Darshan 22 July 1978

Deva means divine, nitamo means virtue - divine virtue. There is a virtue which is nothing but a social formality, it is just social convenience. It differs from age to age, country to country - it has nothing to do with the ultimate law; it is arbitrary. It is just like the rules of the game - if you want to play the game you have to follow the rules - or like the rules of traffic: 'Keep to the left.' It has nothing of the ultimate about it. It has to be evolved because man is not alone; it is a compromise.

When one has to live with many people, one has to compromise. That kind of virtue is not divine.

Divine virtue means falling in harmony with the law of the whole. It has nothing to do with society, history, time; it is eternal. And one has to find it within oneself - one cannot find it outside. No scripture can give it to you, no priest can supply it, because all scriptures are time bound and all priests are in the service of the society.

It needs great courage and daring to search for real virtue, because once you have found it you will be in a constant rebellion. Your life will have the flavour of rebellion and nothing else, but that is also the flavour of all celebration, of all joy, of all life as such. When a man is really alive, he remains in rebellion. When the fires of life start disappearing, one starts following the conventions; then only does one start compromising. But one can live so totally that at the very moment of death one remains in rebellion - to the very last, and that's how a sannyasin should live.

A virtue has to be found within one's own being. One has to learn how to listen to the still, small voice within. The guide is there - we just have to cool down a little bit, calm down a little bit.

Sannyas is a threshold - the end of something that you have known, that you are acquainted with, that you have been, that you are, and the beginning of something which you don't know, which you have never been, which you have not ever thought about, which you could not have even dreamed of.

It is a discontinuity. It is not a growth; there is no bridge between the past and the future.

The mind functions as a bridge: it carries the past into the future. And because it carries the past into the future, it contaminates, poisons, the future. It doesn't allow the future its own being, its own saying. It goes on playing the old tapes. It does not allow that which is happening; it goes on covering it up.

Sannyas is the risk of losing the known for the unknown. It is a gamble, but in that very gamble one attains a certain integrity. In that very gamble something is born... something for which one was waiting without knowing, something for which one was searching and seeking without knowing, so something for which one was searching and seeking without knowing, something for which one was searching and seeking but groping in the dark, not exactly aware for what.

One knows it only when it has happened. There is no way to conceive of it, because the one who conceives will be the past and the past has to go for it to happen - remember that. And hence the new name. It is just symbolic, so that you drop the old identity, so you start thinking about the old name as if it was somebody else's: a character in a novel, in a movie you had seen, a story you had read about, a friend that you had known in the past, but not you, not at all.

Amrit means the essence of immortality, nectar, and majida means god, the majestic one, the one who has all the splendour. God of immortality, god of nectar; that is the meaning. Everybody is carrying that source of nectar within themselves, and everybody is born as a god but has forgotten the way to come to themselves. All that is needed is a kind of remembrance.

George Gurdjieff is right when he names his method 'self-remembering'. That's what religion is all about. It is not something that one has to attain but something that one already has, but of which one has become oblivious. The treasure is by your side but you have fallen asleep and you have dreamed -of being a beggar. Let me shake you out of your dreams.

Once you open your eyes the dream has disappeared. All is yours, and all has always been yours.

Even when you were dreaming and thinking that you are a beggar, you were not; that was just an idea, that was just an illusion.

... Now you have come home. And sannyas is not just going to be a formal conversion. It is momentous - it is going to transform your whole being. You are ready for it. Just a little more and something is there, becoming ripe to fall of its own accord. The real change is always very natural.

It makes no sound at all. One becomes aware only when it has happened. It happens so silently; then only is it true. If it makes noise, it is not true. The ego is noisy; it makes much fuss, it brags much. It magnifies things, it creates mountains out of molehills, and naturally gets more and more frustrated.

Sannyas is just the culmination of a journey that you have been on, not only in this life but in many lives. There has been a continuity now something has come to the point of culmination, to a peak.

Let this moment be that peak. Die in this moment to the past and be born anew.

And it is only a question of understanding - not of practice but only of understanding. Only mediocre minds practise. If a person is intelligent he simply understands and all is finished - just like a flash of light, and one sees it.

