Darshan 15 July 1978

Deva means god or godliness; saguna means with qualities, with form. God can be conceived of in two ways: with qualities or without qualities, with form or without form. The centre of existence is formless but the circumference is full of form. The world is the form of god and god is the formlessness of the world. Form and formlessness are both together; this is the basic polarity.

They are not against each other - they complement each other, they support each other; without form there cannot be any formlessness and vice versa.

In your name the message is to search for god in the forms, the world - in the trees, in the birds, in people, in rocks. Search for him in the form, worship him as form, and as the worship deepens, the form disappears and the formlessness surfaces. But one has to work through the form. The formless god becomes an abstract concept, intellectual. It has no blood, no bones, no body. It is like a ghost.

It is impossible to have a contact with the formless. How to conceive of it? Where to look for it? How to pray to it? How to have a dialogue with it? How to say 'thou' to it? Unless the heart says 'thou', worship never starts. And unless there is a possibility of a dialogue, heart-to-heart, man cannot grow in prayer. Although, a moment does come when I and thou both disappear into each other.

Then what is left is formlessness; that is the ultimate. But one has to begin from the immediate.

Saguna means the immediate god that surrounds you... in millions of forms. All are his forms. He is a dog in a dog, he is a saint in a saint, he is a sinner in a sinner and he is a rock in a rock. All forms are his. This is the immediate, and it is possible to have a contact with the immediate. We can have a dialogue, we can hold hands with the immediate, we can dance with it, we can sing with it, we can commune with it. Begin with the form and end in formlessness.

Deva means divine, rahimo means compassion - divine compassion. Compassion is the highest flowering of love. Love remains a little tethered to the earth, it remains rooted in the body, always

has something of lust in it; it is mixed with the mud. Compassion is absolutely free of the earth. It is a fully grown lotus - it has gone beyond the mud. Now there is no lust in it; it is pure love. There is no desire in it, there is no need in it. It is just an overflowing of one's bliss. It is absolute sharing for no other reason but just for the sake of the sharing itself. The sharing is a joy unto itself; it is not a means to anything else.

When love comes to such a height, to such plenitude, it becomes compassion. The word 'compassion' is also beautiful: it is passion but transformed. Passion has come to its ultimate flowering, that's compassion. And that has to be kept as a goal. If once love can become compassion, then one has arrived at the source of it all. Then there is no more search, one is at home in existence. That is bliss... and that is benediction.

Prem means love, samya means god - love god or god of love. Create the quality of love in all that you do. Even if it is just day-to-day ordinary work, do it with great love, with care, with a kind of caressing. Don't take things for granted - that's where man goes on missing the mystery of life.

The moment you think that you know, you start missing. Love never comes to know. It is always in the exploration; it is always on the verge of knowing but never knowing. It is always excited, waiting, utterly ready to receive it, but it is a process, a non-ending process. Knowledge ends, becomes conclusions. Love never ends and never becomes a conclusion; it remains flowing, hence it is never exhausted. One cannot come to a full stop because there is none.

Once you enter into the mystery of love, you have entered forever. There is a beginning but there Is no end to it. And love has not to become a focussed phenomenon. It has not to become one thing amongst so many other things; it has to become your undercurrent. If you are eating, eat with love, because what you are eating is god. If you are walking, walk with love, because you are walking on the earth - it is holy ground; you are walking on god. Even taking a bath, take it with great respect and love for your body, because it is not your body, it is god's body; it is his temple.

Then small things of life which had no meaning before start having immense significance. And the moment small things have significance they are no more small. You have transformed them into great things. It is up to you to live a small life or a great life. If you live without love you will live a life which is very small, petty. If you live with love, through love, you will live a great life, because love makes everything great. Love is the philosopher's stone - whatsoever it touches it transforms into gold.

The meaning is exactly the same: prem means love, shahida means goddess - goddess of love.

