Darshan 14 July 1978
Deva means god, kabiro means great - the great god, or, god is great. Everything else is just a part - god is the whole.
God is not a person but another name for the totality of all. To live as a part against the whole is to live in misery. To live as a part with the whole, as the whole, in the whole, is to be in bliss.
Man's misery consists in his creating a separation; he creates a distance between himself and the whole that surrounds him. It is as foolish as a fish creating a distance between itself and the ocean.
Hence so much misery. The fish can be happy only in the ocean, with the ocean, as the ocean, because basically it comes out of the ocean. It is a wave in the ocean, and one day it has to disappear into the ocean again.
The ocean remains the source and the goal. The fish is a momentary wave - so is man, so is everything that we can see, we can hear, touch. All are waves, momentary, but beyond the waves there is an eternal ocean. That is called kabiro - the great ocean. It has to be remembered, and not only intellectually remembered but existentially lived too.
Live always with this mindfulness, that we are not separate, that we cannot be separate, that all separation is just in our mind; in reality it is not possible. But all our misery is also in the mind; in reality it is not possible. In reality there is no misery. Reality is made of the stuff called bliss, hence in the East we have called reality satchitananda. Sat means truth, chit means consciousness, ananda means bliss - these are the three qualities of reality. This is the eastern trinity, far more important than the Christian trinity. The Christian trinity looks very childish compared to it. Truth, consciousness, bliss - but bliss is the ultimate peak.
The more we dissolve, the more blissful we become. When one disappears, then there is utter bliss and nothing else.
Nartan means dance, majida means goddess - goddess of dance. God has to be contemplated on, not as a static thing but as a dynamic phenomenon... not as something still but as something dancing, because god is energy. And now, the scientists agree with it absolutely, that there is no matter; all is energy. To say that all is energy is to say in other words that all is dance. Everything is dancing. The earth is dancing around the sun, the moon is dancing around the earth, and the sun itself is dancing around some unknown sun somewhere - scientists have not yet been able to discover that centre, but the dance continues. And it is not only that these big things are dancing: the smallest particle, the electron, is dancing, the proton is dancing. From the smallest to the greatest, all are joined in one orgasmic dance.
God has to be thought of as the ultimate dance, the dance of the whole. To think of god as movement, riverlike, dancing, makes the meditator also have a different vision of meditation. Then meditation is not just when you close your eyes and you sit silently. In fact deep down, when Buddha is sitting silently under his bodhi tree, not moving at all, there is dance deep inside him - the dance of consciousness... invisible of course, but the dance is there. Because nothing remains at rest.
'Rest' is an unreal word; nothing corresponds to rest in reality.
Now, it depends on us: we can make our life just a restlessness or a dance. Rest is not possible, rest is not in the nature of things at all, but we can have a very chaotic restlessness - that is misery, that is neurosis, that is madness - or we can create something beautiful out of it. We can be creative with this energy; then restlessness is no more restless. It becomes smooth, graceful - it starts taking the form of a dance and a song. And the paradox is: when the dancer is totally in dance, there is rest - the impossible happens - the centre of the cyclone. But that rest is not possible in any other way.
When the dance is total only then does that rest happen.
Science has not come to know about that rest; that's why scientists say there is nothing in reality that corresponds with the word 'rest'. But there is a movement, because there is a centre to this whole dance, it cannot go on without a centre. The periphery is dancing, the circumference is dancing.
And to know that centre, the only way is to become a total dance. Only then, in contrast to the dance, does one suddenly become aware of something very quiet and very still. That quietness, that stillness is god.
On the circumference god is a dance at the centre god is just absolute stillness. God is a paradox.
God consists of polar opposites. Those polar opposites are complementaries; they are just like two wings of a bird.
So think more and more in terms of movement, dance, dynamism. Let that become your meditation.
Gyan means wisdom, baria means god - god of wisdom. The most important thing to remember is that knowledge is not wisdom, cannot be wisdom; not only that, it is anti-wisdom, it is the barrier that prevents wisdom from arising. Knowledge is the false coin, the pretender. It pretends to know.
It knows nothing, but it can befool people - it is befooling millions of people - and it is so subtle that unless one is really intelligent one never becomes aware of it. And it is so deep rooted, because from the very childhood we have been conditioned in it.
To know means to collect, an accumulation, to Collect information, to collect data. It does not change you - you remain the same; just your collection of information becomes bigger and bigger and bigger. Wisdom transforms you. It is really information... not just information. It forms your inner being in a new way. It is transformation. It creates a new quality of seeing, knowing, being. So it is possible that a man may not be at all informed and yet be wise. Or the man may be very much informed and may be very unwise.
