Darshan 29 July 1978

Anand means bliss, rupena means form - the form of bliss. Each being is a form, a certain form, a certain manifestation of the ultimate reality, and the ultimate reality consists of nothing but bliss, hence the search. We are searching for our home, we are searching for our original source, our original face.

The search is for the ultimate nature, and until it is found, restlessness continues. There is no way to avoid it. No comfort can be of much help. Maybe momentarily one feels calm and quiet but again the restlessness arises. It comes back again and again; it is a goading. It keeps you searching for nature, for tao, and that tao is bliss.

To be unnatural is to be miserable; to be natural is to be blissful. Let nature and bliss become synonymous in your consciousness. And whenever you feel miserable, remember: somewhere you have gone astray from the natural course, you are no more in tune with it. And whenever you feel blissful, remember: you are in tune. So watch, observe your blissful moments so that you can move into them more and more, so that you know how they come. It is not a science - it is a knack; one has to learn the inner art of it. And the only way to learn is to watch your blissful moments.

There is not a single person on the earth who does not have those moments sometimes. Even though we have become very unnatural, nature asserts itself; there are moments it takes us unguarded. A bird suddenly starts calling and you fall silent... and suddenly, the benediction of it. Or it starts raining and it takes you unawares. You slip out of your mechanical habit for a moment; you are no more a robot. And the smell of the wet earth.... Anything new, anything that surprises you, brings you out of your robot-like existence, and there is nature in all its beauty.

Those moments are rare because they have to come in spite of us. But watch: see how they come, from where they come, in what ways they arrive and in what receptivity they find you, and find you

more often, and what the barriers are that prevent them. And in the same way watch your misery - how it comes, how it happens. Just watching both, slowly slowly the balance... suddenly one has the knack. Then those moments can be invited more and more, and those miserable moments can be dropped by the way. And once the knack is learned, there is no barrier between you and god.

Anand means bliss, subodha means awareness - blissful awareness. Misery is unawareness. We create it because we are moving almost in sleep. We are doing things so mechanically that we go on missing the spontaneity of existence. We can't meet in it - we remain hooked to the past.

Machines have only a past - no future and no present - and the mind is a machine, a bio-computer.

It has only a past; it functions out of the past. It knows nothing but habits, and out of those habits it goes on responding. Those responses are false. They are reactions, not real responses. A response, to really be a response, has to be spontaneous. It has to be out of awareness and not out of the mind.

Remember to act more and more with alertness. Even in small things - walking; walk with full awareness. Let the whole world disappear and just be the walker or the dancer. Or in taking a shower, remain there in the presentness of it - the water falling on you, the cool touch, the joy and the freshness that is coming to the body, the exhilaration.... Remain alert to it all and you are in meditation.

Life has to be transformed into a continuous meditation. Meditation is not a question of something one does for one hour every day, and then for twenty-three hours one can remain unaware, mm?

That won't help, and that one hour will be false, pseudo; it cannot win against twenty-three hours of mechanicalness. One has to spread meditation all over one's life. Walking, eating, talking, listening, in whatsoever you are doing, be there in tremendous attentiveness, as if that's all, as if life and death depend on it, as if there is no other moment, as if the next moment is not going to come.

Then the whole energy pulsates in the present moment. That pulsation is subodha, and that's what brings one to reality, to that which is. And it is the only thing that can give bliss, joy, what Jesus calls the kingdom of god. So your name has the message for you.

Life gathers meaning only when it becomes poetry. If it remains prose it remains meaningless.

Unless it gets anchored in the heart, it remains superficial. And to be anchored in the heart is to be a poet. To look at life with the eyes of feeling is to be a poet. To be in a romantic relationship with life is to be a poet.

Man can have many kinds of relationship with life. The scientist has one kind of relationship. It is antagonistic; it is not friendly, it is inimical. He is there to conquer life. The very idea is ugly. His effort is a kind of rape on nature. He wants to force life to reveal its secrets; his effort is violent. So it is not accidental that as science has grown more and more, nature has been destroyed; man has been uprooted from all nourishing soils. The ecology is destroyed; and not only the outside but the inner ecology of the mind is also destroyed. When the outer is destroyed, the inner is also naturally destroyed. They go together, they are part of one whole.