My approach and my message in short is love. Love heals, love brings a person together. Love soothes, calms. Love gives poetry to one's life. Then life is no more prose. You can sing it, you can dance it. And unless life becomes an ecstasy, one has lived in vain. To live ecstatically is to live religiously, but ecstasy is possible only through love - it is an outpouring of love. So become more and more love.

I am not saying 'become loving'; I am saying 'become love itself', because a loving person can be unloving in some moments, in fact he will have to be. A loving person will have unloving moments too. Just like day and night, the loving person will have moments when he will hate; love and hate go together. But when a person becomes love, then he knows nothing of hate. He has gone beyond the duality - he lives in the glory of transcendence. Then he does not know anything except love, and slowly slowly he even starts forgetting about love. He becomes love so much that he knows nothing of it; he becomes oblivious of it. Then love follows just like a shadow.

That is the ultimate in love. Keep your being arrowed towards that ultimate.

[Osho gives a sannyasin a come close energy darshan]

The energy is perfectly good. Just one problem is there, that you don't listen to your own voice; and that has to be done. Don't be distracted by anything else - follow your own feeling. If you are feeling happy, be happy; don't think of anything else. If you are feeling sad, be sad; don't consider others, their expectations. Your energy is flowing perfectly well, but you consider others too much, so sometimes you repress, sometimes you become pseudo, inauthentic. You look into others' eyes and then you try to fulfill their idea of you. Now this is the problem.

Nobody is here to fulfill somebody else's expectations. And the person who tries to fulfill somebody else's expectations will always be in misery because he will not be true to his own self. He will not be respectful to his own self, and to show disrespect to one's self is to show disrespect to god. And the punishment is misery. Respect yourself! That does not mean that you become hard on others - that simply means that you become soft on yourself. Be tender towards yourself.

You immensely need to grow a kind of tenderness towards yourself. You are very tender towards others but very hard towards yourself. That's what has been taught to everybody, to be hard on yourself and be soft to others; that is utter nonsense. If you are not soft to yourself your softness towards others is just a show, a pretension, hypocrisy. And it is not going to make the other happy either, because he will see through the game; and particularly those who are close to you, who are in love with you, will always be able to see through the game. So you become false and they are not satisfied with your falsity, because falsity can never satisfy anybody. To be really tender and caring towards others, one needs first to be basically tender and caring towards oneself That's where you are a little hard. Relax!

And your energy is going so well that now I can speak through your energy to you, so whenever you hear something from the inside, remember: I am telling it to you! And that is your commitment.

Be polite to others if sometimes you have to go against their expectations; apologise, but don't pretend. This is one of the problems that always comes in relationship: you have to consider the other, continuously, and he has to consider you, and both become false, inauthentic. How can love grow when both are inauthentic, insincere? Love grows in authenticity - it is a fragrance of authenticity. One needs to be absolutely genuine, only then does love grow. So in the world there are so many lovers and no love at all, because the basic requirement is never fulfilled.

So from this moment, this is your work on yourself: be utterly genuine. And even... it may create a few troubles in the beginning, but only in the beginning. Soon people start understanding - they can see your truth.... And if you respect yourself, others start respecting you and start respecting the space in which you are. But if even you are not respectful to it, who is going to. be respectful to it?

The old saying in the Talmud is: 'If I am not for me then who is going to be for me?' Then nobody is for you and you are left in a kind of limbo. Be for yourself and only out of that can you be for others too, because then you will have something to share, to give. The energy is perfectly good - there is nothing wrong in the energy; just your mind goes on interfering with it. Stop interfering!

[A sannyasin says: I can't open up... I feel so frozen. I want to open yet something holds me back....

Perhaps dancing is about the only time that I can really let go.]

Dance will be good, mm? continue Nataraj. You can join the Sufi dancing also and in the night, the music group. And any time you feel that you are getting frozen, start dancing. For five minutes, deep breathing', and then dance. Then go on dancing and when you feel that everything is flowing perfectly well, simply say loudly 'Stop!' and freeze. For two minutes just freeze like a stone. This is going to help you immensely.

