Darshan 25 July 1978
Deva means divine, nartaka means dancer - a divine dancer.
Dance, to me, is closest to the divine, because dance is the most existential activity. Thinking is farthest from existence. Dance is closest. And between the two is singing - singing is half- half; half thinking, half dancing. Thinking creates a barrier between you and existence; dancing dissolves that barrier. It is the only activity in which the actor completely disappears into the act. The dancer becomes the dance. Only then is the dance fulfilled - when the dancer becomes completely oblivious of himself, when he is not, when he cannot find himself; there is only sheer movement, joy, energy, but no centre to it.
And this is the very core of meditation. So while you are here, dance with abandon, dance with totality. Let dancing become the chief work upon your being.
Prem means love, devarahi means a divine pilgrim. The full name will mean a divine pilgrim of love. Life is a pilgrimage, and unless love is attained, it remains only a pilgrimage never reaching anywhere. It goes on moving in circles and never does the moment of fulfillment come when one can say 'I have arrived. I have become that for which I had come. The seed is fulfilled in the flowers.'
Love is the goal - life is the journey. And a journey without a goal is bound to be neurotic, haphazard; it will not have any direction. One day you are going north and another day you are going south.
It will remain accidental - anything can lead you anywhere. You will remain a driftwood unless the goal is clear. It may be a very distant star, that doesn't make any difference, but it should be clear.
Distant - if it is distant it is okay, but it should be there. Your eyes can remain focussed on it, then the journey of ten thousand miles is not a long journey.
If you are moving in the right direction then the longest journey is not such a problem. But if you are moving in a wrong direction or not moving in any direction at all or moving in all directions together.
then life starts collapsing. That's what neurosis is: the collapse in energy, not knowing where to go, what to do, what to be. Not knowing where to go, not knowing what it is all about, leaves a gap inside, a wound, a dark hole, and constant fear will arise out of it.
That's why people live in trembling. They may hide it, they may cover it up, they may not show it to anybody, but they live in fear. That's why people are so afraid of being intimate with somebody. The fear is that the other may see the black hole inside you if you allow him too close an intimacy.
The word 'intimacy' comes from a Latin root: 'intimum'. 'Intimum' means your interiority, your innermost core. Unless you have something there you can't be intimate with anybody. You cannot allow intimum, intimacy, because he will see the hole, the wound and the pus oozing out of it. He will see that you don't know who you are, that you are a madman, that you don't know where you are going, that you have not even heard your own song, that your life is a chaos, it is not a cosmos.
Hence the fear of intimacy. Even lovers rarely become intimate. And just to be sexually related to somebody is not intimacy. The genital orgasm is not all that is there in intimacy. It is just the periphery of it; intimacy can be with it, can be without it.
Intimacy is a totally different dimension. It is allowing the other to come into you, to see you as you see yourself, to allow the other to see you from your inside, to invite somebody to that deepest core of your being. In the modern world intimacy is disappearing. Even lovers are not intimate.
Friendship is only a word now - it has disappeared. And the reason? The reason is that there is nothing to share. And who wants to show one's inner poverty? One wants to pretend 'I am rich, I have arrived, I know what I am doing, I know where I am going.'
One is not ready and courageous enough to open up, to show one's inner chaos and to be vulnerable. The other may exploit it - that fear is there. The other may become too dominant seeing that you are a chaos. Seeing that you need a master, that you are not a master of your own being, the other may become the master. Hence everybody tries to protect themselves, so nobody knows their inner helplessness, otherwise they can be exploited. This world consists of much exploitation.
Love is the goal, and once the goal is clear you start growing an inner richness. The wound disappears and becomes a lotus; the wound is transformed into a lotus. That is the miracle of love, the magic of love. Love is the greatest alchemical force in the world. Those who know how to use it can reach the highest peak called god. Those who know not how to use it remain crawling in the dark recesses of existence; they never come to the sunlit peaks of life.
That is the meaning of your name. And move in such a way, with such alertness, awareness, that it becomes your experience too.
When I give a name, I give you a message with it. It may contain your whole future. And the meaning will become slowly slowly clear, because the meaning is going to be existential. But love is the key, and from this moment start a pilgrimage of love.
Shambala is a well-known name. It is a mythological city somewhere in Tibet, where only enlightened people can enter. To the unenlightened it remains invisible. No such city exists - it is a beautiful myth - although many foolish people have been in search of it. Still people go on searching, thinking that somewhere in some deep hidden valley of the Himalayas the city must exist.
But it is a beautiful myth and of great meaning. There are a few spaces in existence where only enlightened people can enter. To the unenlightened those spaces remain invisible - not that they are hidden somewhere in the deep valleys of the Himalayas: they are just here by the corner. They are within you. You are the valley where they exist. They exist in the Himalayas of your inner being.
But unless your inner world becomes full of light you will not be able to see them.
Jesus goes on repeating and saying to his disciples again and again 'The kingdom of god is within you.' He is talking about Shambala.
Literally also the word is of tremendous significance. Sham means tranquillity, bala means a virgin - virgin tranquillity. That is the inner space which always remains virgin. That is also the meaning of the story of Jesus' birth from the virgin Mary. It is not a biological phenomenon. It is simply a symbol saying that Jesus comes from that inner tranquillity which cannot be contaminated, which is absolutely virgin. There is no way to corrupt it.
