Darshan 28 July 1978

Krishna is one of the incarnations of god. The Hindu concept of god coming to earth is not like the Christian - not that god has only one son, not that god only comes in one form, as Christ: god comes in many forms, god comes in every age. God comes in every country, every time, because god is not yet in a state of becoming careless towards man, and will never be. God still hopes that man can be redeemed, that man is not a hopeless case, so god comes again and again.

And whenever there is enlightenment, god takes possession of the enlightened person, because the enlightened person is not a person at all; he is just emptiness. And only in that emptiness can god take possession. So whenever there is this emptiness, whenever the ego disappears, god immediately appears. These are two aspects of the same phenomenon: the ego disappearing and god appearing; the death of the ego is the birth of god.

So in India we have many incarnations of god. Every enlightened person is a god person. His own personality is gone. Now he is just a hollow bamboo, and god can make a flute out of him and can sing his song. And one of the best songs that he has sung is through Krishna... one of the most beautiful, most enchanting.

The very word 'krishna' means enchanting, that which attracts, magical, that which is like a magnet and by which people's hearts are suddenly moved.

And Krishna is also one of the most affirmative expressions of god.

Jesus is a little sad. And who knows? - Christians may be right; they say he never laughed. At least in the way they have depicted him he seems to be completely incapable of laughter. He may have laughed, but the story that has come through the Christians is not of a laughing Christ, and you

cannot think of him as dancing. Somehow they have made him fit with the cross. He looks perfectly made for it; the sadness, the heaviness, the seriousness, go perfectly well with the cross.

Krishna goes perfectly well with the flute, with flowers around his neck, with beautiful clothes - the clothes of a dancer, with ornaments on his body and with a throne, with all the grandeur, with a crown made of peacock feathers... utterly beautiful, utterly affirmative.

The message is that religion should be a matter of dance, laughter, love. It should not be serious. It should be light - it should not be grave. It should be capable of loving this world and of affirming life, not negating it.

[The new sannyasin says: I feel as if you know me.... but it's very strange.]

It is, but strange things are possible in life. Life is so full of strange things - things which one cannot believe but which one has to believe because they happen, things which are incredible. If somebody else tells them to you, you will not believe them, but when they happen to you, you have to believe.

And that's why life has value: it is a constant surprise, you can never exhaust it, and each moment something turns up which you had never expected, never dreamed about.

Life takes such sudden turns - unexpected, unpredictable. That's the beauty of it. That proves it is not mechanical. That proves it is something more than a mechanical existence. It is not repetitive.

And strange things are the only proofs that god must be, because strange things cannot be explained by reason, cannot be explained away by reason. Reason simply stumbles over strange things and is at a loss.

In those moments when reason is at a loss something of the beyond penetrates you. And the man is fortunate who comes across such moments more often. And if you become available to such strange spaces, they will come more often, they will happen more. In fact they have always been happening but you were not aware. We only see that for which we are on the alert. We go on missing much just because we are not looking for it!

Scientists say we only see two percent of life; ninety-eight percent is simply passed over. And in that ninety-eight-percent is all that is beautiful, all that is beyond comprehension, all that is strange and mysterious. What we see, the two percent, is nothing but utilitarian - concerned with bread and butter... small things: the house, the family, the relationship. Sooner or later one settles into a certain pattern and then goes on revolving in the same pattern for the whole of life, and dies.

Remain available to these strange things - invite them. And when they happen, don't be in a hurry to dissect them and don't be in a hurry to find some explanation for them. Wait! There are not explanations for each and everything. And the things which have no explanations are the real things. They are the doors - they take you into the unknown And the things which have explanations are ordinary. Things that can be reduced to knowledge are just mundane, and things which are elusive and go on slipping out of your hands, are mercurial, like mercury, they are the real things. Follow them - wherever they lead you go with them, trust them, and you will never be a loser.

Prem means love, rajo means the secret - the secret of love, or love, the secret. Love is the greatest secret there is, and if one can discover it, one has discovered an inexhaustible treasure. It is oceanic.

One can go on and on. It begins but it never ends; it has a beginning but no end.

