Darshan 19 July 1978

And remember that sannyas is a new birth, the beginning of something mysterious in life, something that is very elusive. There is no way to argue it, to prove it, but it is. And unless it starts having its impact on you, your life goes on missing the meaning. Once the unknown has penetrated you, life has meaning, and only then. Meaning simply means the penetration of the unknown into the known.

All is not known, and it is good; all can never be known, and it is good. Something is basically unknowable.

To be initiated into sannyas is to be initiated into the unknowable. It is a love relationship - love with the whole, love with existence as such. And out of love everything grows: prayer, worship, celebration. Love is the source of all.

Remember it and from this moment be in search of the mysterious that is already around you, within you, without you... but of which we have become oblivious. Because it is so much there, we don't pay any attention to it. Attention is paid only when something new happens - and god is so ancient.

If something new happens, immediately your mind becomes attracted. If nothing new happens, then the mind goes to sleep. And god is the most ancient - he has been your companion forever and forever; hence we have forgotten him. Now he has to be remembered.

Prabhu means god, anubhuda means experienced. God is not a speculation; it is an experience.

God is only if experienced: otherwise there is no god. One can go on believing in god, but belief is impotent. It is absolutely uncreative; on the contrary it is very destructive. It destroys the very possibility of moving into experience. It gives you a false notion that you have already known. and you have not known yet. If the idea settles in you that you know, without knowing, the search has stopped. Now you will never go into it, now there will be no more seeking.

Belief is anti-god; even belief in god is anti-god. God is not a belief at all. It is an adventure into the beyond. It is going beyond the mind. It is going beyond the ego. It is transcending your boundaries.

In that transcendence, something is experienced; you call it x, y, z, or god. What you call it makes no difference. Whatsoever you call it looks absurd, because the experience is so vast and the words we use for it are so tiny - they cannot contain it. The word 'god' is very tiny, so is 'nirvana'; it cannot contain the truth of the experience. The experience is as vast as the sky... it is infinite.

Remember it: never be a victim of a belief. All beliefs are irreligious, anti-religious, anti-god. The real man of religion has no belief. He has great trust - trust in the search, trust in the possibility, potentiality, trust that there must be something beyond, but no belief of what it is. Trust is open courage. Belief is a closed cowardice. Cowards believe - courageous people trust.

Deva means divine, anand means bliss - divine bliss. The goal of all life is to attain a state of bliss. Even trees are searching for it, even rocks are moving towards it; it has nothing to do with the human mind. The whole existence is a search for bliss, in millions of ways, from different directions.

but everybody, knowingly, unknowingly, consciously, unconsciously, is moving towards one goal.

That goal simply means a state of utter rest - desirelessness; because desire means something is needed.

Rest means one is at home, at ease, relaxed. Bliss is not a state of excitement. It is a state of absolute tranquillity. It is not like happiness, notwithstanding , what the dictionaries say. Bliss is not happiness; it is neither happiness nor unhappiness, because both are states of excitement.

Happiness is the excitement that you like and unhappiness is the excitement that you don't like, but both are states of excitement and both tire, both exhaust. After a certain period of happiness you become fed up with it; you want to relax. You want to get rid of it - you can only tolerate so much.

Bliss is a state of utter non-excitement, absolute stillness. One is never tired, hence it can be eternal. Happiness can only be momentary: bliss can be timeless. Unconsciously everybody is moving towards it.

Sannyas means a conscious movement towards it, deliberate, judging each step, evaluating each move, with a target, with a distant star in one's vision.

Paritosh means absolute contentment, prem means love - love for absolute contentment. Let that be your work. Let all kinds of discontent disappear. Don't cling to them; they remain only because we cling. Open your fists - let all the birds of discontent fly away.

For a few days you will feel very alone, because one becomes accustomed to one's miseries; they become companions. One feels full; that's why people cling even to misery. Although on the surface they go on saying 'We want to be happy, and we want to be this and that', deep down they are the causes of their own hell. If they really want to get out of it, nobody is preventing them, nobody can prevent them. It takes only a conscious decision on one's part of 'Now, from this moment, I drop all discontent.' Then the flavour of contentment arises.

It is the most beautiful thing that can happen to a person, the most incredible experience. And in contentment is found god, because only when one is utterly at peace, can truth reveal itself. When there is no desire, there is no movement in the mind. When there is no desire, there is no frustration either. One is simply as one is. Then one lives in a kind of suchness, in total acceptance of life. The acceptance is unconditional whatsoever life brings, one is happy with it. There is no grudge and no complaint.

This is really how one becomes a temple, and a sannyasin has to become a temple, a shrine ready to be a residence for god.

Sambodhi means enlightenment, satyo means truth - the truth of enlightenment. And there is no other truth. Other truths are only logical conclusions. They are not real truths - just appearances of truth. Their truth is not existential; it depends on the functioning of the human mind. Their truth is temporary, it changes. New facts, new data, are collected, then the truth has to be changed. That's what is happening in science every day: no truth has any abiding existence. What was true for Newton was no more true for Albert Einstein. So truth for science remains only tentative, and what kind of truth is a tentative truth? It is only a utilitarian lie - practical, pragmatic, useful, but it is not a truth.

Truth is only the one that happens when the mind stops functioning; that is the truth of enlightenment.