This was one of the basic techniques of George Gurdjieff to help people to come out of their frozenness. First he would teach them movement and then in the middle of it he would shout 'Stop!' It was called the 'stop exercise', and they had to stop in ridiculous, absurd postures. As they were, they had to stop. With thirty persons dancing there are all kinds of postures. And they were not to deceive; that was the whole point of it.

You can deceive - you can find a better posture. So you can tell somebody else to tell you 'Stop' or you can fix the alarm so you cannot deceive. Otherwise you will find a good posture and stand in it and say 'Stop'; that will not help. An alarm will do or any child - just tell a child and he will enjoy. Tell him to find the most difficult posture and then shout 'Stop!' He will enjoy it! But don't deceive even if you have to fall.

The first thing to get out of this state is to make your frozenness conscious, deliberate. The grip is always unconscious. One it becomes conscious you are out of the grip. So you can enjoy it. Just walking on the road, freeze; doing something, freeze. Just for two minutes remain like a statue, then relax again and start your work. You have to make it very very conscious; it has to be brought to a state where it is no more automatic, where it is no more robotlike but you are the master of it. Then immediately you will be out of it. So for one month do the stop exercise and then report: Good! It will go.

[Osho gives a come close darshan to someone with relationship ups and downs.]

Very good! Things are really good. Just become a little less serious - be a little more playful. All that is great always happens in playfulness. All creativity is a by-product of playfulness. Seriousness is barren. Nothing is ever born out of seriousness... except destruction. The serious person is destructive to others and destructive to himself. Seriousness is a kind of disease - one has to get rid of it. Become more playful. Take things non-seriously. Nothing is so important to be worried about.

When you are non-serious, windows start opening. into existence. When you are non-serious, you are non-tense too. When you are non-serious, you are non-possessive. There is no expectation out of life. Then there is no question of being successful.

The serious person always tries to succeed, to prove, to be in control, to possess, to be this, to be that. The serious person is bound to become somehow political. His relationship with existence is that of politics. The religious person is simply playing around, making castles out of sand for no purpose at all? just for the sheer joy of it... collecting shells and red stones on the sea beach for no motive; by the evening he will leave all of them there and go home. But in those non-serious moments, those holy moments, the beyond opens its doors.

Your energy is good but your seriousness is too much so it does not allow any opening. Your seriousness goes on being your enemy. You have to kill this enemy, you have to uproot this enemy.

So from this moment for three months be as playful as possible and after three months, report to me. Good.

[Osho gives a come close energy darshan to a couple.]

Mm, your energies are moving very well and in symmetry and together, in a good harmony. This harmony is really the meaning of being a couple. To be a couple means to be in a harmony energy- wise. There is a synchronicity between your energies. It can grow very much if you don't disturb it.

If you don't start small distractions, it can become a really great meditative explosion. Your love can become prayer. It depends on you.

Feel about your relationship that it is sacred... not just physical but spiritual. Think of it not only in terms of sex but in terms of love and of prayer. Even while making love feel you are going into meditation; use that momentum to go into meditation Help each other, and avoid as much as possible unnecessary conflicts. They always crop up and they destroy beautiful gardens. They are like weeds, and if weeds are too many then roses cannot grow.

So just be alert. But the energy is really good and much is possible, much is possible in your togetherness.

[A sannyasin says he wants to return to the West, yet his heart is here, and he is split between the two.]

No, no, you go. It comes to every sannyasin - once or twice every sannyasin has to go away from me; that is part of growth. Something happens when you are here, close to me, and something happens only when you are far away from me. And both al needed to happen. Finally you are to be here; finally all this going has to disappear.

Once the new commune is ready people won't even leave the walls, they will not go outside the fence of the commune; there will be no need. So before that, finish these comings and goings; that's good.