If a man has a relationship with life, and the relationship is that of enmity, it will remain a kind of tense affair. Joy will be impossible. At the most one can hope for a comfortable life, but not a celebrant's life, and a comfortable life is nothing but a comfortable death. Life has to be a celebration - one should not be contented with less than that. Life has to be a dance.

The other polarity is to be related to life as a poet; it is just the opposite of the scientist. To be related to life as a poet means not to bring your head in between but to be in a direct contact with life through the heart. And when the heart functions directly with life, joy arises. Joy then is natural... when the heart is in tune with life, and dances with life.

It cannot happen through logic - it can happen only through love. And it cannot happen by forcing nature to reveal its secrets. It can only happen by surrendering to nature. Because nature is vast and man is tiny... just a ripple in the great ocean. And the ripple cannot fight with the ocean; that is so stupid. The very idea of conquering life or nature is stupid. The wise man is one who allows life to conquer him, who surrenders, who is just in a kind of let-go, who trusts. In that trust one becomes a poet.

Science is doubt, poetry is trust. The scientist is inimical; the poet is very friendly towards life. He befriends all. The earth and the sky, the rivers and the mountains, the stars and the oceans - he befriends all. And the beauty is that when you befriend life, life befriends you and it starts revealing its secrets of its own accord. That is the meaning of the old religious word 'revelation'. You need not force anything.

And the difference is exactly the same.... Just as a man can rape a woman or can fall in love - from the outside the man raping a woman or making love to a woman may look exactly the same, but from the inside the difference is tremendous; they are just polar opposites. Science is a rape; poetry is a love affair.

My message is: let your life become a love affair with the whole - call it god or nature or tao; those are just names for the same reality.

Prem means love, suresh means god. Love is god, and to be loving is to be religious. Love need not be Christian, Hindu or Mohammedan; love is enough unto itself. Any adjective to it will be a kind of falsification of it. Love is simply love - neither Catholic nor Protestant - and that's the beauty of love. It is indivisibly one. If we think of love as god, humanity becomes one. All the churches have to disappear, all the small theologies have to die for a real theology to be born - the theology of love.

In the past all the religions have talked about love, but that has remained only talk. They talked about love and they continued to do just the opposite; they created much hatred in the world. It is very easy to create hatred in the name of love. Love for the country can create much hatred, because then you are easily manipulated; the politician can easily manipulate you. And love for the country becomes hate for other countries; that is another aspect of it. Love for Christianity becomes hatred for Mohammedanism, and so on, so forth. Behind the talk of love, hate has been growing. And because it has been hiding behind the curtain of love, it is very difficult to detect it.

Now there are people who love communism, and for communism's sake they are ready to destroy the whole world. There are people who love democracy, and for the sake of democracy and their love they are ready to destroy the whole of humanity. These are all just strategies of the mind, deceptions.

When I say a 'real theology of love', I mean love not for country, not for church, not for this or that, but simply love, lovingness, love without any object. If there is an object, hatred will be the result. If there is no object but love is just your inner state of consciousness - you are loving - only then can the world really become one. And it needs to become one.

Much suffering happens unnecessarily in the world because of religions. And to be divided in the name of religion is sheer nonsense, because the very meaning of the word 'religion' is that which joins together. That is also the meaning of the word 'yoga': to join together. So love is the alchemy that joins together, but love has to be without any object - it has just to be your inner state.

Remember it, make it your life, and much will be the benefit out of it - to you and to others.

Remember always: whenever you are benefitted, others are also benefitted. To be really selfish is to be altruistic, and the greatest selfishness is to be loving, because it gives such joy to you, such fulfillment, as nothing else can. And when you are fulfilled and you are joyous, you create vibes of joy around you.

Naturally you make others happy, without any motivation. Not that you want to make them happy - nobody can make anybody happy - but you are happy, and happiness is contagious.