In fact that's what has happened in the world: man has become more educated, more literate.
Universal education is available, so everybody has become knowledgeable, and wisdom is lost.
Now who cares for wisdom? Knowledge is so easily available in the paperbacks - who bothers about wisdom ? Wisdom takes time, energy, devotion, dedication. Wisdom requires much sacrifice.
It is an arduous and long journey and the task is uphill. Who bothers when knowledge is so easily and cheaply available? And through knowledge you can pretend that you know. You can deceive others but you will not be able to deceive yourself.
So drop all knowledge. Drop the whole thing, the whole endeavour, as futile, and start new ways of creating wisdom.
Meditation leads to wisdom - learning leads to knowledge. Unlearning leads to wisdom. Knowledge needs concentration - wisdom needs meditation. Concentration is: moving in one direction with great effort, with a goal, with a greed, with something to achieve. Meditation simply means not moving anywhere at all, but just being here and enjoying the moment; no direction, no goal, no intention, no motivation, no greed - a state of desireless awareness... not going anywhere but just being here and enjoying the moment for its own sake; that's meditation. And meditation slowly slowly becomes wisdom. Meditation is the seed and the true god is available only through wisdom, not through knowledge.
Prem means love, rafia means goddess. Love makes one a god. Love transforms a human being into a divinity. Without love, man is not even man; with love, man is more than man. Without love, man is just part of the animal kingdom, below humanity; with love man is beyond humanity, has surpassed humanity, is a god or a goddess.
Love is the bridge that man has to pass through. Love joins these two infinities - the unconscious world of the animals and the conscious world of the buddhas. Those who don't know how to love remain unbridged with god.
And the strange thing is this, that everybody thinks he knows how to love, and it is very rarely that a person knows how to love. What people ordinarily mean when they say that they love is simply that they want others to love them. They want to get love, attention, caring, from others; they want to become the centre of their attention. That's what they mean when they say that they love, that they want to love, but in fact they want love to be showered on them. They are beggars, and beggars can't love; only emperors can love.
Basically love is not a desire to get but a desire to give. And when one gives, much comes in return, but that is another matter; it is just by the way. It is not the motivation; it is not for that that love was given.
Love, to be really love, has to be a sheer gift of joy with no strings attached to it - conscious, unconscious - no conditions made. Otherwise love is degraded and becomes a bargain, is degraded and becomes a commodity in the marketplace. And love is prayer: it belongs to the world of the sacred, is part of the world of the temples; it is not part of the supermarket.
This is the problem: how to learn to give? Our whole mind is nothing but greed. It wants and wants and wants more and more, from everywhere. It is very reluctant to give. Even if sometimes it gives, it gives only in order to get, and naturally it wants to get more than it has given. Hence the conflict between lovers, constant conflict, because both are bargaining, haggling. Both want to give less and get more. Now, this seems to be impossible, so all that becomes possible in the name of love is friction, conflict, anger, rage, jealousy, possessiveness; and all kinds of diseases grow in the name of love. But once you learn how to give, all those diseases disappear, and with that, all that pathology; then one is whole and healthy. And much comes... a thousandfold love is returned by existence. Existence constantly goes on giving to us whatsoever we give to it.
That is the meaning of your name: give, and give so totally that there is no idea of getting anything out of it, there is no idea of return. Give, and be thankful to the person who has accepted your love... because he has accepted it; he may have rejected. So don't wait for him to be grateful! You should be grateful that your love has been accepted, welcomed. Then life starts changing, and one becomes a god, one becomes a goddess.
The day you have learned how to give totally all that you have for no reason at all - just for the sheer joy of giving - that moment, the benediction... call it enlightenment, nirvana, god-realisation, or whatever.
Anand means bliss, sikha means a peak, a mountain-peak. Bliss is a peak. It is the highest peak of consciousness; there is nothing higher than that. All else - beauty, good, truth, consciousness - are smaller peaks compared to the peak of bliss. Bliss is the Everest of the mountains, of the Himalayas, of consciousness. And the real challenge is to conquer it. The outer Everest has been conquered but the inner Everest everybody has to conquer; nobody else can do it for you. Many have conquered it but it remains personal; it never becomes a public property.
If Albert Einstein discovers something it becomes public property. Then each and everybody following him has not to discover it again and again - that will be stupid; once the theory of relativity is known, it is known. Einstein may have worked for twenty years on it but anybody of normal intelligence can understand it within hours.
