lot of patterns of holding that I've had; my mind seems to hold all the time.]

These are childish patterns that persist in our mind. It is very rare to really become mature. The child goes on remaining there. One has to say goodbye to the child - only then does one become mature.

There is a basic cause to it: each child learns in his childhood that he has just to demand and all his demands have to be fulfilled. And they are fulfilled, otherwise he would not survive. He has no responsibility to give anything - he simply gets; and because of this a very wrong pattern sets in. The child simply gets and there is no question of giving. He becomes very manipulative, he becomes very political: he knows how to manipulate the mother and the father and the whole family.

If it is needed he cries, creates a tantrum, creates such hell that they have to yield, or, if sometimes it helps, he smiles; but these are all strategic, political gimmicks. The whole effort is of dominating, of possessing. And the child wants to be dictatorial - each child is dictatorial. When he needs her, the mother should rush to him immediately; not a single moment has to be lost. If he needs something, it has to be supplied right now - he cannot wait. And all these things have to be done because the child is so helpless. That helplessness becomes his strategy and he never learns to give.

Only people who know how to give are non-possessive. Remember it. People who know only how to get are bound to be possessive because, who knows? If somebody else possesses the mother, then? So no child likes the birth of another child. He hates it - the very idea is repulsive - because that means division, that means the mother will not be absolutely available to him. Each child wants to kill the new child, has murderous ideas, and that child remains in everybody.

We become mature physically; psychologically we remain immature. So on the surface we pretend that we are grown-up, and nobody is a grown-up. This is one of the basic problems - that everybody is showing that he is a grown-up and nobody is a grown-up. So it is only a veneer, just a facade, skin-deep. Scratch a little bit more and the child is there and the tantrum. The child wants to possess and dominate and is always afraid that somebody else may take his woman, may' take her man - then what? And you are needy, you are hungry.

So you have to be absolutely certain that your woman never talks with anybody, never laughs with anybody, never loves anybody. You create a prison around her - a very subtle prison - and you are constantly on the watch. Now how can love happen in such circumstances? You are watching her, she is watching you, so both are against each other. afraid, insecure. How can love arise in suspicion, in doubt? Each is like a policeman to the other: every detail has to be known - what you have been doing, where you have been, with whom have you been, what you have talked about.

How is love possible?

Love is a fragile phenomenon. It is not possible to grow in such a hard soil, and it never grows. And because it never grows you are more hungry for it. The more hungry you are, the more possessive you become. You know only one way. So you say that you love the woman, but that's only a saying.

If you come to know that she has been laughing with somebody else and has been happier than she ever is with you, you will kill her. But you say you love her!

Your love can turn into hate any moment. It is only love on the surface - deep down it is hate. Your so-called lovers all hate each other, but because they need, they go on pretending. They are afraid - the woman may leave; then they will be lonely. And that loneliness makes them afraid. You will lose your identity - who you are - and what are you going to do then? You will feel almost like a small child lost in the supermarket who cannot find the mother. Or you will be like a dog, lost in the paradeground and just rushing everywhere looking for the master and not knowing where to go.

Who will take him home?

Unless this needy love is dropped and a totally new love arises in you - love that knows how to give, love that enjoys giving; not the love of a child but the love of a mature person - you will remain possessive. You will turn the other into a thing, you will reduce her to the thing, and when you reduce the other, the other reduces you.

The so-called love affairs are almost like enmity. They are not love - no friendship, not at all. Each is just trying to exploit the other. It is a mutual arrangement of exploitation: 'I will exploit you, so I have to allow myself to be exploited by you.'

Love can be defined... they have in China a very ancient definition - it is: 'Scratching the other's back so that the other can scratch your back.' That's all. It is difficult to scratch one's own back, so somebody else scratches your back and in return you scratch her back - a mutual arrangement, but nothing of much value.

If you really want to drop possessiveness - and it has to be dropped, otherwise you will remain miserable - then you will have to understand that your child is there and that you have not grown psychologically. That child has to be taken into full consciousness. It functions through the unconscious - it has to be brought into awareness, into full light. You have to see it and its ugliness.

In that absolute clarity you can say goodbye to the child. It is your problem.

Jesus says 'Unless you are like children you will not enter into my kingdom of god.' And he is right.

Another saying can be created 'Unless you are childish, you will not enter into the kingdom of hell.'

To be like children is one thing and to be childish is just the opposite. And people are childish but on the surface are trying to be brave and courageous and heroes, mm ? just on the surface all that macho. But just hiding behind that is a small crying child whose bed is wet. His mother is not available and he does not know what to do. Or a child who is hungry and is hankering for the breast and the breast is not available... is helpless.

You will have to bring this whole state of your mind into clear light. Awareness transforms. See to it - bring it out, meditate over it. It is not just possessiveness: behind possessiveness is the child. It is not just jealousy: behind jealousy it is the child. Because a mature person is never jealous - cannot be. Why should he be?

Nobody is obliged to love you. Nobody is responsible to make you happy. A mature person understands this much - just bare facts, bare fundamentals: 'Nobody is responsible to make me happy - it is my business to be happy or to be unhappy. Nobody can make me unhappy or happy and nobody has this responsibility, so how can I be jealous? For what? How can I make the other feel responsible and guilty? The other is free.'

If out of the freedom of the other he or she decides to be with you and loves you, be thankful. If she moves away, it is perfectly okay. If you feel sad, that is your business; that is none of her problem Out of freedom we meet and out of freedom we should remain together. And if out of freedom separation happens, so it happens; it has to be accepted. The mature person accepts life with all its thorns and with all its flowers.

And he never makes the other feel guilty. These are ways of making the other feel guilty: 'You are making me miserable because you were talking to that man and you were looking so happy. That is making me unhappy.' It is not making you unhappy - it has nothing to do with your happiness. It is your childishness, your immature demands, unhealthy demands, pathological demands, that are making you unhappy.

So just become a little more alert of the child inside. Meditate more on it. Every day for at least one hour sit silently and watch the child, its ways, its functioning, and the whole mechanism of it. And don't judge, don't call it names. Don't condemn it because that is not going to help. That is again childish. Just watch without any judgement, without any evaluation, just watch. Let the child have its full say. See how it functions, how it works, how this mechanism has been functioning inside you.

And just watching it you will be surprised: things have started changing. Seeing the stupidity of it one starts changing. It is going to happen.

This is my whole work here - to make you mature, so mature that you don't need any love. You give, and if it comes in return that's another thing, but it was not the basic motivation behind it. To give love for love's sake is maturity. Much comes in return, a thousandfold comes in return, but that is another matter. That is nothing to be thought about it is not part of your desire; it is just out of the blue. But you had enjoyed giving. Then one is not jealous.

If you are needy you will be jealous, and the child is needy. It goes on hanging, it goes on finding mother and father figures and goes on hanging on them, goes on demanding as if the whole world exists just to fulfill you! The child thinks of himself as the centre of the whole existence. That is stupid. We are not the centres, nobody is the centre of the whole.

Just watch it, meditate over it. It will go, it has to go. It is creating misery and nothing else, so why cling to it? But it can go only when you have become absolutely conscious of it.

This is the alchemy of awareness.