[A sannyasin couple say: We thought we wanted to leave but now, after we made much preparation, we're in a space where we don't know.]

If there is no need, why go unnecessarily? There is no point. You have to be back soon, so just go and come back. The moment you reach there you will start thinking of coming back.

This is your home now. You may consciously know, you may not know, but now you are part of me.

The old mind can play tricks on you. This is just the restlessness of the mind that wants you to be moving. It hankers for something new; for some new sensation, and there is nothing new under the sun... or everything is new. It all depends on you. If you know how to see, everything is new; everywhere it is new. If you don't know how to see, everywhere it is the same - the same houses, the same people, the same streets.

So what is the point of going if there is no need? I don't think you should go, unless the hankering is so much that you will be miserable here; then you can go... and be miserable there! But if you are miserable here, you will be miserable anywhere. And if you cannot be happy here, you cannot be happy anywhere else. Here is a great opportunity for you to grow and to be happy. Rather than wasting energy in coming and going, become part of the family and relax... and start working.

But if you have to go and finish things there, you can go and finish things and come back.

[A sannyasin is invited to stay forever, but has two children in the West who are at present with her ex-husband, who wants to keep them. Part of her feels guilty and part of her wants to be free.]

He would like to keep them? If you listen to me, my own feeling is that it is better to leave them with your husband for one or two years so you can be absolutely alone here and grow without any barrier, limitation. And then bring the children. By that time they will be a little older also and you will be ready to bring them.

Right now if you bring them, first there will be trouble - the husband will create trouble. It will not be easy, legal problems can arise. And the second: if you bring them, you will feel hindered by them.

He will take perfect care of them; don't be worried about them....

Every mother wants to be with the children - and every mother destroys them! Just listen to the psychoanalyst: if you ask them one single cause for the misery of man it is the mother... and out of love. It is not that the love is not there - out of love.

It will be good for you to be free, and it will also be good for the children to be free. They will start growing more individual patterns. The father remains a peripheral influence because he has so many other things to do but the mother remains a very very central influence.

So don't feel guilty. There is no need to feel guilty. And after one or two years, when you feel that now there is no problem - you have come to your own independence; now you don't need to be free because you have freedom, you are free so you don't need freedom - then you can bring the children. And they will be more benefitted by you, because you will have something to give them then. Right now what can you give?

If you really love them you will be able to give them something later on.

But about that you have to decide; if you feel like bringing them, you can. That is not a problem - you can bring them. Just go and see what happens... but you have to come back!

[Osho had previously sent a message to a sannyasin to return to the West. Now the sannyasin says he sees how everything is so beautiful here: It's just like a man can see only when he loses something.]

That's right! That's why I sent the message that [you were] to go to Italy, and then I cancelled the message when you saw the point of it. Now you need not go to Italy! Good.

There is no problem in it - that's how the human mind functions. It is nothing to do with you particularly; everybody's mind functions that way. The mind can be alert either when it loses something or gains something new... only when something happens abruptly. Then in a shock one becomes alert. But then one again relapses into the mechanicalness of it. This has to be watched, and slowly slowly you will become capable.

These are good happenings. This is the meaning of being with a master. That was just a zen stick that I hit on your head, mm? I don't go around carrying a gross stick but I have my own subtle ways of hitting people, whenever they need it. You were asking for it but you had not asked for that much, that I know. You were asking for just a small pat on the head, but that won't do!

It is always so. You love a woman and you understand only when she dies, when you have lost her; and then you cry and weep. It is not because of death that you are crying and weeping; you are crying and weeping because now you see the point, and now there is no point in seeing it - she is no more. You never loved her though you always talked about love and always quarrelled, never loved. Now she is gone and great love arises, but she is no more there to respond to it. It only happens when people lose something or gain, but the things have to be very abrupt so the mind cannot immediately function in the old pattern. If things change slowly, then there is no problem; the mind will cope.