When you are in absolute silence, not a thought moves and the lake of your consciousness is absolutely rippleless, then you become a mirror and then the whole is reflected in you; that is the truth of enlightenment. That's what happened to Buddha under the bodhi tree... that was what Jesus was calling 'the kingdom of god'.

Remember: if something is utilitarian it does not mean it is true; it simply means it is useful. And the ultimate truth of enlightenment may not have any use at all. What can we do with Buddha's truth?

You cannot make atom bombs out of it and you cannot run factories out of it. What can you do with it? It has no utility at all! It is just like a rose flower or a sunset and the beauty of it, or the smile of a child or the tears flowing out of joy - what utility? It has no utility. It is utterly useless. But in its utter uselessness it has tremendous beauty, uncontaminated by the marketplace, and that tremendous beauty liberates.

Jesus is right when he says 'Truth liberates' - it gives one freedom. And freedom is joy and freedom is benediction.

[A sannyasin couple who took sannyas in the West, come for Osho's blessings.]

Just be here. In fact there is nothing to say but just be here. It is not what I say to you that is going to help; it is what I am that is going to help. It is not that my words can in any way liberate you. Words always create new bondages because the mind immediately reduces them to knowledge. Even if words come from a wordless man, the moment the mind grabs them, it kills them. It reduces them to dead knowledge, it accumulates them as its treasure.

Only being can penetrate being... only the heart can have a dialogue with the heart, and that dialogue is not the dialogue of words but of silence, of love, of prayer. So just be here prayerfully.

The more prayerful you are, the more you will get out of it. Just be here in great trust. Because small doubts in the mind block the way to the heart, and those doubts are just meaningless. But the mind is very very skillful in creating doubts; it jumps upon every opportunity. Where it is almost impossible to find something to doubt, even there it finds something. If it cannot find, it creates; if it cannot create, it projects. If it cannot find, cannot create, cannot project, it becomes angry. But it creates smoke around the flame of your being.

When I say 'Be prayerful, be trustful' I mean for these few weeks that you will be here, live without a mind. Be small children again, collecting seashells on the beach - for no other purpose but just for the sheer joy of it. I am a beach... and the impossible is possible! But it is possible only to those who come close to me without any motivation, for no other purpose.

This is the meaning of the ancient Indian word 'satsanga': to be in the presence of the master, to be with the master, just to be in his company. No question is asked, no question is answered, but being melts into being and something is triggered. The presence of a master is a catalytic agent.

You are both ready and you have come in the right moment, so it is all up to you how much you can make out of it. I am ready to give all; now it will depend on you, on if you are courageous enough to take it in. So be children, be prayerful, and don't be serious at all. Just play around - and things are going to happen!

[Osho explains the meaning of prem deep - light of love.]

The small lamp of love is more powerful than all the suns in the whole of the universe. It is the source of light, the very source of light, because it is god.

We are made of light, and at the very core of our being is love. Love is light condensed, and once that condensed light starts exploding, life becomes a song, a dance. Otherwise life remains misery.

It is only love that transforms it and gives it a new world, a separate reality.

Worship love - worship no other god.

[A sannyasin says: I'm a bit scared of going back to the West. I'm just confused. Everything that I want to happen to me is here. I don't know why I'm going back.]

It happens to almost all sannyasins: once or twice they have to go. When things really start happening, the mind wants to escape. And if you don't go the mind will create so much turmoil, so that won't help either.

Going is perfectly good. Go, let the mind have its desire fulfilled. Next time when you come, the desire will be less or maybe no more at all; but once or twice this is bound to happen. And the fear is also part of it, because you know something is happening and it may not happen there or may stop.

So now you are two persons: one that is growing and coming up and one that is going and dying.

The dying person is trying to take you away - this is its last effort to survive. And the growing person is becoming afraid. It is tender, soft. Maybe it can't grow there or it will be difficult to grow there.

Things here are like a nourishment for the new and a poison for the old. There it will be just the reverse: poison for the new and nourishment for the old, that's why the old wants to take you away and the new is afraid.

But this is my observation, that each sannyasin has to go once or twice and then there is no problem.

By that time the new has become so strong that it makes no difference whether you are here or there, and the old is gone so there is no urge to go back. Even if you go, you go without any urge; that is a totally different matter.

Right now there is an urge to go, and a very unconscious urge, so you cannot even figure out why.

For what are you going ? Things are happening here and why are you going ? It is coming from the unconscious. The conscious mind cannot understand why; it is not a conscious thing.

But my suggestion is always this: go. I will take care of the new, and I can see that the old is on the deathbed and it cannot survive. Next time when you come we can do the post mortem!

This will be the name for the centre: Nimitta.

It means the instrument. Let it become my instrument. Function there as a medium for me, a vehicle.

Drop your own will so that I can function through you.

All the sannyasins who are starting centres around the world have to remember it - that they have to disappear so I can function totally. If they are too much, they start doing things on their own and then things will go wrong. They have to efface themselves, they have to become nobodies, just empty spaces, then nothing is going to go wrong ever; I can take care.

So those who are starting centres have to commit suicide. Right? That is the right word 'suicide'.

They have to dissolve, they have to forget themselves. Many times the mind will come back and the ego will come back - you have to put it aside. You have to constantly remember: 'Thy will be done.'

That has to be your mantra, that is the meaning of nimitta: just become an instrument, a passive vehicle.