And that is possible for you. You have a very very potential intelligence, so the path for you is not going to be of practice. Simply start living from this moment in a new way. And what do I mean by a new way ? I mean live as if all that you needed has happened. It has happened; it may take a little time for you to recognise it, but start living as if all that you desire is fulfilled. In the beginning it is always 'as if', but soon the 'as if' disappears and one understands that it was not 'as if'; it was real. So from this moment live as if all is fulfilled. Nothing more is needed, nothing at all. Life is as it should be and all is perfect, everything is in its place.

This is real conversion - to feel existence as perfect, with no desire to improve upon it, because all desire to improve upon it is of the ego. The really religious person simply lives, loves, celebrates, dances, sings, eats, sleeps, and all is good and as it is it is good. Live moment to moment in this suchness.

Prem means love, shahido means goddess. Live like a goddess, live as love fulfilled, and you will be surprised that if you can dare to live like that, it starts happening.

Prem means love, kshema means ultimate good - love the ultimate good, the summum bonum.

There is nothing higher than love; love is the highest religion there is. All is contained in that small word. All the commandments and all the scriptures, and all the teachings of all the Buddhas - Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tzu - are just streams of the ocean of love.

If you understand Jesus you are bound to reach to the ocean of love. Or if you understand the ocean of love you have understood Jesus automatically. And there is a gap of twenty centuries between you and Jesus but there is no gap between you and your heart. Love is easier to understand than Christ. There is every possibility that in trying to understand Christ and Buddha one may get lost in the jungles of theology. Rather than reaching to Christ-consciousness, it is more possible that one may become a Christian. And to be in Christ-consciousness is beautiful but to be a Christian is ugly. To become a Buddha is beautiful but to be a Buddhist is nonsense. The world does not need Buddhists, Hindus, Christians, Mohammedans; it certainly needs more and more people of the level of Christ-consciousness; and Buddhahood.

The most simple and the most natural way is to find your source of light... and it is not very far away; it is just by the corner. One just has to learn a few steps to come down from the head to the heart.

Just a few steps and the world becomes totally different. Then it becomes godful. When the heart is loveful the world is godful. When the heart functions not and one is only obsessed with the head, there is no god.

Friedrich Nietzsche says 'God is dead.' All that really is the case is that Nietzsche's heart is dead, and that is abundantly proved by his madness. A man who lives in the head only is doomed to become mad because he is cut off from the nourishing sources of love. He is like an uprooted tree.

How long can it remain green? It is impossible to live without the heart. One can only pretend to live but sooner or later that pretension is bound to collapse.

And what had happened to Friedrich Nietzsche is now happening to the whole world at large. Either the world is going to become totally mad, insane, or we are on the brink of a new revolution - the revolution that will replace the head with the heart. That is the only possibility and the only hope for man to live in the future.

The head has done enough harm. More cannot be tolerated. Hence my insistence is for love, and I call love the ultimate good.

[A sannyasin couple are leaving. Previously Osho had told the woman to listen to her inner voice and never to compromise to the point of being inauthentic if one is in a relationship.]

(To the man) give her absolute freedom so she can just feel as she wants to feel. Allow her as much space as possible. This is one of the fundamental problems of love. Every lover has to learn it, nobody knows it by birth. It only comes slowly slowly and through much pain, but the sooner it comes, the better - that each person needs his or her own space, that we should not interfere in that space. To interfere is very natural for lovers, because they start taking the other for granted. They start thinking that they are no more separate. They don't think of 'I' and 'thou'; they start thinking of 'we'. You are that too, but only once in a while. 'We' is a rare phenomenon. Once, for a few moments, lovers come to that point where the word is meaningful, where you can say 'we', when 'I' and 'thou' disappear into each other, where boundaries overlap. But these are rare moments; they should not be taken for granted. You cannot remain 'we' twenty-four hours a day, but that's what every lover demands - and that creates unnecessary misery.

When you come close once in a while you become one, but those are rare moments, precious, to be cherished, and you cannot make them a twenty-four-hour thing. If you try, you will destroy them; then the whole beauty will be lost. When that moment is gone, it is gone; you are again 'I' and 'thou'.