But what Buddha attained or what Christ attained remains personal. There is no way to make it collective. One has to attain it on one's own, and it has to be again and again discovered. Buddhas and Krishnas become witnesses to it. They prove that it is, their being proves that it is; their very existence becomes a loud witness to it, but that's all.
You have to go and trek in the mountains, with all the dangers and the insecurity, and you have to be alone in the search. You cannot go as a crowd, you cannot make it a group experiment. Each one has to go alone and each one has to find a way, because the way does not exist ready-made. By your very search you create it. It is a footpath, not like a super-highway. And each time it disappears; the moment one has reached, the footpath disappears. It is like the birds flying in the sky: they don't leave any footprints. But the challenge is worth accepting, because only in accepting the challenge of this unknown, arduous, dangerous journey does one become a man.
In accepting the very challenge, one becomes a human being. Before that one remains below human Before that one is not born. Before that one only looks like a human being. With this challenge and the acceptance of the challenge something integrates inside; one starts having a centre. And the more one goes into the wild mountains, the more and more centred one becomes.
The more one is left alone, the more the soul is born.
George Gurdjieff used to say that everybody is not born with a soul. He is right and he is wrong, both. Wrong because everybody is born with a soul, and right because that soul remains only a potential; it is not actual. Unless you take the challenge, it remains only a seed. A seed is not a tree.
It may become a tree, it may not become. The seed has to accept the challenge to fall into the soil, to disappear and die in the soil, to hope, to wait, to trust that out of its death something will be born.
This challenge slowly slowly kills your ego. And when the ego is gone, a new entity arrives - the soul, the self.
[A sannyasin had written to Osho about feeling guilty about recurrent sickness, and wondering if, in her involvement with a love relationship, she was diverting energy formerly invested in Osho. Osho checks her energy.]
Nothing is wrong with your energy, mm? just your mind goes on playing tricks with you. And the mind can go on playing tricks unless you learn how not to associate with it, how not to get identified with it. It is not a real problem that you are facing, not at all.
A real problem is a problem of the energy. Then it is a hard task, mm? because the energy has to be changed, rechannellised, diverted, refined. And the energy makes its own musculature, so the whole body musculature has to be changed. And the energy makes its grooves; those grooves have to be changed. If a problem is in the energy then it is long work, but your energy is absolutely right.
The problem is bogus - it is just in the mind. It is as if a man has no cancer but has got the idea, the suspicion, and now the mind is afraid of a cancer which is not there. The mind can create it. If it remains long in it, it can force the body to follow it, but it has not yet in any way been affecting your energy. Your energy is totally flowing and good.
You have to learn not to associate with the mind, because the mind is always old, it knows only the old tricks and it moves on in those same tricks. It is like a gramophone record: you put the mechanism on and it moves.
You will be surprised that now they have discovered how to play the tapes in the brain. Just by touching a particular part of the brain with an electrode, you start having a particular vision, a dream opens up, certain thoughts start moving. If the electrode is removed, immediately all stops. Put the electrode on the same spot again and the same thing is repeated, exactly the same - the same dream, the same thoughts. So the mind is a kind of tape - it goes on playing its old tapes - and you have to learn not to be identified with it.
All that is needed is a kind of witnessing. Become more of a watcher: see the mind talking - remember that this is a tape, that this is just an old gramophone record. You have moved from it long ago, it has no relevance to you, it has lost all context in your being but it is there. And unless you stop identifying with it, you will go on giving nourishment to it. Stop identifying and the nourishment is stopped. Sooner or later it will fade and fade and fade, will recede and will become disconnected from you.
So it is not a question of solving this problem or that; your only problem is how to get disidentified with the mind. Your energy has become part of my buddhafield - you need not be worried about it.
Your love is so much for me that there is no problem in the energy.
Just remember: whenever the mind starts playing a trick upon you, shake yourself - give a good jerk or jump or jog, shout - and tell it 'I know you. Enough is enough!'
[Osho gives a sannyasin a 'come close' energy darshan.]
Everything is perfectly good. Mm? going crazy slowly slowly, that will do it. Your mind is disappearing, that's good.
My whole work consists in that, in taking away the mind. And once the mind is gone all is beautiful, all is immensely beautiful. We are living in such a splendour, in such an utterly wondrous world, but because of the mind the contact cannot happen. The mind goes on keeping us away; it is a buffer. In the name of protection it does not allow contact with reality. It does not allow you to laugh, because if you really go into laughter a moment comes when laughter is mad. Mad means it is existential - there is no reason to laugh. Laughter is happening of its own accord; it is autonomous. If you allow crying and weeping, a moment comes when it happens of its own accord - you are no more there.
And that is the fear of the mind, that the control may be lost.