On the path of love, many things happen of their own accord. It is not the path of effort. The path of love is the path of surrender. You don't do much - rather, on the contrary, you simply allow yourself to be available for things to happen. You are in a receptive passivity.

The path of effort is to be active, to be searching, to be seeking. Some way or other ego is involved in it - it is an ego trip. On the path of love one surrenders. One is not even to search or seek. One waits... one is patient, and whenever the time is ripe, things start happening. Love is trust that it is going to happen if one can wait enough.

On the path of love many things grow. Prayer grows... without any effort. The lover comes to know about prayer not through any scripture, not from the church. Those prayers that come from the scriptures and the church are going to be pseudo, false, because they have not grown out of your heart. They are plastic. You have purchased them in the market. They are not real flowers.

That is not the way of growing real flowers. One has to become the soil. Roses come but one has to become the manure. One has to die for those roses to come. On the path of love, prayer grows. Suddenly one day you find that the rose is blooming, it has bloomed, and you are full of the fragrance. And that fragrance is always new. It is not the prayer that Jesus did or Krishna did. It will be your prayer - it will come out of your being; it will have your colour, your form, it will have your signature on it. It will be authentic.

On the path of love celebration grows of its own accord, and dancing and singing, and life is no more a struggle but a let-go. And there are things which happen only when you are in a let-go. All that is great happens only when you are in a let-go. If you are in an effort to conquer, you will conquer only small things.

Conquerors can become at the most Adolf Hitlers, Napoleons or Alexanders. They never become Buddhas - they cannot. To become a Buddha or to become a Christ, one has to be not in the mood of conquering at all, but, on the contrary, to be conquered by god one has to be feminine. That is the secret of love: to be feminine, to be passive, to be open, vulnerable, ready to absorb, ready to be pregnant, just to be a womb, and all that is needed comes. That's what I call trust - that it comes; whenever your real need is there, it comes. It never comes by your search. It comes only when your real need is there. When you are really thirsty, your thirst will be quenched.

That's what Jesus means when he says 'Knock and the door shall be opened unto you. Ask and it shall be given. Seek and ye shall find.' But by 'seeking' he does not mean an active search, because he says 'The kingdom of god is within you.' How can you seek it actively? Where can you go to search for it? There is nowhere to go. One has to relax into oneself. The seeking has to be passive, the knocking has to be passive. It has to be a kind of prayer in love.

[The new sannyasin asks how to accept that she is not close to Osho.... It takes so much effort.]

But you will be close! It takes a little time....

Effort will not bring you close to me. Effort is the thing that is keeping you distant. Drop the effort!

Just be in a loving space, that's all; be in a prayerful space, that's all... and you will come closer and closer. It is not a question of your having to come closer. You are; it is just that your effort is not allowing you to see that fact. You are so concerned, so worried about being close that you can't see the fact that you are close. Your whole mine is focussed on how to be closer so it can happen. You can go on searching for something which was just around the corner.

Closeness is not a thing that can be achieved by effort. The distance or closeness are not spatial, not in space; they are inner. One can be close to me thousands of miles away physically, and one can be distant just sitting in front of me. So it is not a question of space or time. It is a question of seeing what is the case. From my side I am very close to you. From your side you are still making efforts, and your efforts are your undoing.

Drop the efforts and just enjoy being with me. Forget about closeness, etcetera. Just enjoy. Be happy that you are with me, and suddenly you will see that all the distance has disappeared.

[A sannyasin says he has doubts about being a sannyasin because he just wants to do a little meditation, be with his children - not striving to make something special of his life.]

It is not special at all. Sannyas is exactly that: to live a very ordinary life. These clothes and this mala are just to remind you so that you don't forget, that you have to live a very ordinary life. One tends to forget. The ego comes in again and again and starts being special. The ego is so clever that it can even try to be absolutely ordinary so that one becomes extraordinary.

It can even hide behind the so-called ordinariness. It can say 'Look! I live a very ordinary life.

Nobody lives such an ordinary life. Everybody is after being somebody special. I am not!' But it is finished - the ego has come in!

These clothes, your love for me, your relationship to me, is just to remind you how cunning the ego is. And they are a protection. You are still in a space where the ego can destroy you; this is a protection. And this idea comes to many people. They think 'Now, meditation is going well, things are feeling good, so what is the need of sannyas?' They don't understand that the more things are going well, the more is the need, because the more you become soft, vulnerable, open, the more protection you will need.