You have your space, she has her space. And one has to be respectful now, that the other's space should not be in any way interfered with; it should not be trespassed. If you trespass it, you hurt the other; you start destroying the other's individuality. And because the other loves you, she or he will go on tolerating it. But toleration is one thing; it is not something very beautiful. If the other is only tolerating it, then sooner or later the other will take revenge. The other cannot forgive you and it goes on accumulating - one day, another day, another day.... You have interfered with a thousand and one things, then they all pile up, and then one day they explode.

That's why lovers go on fighting. That fight is because of this constant interference. And when you interfere in her being, she tries to interfere in your being, and nobody feels good about it.

For example, she is feeling happy and you will feel left alone because you are not feeling happy. You will feel as if you have been cheated. 'Why is she feeling happy?' You should both feel happy - that is your idea. That happens once in a while. But sometimes it happens that she is happy, you are not happy or you are happy and she is not happy. We have to understand it, that the other has every right to be happy without one... even though it hurts. You would like to participate but you are not in the mood. If you insist, all that you can do is: you can destroy her happiness... and you are both losers in that way, because if you destroy her happiness, when you are happy alone she will destroy your happiness. Slowly slowly, rather than becoming friends, we turn into enemies.

Love is a sacred art. To be in love is to be in a holy relationship. And those moments when you are 'we' will be rare. Then there is no question of interference because you are not separate. Then it is perfectly good to be totally in her and her to be in you; your centres coincide. There is no question of interference, there is no need for any privacy, there is no need for any individuality; but you should not enforce those moments. One has to be very watchful, careful, cautious, because love is a delicate phenomenon: it takes years to create it and it can be destroyed within minutes It is really the most delicate thing in the world. It takes a long time, a - long intimacy to create it.

That's why people who go on changing their partners have only sexual relationships, not love relationships. They make love but they are not in love, and making love is ugly. The very word 'making' is ugly. To make love means to perform it. It is an act, a doing, a self-conscious, deliberate management is behind it - you are in control - but it is not loving.

Loving is not a kind of making - it is a happening, but for the happening you have to wait. And happening takes time; it comes when it comes. You cannot demand it, you cannot make it like instant coffee. You cannot say 'Right now I want to make love.' You can make love but there will be no love in it; it will be pure sexuality. Nothing is wrong in sexuality but there is much more to it which you are missing, which you will go on missing.

When two persons live closely - in sadness, in happiness, in joy, in misery, in all moods, in all kinds of climates... sometimes it is very cloudy, sometimes the sun is there, everything is sunny - and when you live in all the climates and all the moods, and you have seen each other in different ways, through different angles, slowly slowly intimacy arises. That has nothing to do with sex. Sex may be a part of it but sex is not synonymous with it. Sex is only a very small part of it, and sometimes there may be no sex in it at all. At the highest love-peak sex completely disappears. It is almost prayer - two persons are in a prayerful mood together.

Just being together is enough, just being together is orgasmic. Just feeling the presence of the other is enough; there is no need to do anything at all. Sitting silently, feeling the other's presence, some unsung song is heard, some unstruck music is heard. You are transported. But this takes time and it takes much care, much nurturing.

The basic requirement is: the other has to be given absolute freedom to be herself. If she is happy, feel good - she is happy; if you can be happy and participate in her happiness, good. If you cannot, leave her alone. If she is sad, if you can participate in her sadness, good. If you cannot participate and you want to sing a song and you are feeling happy, leave her alone. Don't drag her according to you; leave her to herself. Then slowly slowly a great respect arises for each other. That respect becomes the foundation of the temple of love.

So I have told her to be absolutely herself and I tell you now that you have also to be the same.

Meet, be together, when the moment comes merge into each other, but when the moment is gone be friendly, respectful. Don't treat the other as your possession, and don't ever allow yourself to be treated by the other as her possession. That is humiliating - that is de-humanising.

If you can take care, something great is going to grow between you two... but that can grow only if you both are very careful. Remember: between you two something is growing which is very delicate, which can be destroyed very easily. But if you can go on creating it and you go on bringing it to higher crescendoes, through it you will know what prayer is and through it you will know what god is.