My whole approach consists in this: how to help you to become capable of being in uncontrol. And once you know that you can be in uncontrol and yet there is no danger, then infinite possibilities open up. Then there are doors upon doors and one can go into one mystery, into another, into another...
there is no end. I am happy.
[A sannyasins says: If you would give me a push over the edge, I'm ready.... All the dreams have been realised.]
That s good! Just wait a little - the push will come. Whenever it is needed, it will come immediately; you are coming closer to it.
Dreams can be realised, all dreams can be realised The ultimate of the dream, of being blissful, is so close by that it is very strange how people go on missing it. It is just within reach, and everybody's reach. You have just to grope for it a little bit and it is there.
But people don't grope, or if they do, they grope in wrong directions, so life remains unfulfilled. And to live a life which is unfulfilled is agony, is hell; that is what hell is. It is not a geographical place somewhere; it is a state of an unfulfilled psychology. When there is fulfillment, there is paradise.
So you are at the gate and the gate will open any moment - just watch!
[An indian sannyasin has been invited to be a part of the ashram, but says, in Hindi, that her parents will not let her come.]
First tell me your desire. I am not going to be guided by your desire, but I just want to know what you want....
The situation is such that if I tell you to go with your parents, you will not be happy. Not that they are not loving - they are very loving - but their love won't permit you any freedom. Their love is an old orthodox kind of love and they don't know any other kind, so there is no complaint about them; they know only that. They want to care about you, they are concerned about your life, they want you to be happy. But that has always been the old mind; and particularly about girls, parents are very much concerned. In the East their responsibility ends once you get married.
While you remain unmarried, they remain very concerned: once you are married then that chapter is closed for them. Then it is for you to be in hell or in heaven or whatsoever. And an arranged marriage never brings joy, mm? It brings security - it is convenient and comfortable - but it never brings joy.
A love marriage brings joy but it never brings security; it is always insecure. So parents always decide in favour of an arranged marriage because they think of your future, security, your children, everything - except your joy, that is never a consideration. They think security is joy, comfort is joy - it is not!
Comfort is comfort, security is security. It is not joy. It is good if it can happen with joy, but in itself it is just a futile existence. In a love marriage that you would like to choose, security is not there, comfort is not there. Joy is there, but joy too is very momentary. And the more romantic a love is, the more danger there is of falling from the peak, and then you fall into a dark valley.
If I tell you to go, you will be miserable - they will arrange for a marriage to get rid of the whole problem. You will be miserable, and then you will throw the responsibility on me because I told you to go. If I tell you to be here, you will be miserable.
The misery will be that they will be angry, they will be hurt and you will not be happy if they are hurt, if they are angry. You will not be happy if they start thinking of disowning you. And here, sooner or later you will fall in love, and love brings Its own problems. Then you will think that I am responsible because I told you to be here. So think of my problem too - this is my everyday problem! If I say this, you will be in trouble and you will throw the responsibility on me; if I say the opposite, the responsibility will be on me. So now you are grown-up enough - don't throw responsibility on me; you decide.
If you decide to be here, this is your home - you can become part of the ashram; you are welcome.
If you decide to go with your parents, that's perfectly good, mm? They are my sannyasins, they will take care of you and whatsoever they want to do, they will do. But don't leave it to me, otherwise you will never be able to forgive me. The best way is: you decide yourself And it will be difficult, I know, because a few things will be good here and a few things will be good there - it is going to be a difficult situation but this is the beginning of life, mm? Now you are becoming mature; this is how life begins. When problems begin and confusion and decision becomes difficult, then too one has to decide. But I am not going to decide for you. That will be very easy but you will remain immature, because then you will depend on my decision. And it is very difficult in life to be happy.
So whatsoever decision I give you, you will be unhappy and you will throw responsibility on me.
Because happiness has nothing to do with outer things - it is an art, and very few people are artful, artful enough to be happy. You are a dancer so you know - happiness is not like a thing but like dance; you have to learn it. It is a very subtle art.
So my suggestion is: you decide. Risk - whatsoever decision you take, risk will be there - but from this moment become mature, independent and decide. And remember always: if you go into hell with your own decision you will be happy, even there, because it is your decision; you have chosen it out of your freedom. And even if you are forced into heaven, you will not be happy there because you have been forced into it and heaven will look like a prison.
Freedom is the ultimate value, and slowly slowly all of my sannyasins have to learn to live in freedom.
So let this be the beginning. One thing is clear: if you go there you are going with loving people; there is no problem. If you want to stay here, the doors of the ashram are open for you; any moment you can enter in and be part.