Otherwise you can be easily destroyed by small things that are always there like seeds in the mind.

Once you forget about meditation, about me, about sannyas, those small things Like seeds will sprout again and become big trees. The seeds are not yet burned. It may be just that those seeds are playing a trick upon you.

So be ordinary - there is no problem in it; that's how one should be. Live the ordinary life of eating, sleeping, taking care of your children, loving. Don't make anything special of yourself. But this is precisely what sannyas is! Sannyas is not something special.

And doubts are expected. They will always be coming; until the mind is dissolved totally doubts will go on coming. They will come less and less but they will come. And then there are moods when you are flowing, when you are happy; doubts are less. When you are not flowing and you come into a valley part, dark part, doubts are more. It is like in the day, fear disappears, everything is clear. In the night, in the same room, all is dark and the fear comes back. Doubts always come when you are more unconscious, trust always when you are more conscious.

The totally conscious man is absolutely trustful. You can go on deceiving him but he will not doubt you - he cannot; it is simply not possible. He will not find anything that can bring the doubt back.

You can kill him but he will die in deep trust.

It happened... there is a very famous Tibetan story: A young man came and surrendered to a master, but the master was a bogus one, just a pretender. But the disciple's surrender was so tremendously total that he achieved. The master was bogus, the master knew nothing, but the disciple's surrender was total, his trust was total, and miracles started happening in the disciple's life. Even the master was surprised because he could not believe it - he himself could not do such things! The disciple was doing things: he was walking on water! The master himself tried, thinking 'If my disciple can walk on water, then why not I ? Maybe I have not tried it yet.' He asked the disciple 'What do you do?'

The disciple said 'But what is there to do? I just simply remember you! I remember your name and everything is possible. I have passed through fire and I was not burned; I have walked on water; I have jumped from the mountain cliff and I was not hurt. Just your name! And you know it - why are you asking me?'

The master tried but he nearly drowned. He tried saying his own name, he tried to remember himself, but he was afraid; doubt was there. He could not believe that this was possible - just repeating his name?

So it is not a question of whom you are with. The greater question is: how much trust? But one cannot force trust. If you force, those doubts remain repressed and they will come back; so rather than forcing trust, watch those doubts, become aware. Observe them, take note that they are there, but don't be trapped by them, don't be overpowered by them.

Buddhists have a technique for it. They say: when doubt comes, repeat inside 'Doubt, doubt'... and watch. Whenever doubt comes repeat twice 'Doubt, doubt' and watch. You are the witness and the doubt is there - and you have named it doubt; just watch. You have labelled it. And slowly slowly you will see that if you are not identified with the doubts, they come less and less and one day they disappear. That day is a day of great liberation when all doubts disappear and only trust is left. That trust will give you all that your life contains in itself. It will give you the whole world.

So the idea is good - remain ordinary, but don't make much fuss about it, mm? Enjoy it and continue to meditate.

[The sannyasin then says he doesn't feel like doing groups.]

That s the doubt.

I am not saying to you to go into fire and I am not saying to walk on water and I am not saying 'Jump from the cliff, off the mountain.' Just think if I say 'Jump from the cliff, off the mountain!' I am just saying do a few groups, and the 'no' comes.

The I is too strong - 'I don't feel like it.' If you have not done any groups what right have you to...?

You have never done them, so how can you have some idea of whether to do them or not, or whether they will be helpful or not?... Then why do you decide so absolutely and so easily ? Why do you allow the no to come? You could have said to me 'If they are helpful, I will do them.' But you cannot even ask that.

And you think you will be able to live an ordinary; life! You say that these doubts are there and you ask how to drop them... but you have been nourishing them.... Nourishing them, nurturing them, feeding them.

It is up to you. Just be here.

[A sannyasin says that deep inside he always feels sad. Osho checks his energy.]

Nothing to be worried about. It is not really sadness - you are just becoming less excited, and that's good. It can appear to be like sadness. Many things are so similar that one can get confused.