There is a point at the very core of every being which is incorruptible. You can be lost in the darkest of nights, but that point remains out of it. One can become the greatest sinner, but that inner point remains transcendental to it - yes, even in an Adolf Hitler or Genghis Khan or Tamerlaine. It is intrinsically pure, and that is our witnessing soul... the one who witnesses in you, and witnesses everything. Sadness comes; it witnesses it. Happiness comes; it witnesses it. Dreams pass; it witnesses. Millions of things pass in a procession, but the witness remains there uncorrupted. It is like a mirror: the mirror can reflect ten thousand things but once those things have passed, the mirror is clean and pure as ever.
That witnessing is shambala. That place has to be found, that city has to be searched for. And you need not go to the Himalayas - all that is needed is to go within oneself.
[Osho explains the meaning of anand nirup - formless bliss.]
Bliss does not mean happiness, does not mean joy, does not mean pleasure, because wherever pleasure is, there is pain, and wherever joy is, there is sadness, and wherever happiness is, there is unhappiness; they exist in pairs.
Bliss is alone. It is transcendental to all dualities. It is neither happiness nor unhappiness. It is a state of absolute tranquillity, no disturbance at all. Happiness is also a disturbance - ripples of joy are there, the lake is disturbed - so is unhappiness But when the lake is absolutely calm and quiet, not even a single ripple, when the lake functions like a mirror and can reflect the whole sky, exactly the same is bliss. When your consciousness is just a lake without ripples, neither good nor bad, in that state of silence one arrives home....
Nirup, means formless. This tranquillity, this blissfulness, this benediction, has no form, no shape. It is neither male nor female, it is neither black nor white. It has no finitude to it, no boundaries around it; it is as unbounded as existence itself. Although it contains all the forms, it itself is formless. Again, think of the lake: all kinds of ripples and waves arise in it and each wave has its own form, but they all disappear back into the lake. Our innermost being has no form, although all forms arise out of it and dissolve back into it. Nirup means that formless source, a state of formless tranquillity.
And the key for you is in your name - it can unlock the door of existence. Just remember two things. One is: don't get identified with any kind of duality - pain-pleasure, happiness-unhappiness, good-bad; remain aloof from both. When unhappiness comes, remember 'I am not this.' And when happiness comes, then too remember 'I am not this.' It is easy to remember when pain is there that 'I am not this'; who wants to be pain? But when there is pleasure one forgets, one tends to forget.
But remember, neither this nor that, and slowly slowly you will become aware of a third quality in your being about which you have never been aware before. The day one becomes aware of that something which is beyond pain and pleasure, a great moment has come.
And the second thing: don't get identified with any form. Never think 'l am a woman or a man.' That is only the form of the body; it is not your form. Never think 'I am beautiful or ugly', because that too again belongs to the form, not to you. Never think you are black or white; that too belongs to the pigments of the body. Never think you are a child, young, old; that too belongs to the form.
Never think you are ill or healthy; that too is part of the form. Remain aloof, detached, far away, just watching. Childhood comes and goes, youth comes and goes, old age comes and goes - the watcher remains, and the watcher has no age.
These two things have to be remembered. And much will happen out of that remembrance.
[The Sahaj group is present. One member felt a lot of emotional pain and discomfort in the group.
Osho checks her energy.]
Don't take it as a problem - it is not. You are on the threshold of something very beautiful... very close to a door which can open any moment. The pain is a birth pain. It needs no treatment. It has to be welcomed. It is very sweet; it is not a disease. It always happens when something new is going to happen, because the unknown has to make a way into the known.
It is like a child coming out of the womb, mm? The child has lived in the womb for nine months and it has been a very comfortable home. Now suddenly he has to leave it. He clings. Because of that clinging, the pain arises. Not only does he cling; the mother is also possessive. She has possessed the child so totally - it has been a treasure in her being. She has felt the child's heart beating, the movement of the child in her own body. Never again will such unity be known. She is afraid to lose that unity; she also tries to hold it. The mother wants to hold the child in the womb, hence the pain; the child wants to cling to the womb, hence the pain.
If the mother is ready to allow, the pain disappears for the mother; and if the child is ready to allow - which is very rare - then the pain disappears for the child too. Then birth becomes one of the greatest joys. In fact, if the mother allows it happily, joyously, when the child is coming out of the womb she will come to know the greatest orgasm that one can ever attain to. Instead of pain there will be such tremendous joy. And if the child can allow - only a few children can.... Only those children who are conscious in the womb, those who are going to be Buddhas in this life, those who have died in the past life fully alert and aware and have entered the womb consciously, deliberately, knowingly, have chosen the womb, can leave the womb. Then leaving the womb is the experience of the greatest freedom possible for the child, because it was an imprisonment; the space was so confined. Cozy, comfortable, but a prison all the same. If the child goes happily with the pulsation, the natural pulsation, then the child will know great freedom; and if the mother allows it knowingly, happily, she will know great orgasm. Both will be enriched. But that doesn't happen ordinarily - both suffer.
The same is the situation: if you allow, if you welcome it, the pain will change. It is your interpretation - it is just something 'x'; you are calling it pain. If you welcome it, suddenly it will become pleasure and you will be thrilled - a great adventure! You are on the verge of something opening....
When a bud opens and becomes a flower, there is a little pain. But a man can consciously open up; then the pain disappears into pleasure. Pain and pleasure are not very different - they are our interpretations. Allow it.
[The sannyasin says she will be doing the massage group and T'ai Chi Intensive.]
Very good - both will be helpful. If the pain has not gone after Massage and your acceptance, then take a few sessions of Shiatsu, mm? But good - nothing to be worried about.