If a man has always lived with excitement and then it leaves, he feels like falling into sadness. But it is perfectly good. Your fever is disappearing; you are becoming more still, more calm. Don't call it sadness. It is just the silence that comes after the storm... and more silence will be coming.

If you call it sadness you have already taken an anti attitude towards it. In calling it sadness you have already condemned it, and you will hold yourself back. You will try to do something so that you are not sad. But it is not sadness at all - it is just a meditative stillness, something immensely valuable. Only later on will you be able to see the point of it... when it has come to its full flowering.

It is just as if a man has always lived with fever and then he becomes healthy, the fever disappears.

He will think 'What is happening? I am losing my energy, my heat, my life. I am becoming cold. Am I dying or something?' All that is happening is that the fever is leaving him - he is becoming healthier.

It's perfectly good.

[A sannyasin couple have just arrived from the West. Osho had told them to live separately. Osho checks their energy, and says there is no need for them to separate. But give each other as much space as possible, for they love each other deeply and a love of that intensity needs a break. Mini- divorces every day mean there need never be a real divorce. Love is like food, says Osho, and if you go on stuffing yourself with chocolates and with goodies all day long, you'll never experience real hunger. Love is a food... a goodie, beware of it - don't go on stuffing.]

[Another couple are in conflict. The man says when he is with his partner he feels surrendered to her and its tremendous, but often he needs a few days away from her, and she does not like this.]

(To the man) Simply listen to your feelings. When you feel flowing, flow; when you don't feel flowing there is no need to force it. Don't create unnecessary problems for yourself. And she is perfectly ready to allow you that much space; there is no problem from her side. But be true: whenever you are feeling flowing, flow. Don't play a politician. In times when you want to be with her - as she is saying - you say no, but she feels that you want to say yes. Don't play the politician. If you want to say yes, say yes; if you want to say no, say no. Because women are very perceptive. If deep down you want to say yes and on the surface you are saying no, she will be able to feel it. They have a deeper sensitivity to feel, they are intuitive. It is very difficult to deceive a woman, and she is almost always right.

So there is no need... when you love a woman, simply be true. Don't play this male chauvinistic game. The male mind is such that even when it wants the woman to be close, it says no, because it wants to pretend 'I don't need anybody. I am enough unto myself. If you want me, you can come, but I don't need you.' That is foolish - you cannot deceive a woman - and that unnecessarily creates complexity. Life as it is is complicated enough; don't make it more complicated. Make it as simple as possible. If there is yes, then yes; if there is no, there is no. Don't create confusion. And she will be able - she loves you - she will be able to understand it when you want to say no; she will not feel offended.

Truth never really offends. To be true to a person is really being respectful to the person. If you are not respectful then you have to be diplomatic. Then you have to play; you have to use games and strategies. But when you love a person simply say.... And it is not in any way condemning her; when you want to be alone it says nothing about her. It doesn't say that she is not worth anything or she is not lovable or you don't love her any more. All that you are saying is 'Right now I am not in a flow.'

You are saying something about you, not about her.

And be true to yourself too. When you are not feeling in a flow, if you enforce the flow, it will be false, pseudo, and you will take revenge on her. You will be angry, because it is because of her that you are in this enforced role, as if she had been forcing it on you. And when you are not feeling to move with her, to go into love, to be together, don't feel guilty either. One cannot be in that state of loving twenty-four hours a day. It is a rare moment - it comes once in a while - and it is valuable because it is rare. If it is just an ordinary thing, available on order, it will be of no value. It comes when it comes; you cannot order it. It is not in your control, so what can you do? When it comes, go together.

And remember the second part of it: sometimes she may not feel flowing with you. Then be respectful to her feeling; don't disturb her. Don't force her to be with you or to be loving. Just out of your consideration she may go with you, but then it is false, and anything false never satisfies, never. Only truth gives contentment. So what is wrong in it? One day you feel flowing, flow; then for three days it disappears. Perfectly good - three days are not long. One can wait for the day that will be coming after three days. And don't feel that you are in a miserable state because only once in three days do you feel flowing. You should be happy! There are people who don't feel flowing and months pass, years pass, and there are people who have never felt flowing in their whole lives.

But just be true, and don't be diplomatic... and report to me after six weeks how you are flowing. But things are perfectly good.