If I had told you 'You have to go to Bombay,' there would have been no problem; then to Karachi and then to Cairo, and slowly slowly to Rome. It would have been perfectly okay; you would have coped with it. But suddenly I say you have to go immediately to Italy... the change is so abrupt that the mechanical mind simply stops; it does not know how to function. It is in a surprise. But these are the only ways to stop it. Then you see how sensitive you become. The trees are so green - they have never been so green - and the roses are so rosy - they have never been so rosy. Everything is new, every leaf of grass is so tremendously beautiful, so psychedelically beautiful. But then again you will have to go back into the old pattern and things will settle.

It will happen this way many times. Only then by and by will it sink into the heart that you can live each moment this way. But it will happen slowly slowly - you cannot force it.

[A sannyasin says her partner of four years has fallen in love with someone else and she realises what she thought was love was just clinging and insecurity.]

No, you loved him... but you are not yet capable of let-go. You loved him, you still love him, but love is not naturally capable of letting the person go when it starts falling apart. That art has to be learned.

Love naturally tends to cling. Not that a love that clings is not love, not that a love that cannot allow the lover to go is not love, no. It is love but not a very grown-up love. It is the love of a child to the mother; it is a childish love.

The child loves the mother but the child cannot let her go. He becomes afraid about his survival, his security; the mother is his security. If the mother goes, he simply does not know how to exist even for a single day. So he goes into a panic. This is your child inside that is going into panic.

But just because of it, don't think that you never loved him. You loved him and you still love him, but your love is not a guarantee that he will not move with somebody else.

[What can he do? Osho explains that either he can repress these feelings when they come - and take that out on her in ways subtle or overt - or move with others and be overcome with guilt and feel that he has betrayed and made her miserable.]

Remember that love is an unknown energy, an unknown force - it is not in your control. It is in your control only when you become enlightened, never before it. When you are full of consciousness, when each act and each move of your life is out of full consciousness, then there is no problem. Then one never falls in love. There is nothing like falling. One simply loves, one is loving. That is a different thing, a different state of affairs. Before that has happened, love is an unknown energy. When it strikes you, nobody knows, and nobody is capable of controlling it; it is tremendously powerful.

Feel compassion for him and be courageous enough to let him go, because if it is one-sided, it is pointless. If he is not with you and you are with him, you will be miserable, because one needs to be needed and he will not need you any more. And you will feel worthless.

Rather than clinging to it, start searching again. You are alive - you are not dead! And who knows?

You may come across somebody and love will bloom again. It is never finished with one person.

Many persons come and go - love continues. It is good that for three years you remained together.

Even three years is such a long time; in such a swiftly changing world, three years is long enough...

almost a life!

Feel thankful for all those joys and all those moments that you shared with him and he shared with you - feel grateful. And don't become unnecessarily miserable. Now the moment has come to share those moments with somebody else. Maybe now they will go even deeper because you will be more experienced, more alert, more conscious, and more aware of the mysterious force called love. Things will go deeper.

In fact it is perfectly good. It hurts for a few days because the mind never wants anything to change.

It loves the status quo because it is convenient, comfortable. Now you have to find a new person, you have to adjust to his habits, his ways, and again there will be turmoil, excitement, and the beginning and things, and again a settling. It takes a few days to settle again, to become intimate again. First comes the ecstasy, which is superficial - the honeymoon ecstasy - and then comes the real ecstasy which is calm and quiet, what is called 'intimacy'. The mind says 'Why bother? One thing was going perfectly well.' But it is not within your control or within his control. It is no more there. Don't cling to something that has disappeared.

And don't think that you never loved him - you loved him. We have been taught a very false notion about love - that love has to be permanent; only then is it true. That is nonsense, mm? It is like saying that if a rose flower is not permanent, it is not a rose flower. If by the evening it withers away, then you can start saying that it was just a dream flower because it withered away. Then you will call a plastic flower a real flower because it never withers away .

Love is a rose flower: it blooms, it withers away. It is born one day, it disappears one day... and that's how it should be.

Life is a flow - nothing abides - and that's the beauty of it, the constant ecstasy of it. The mind is always orthodox, it wants to cling. Just let him go and let him go with joy! If he is enjoying his freedom, you also enjoy your freedom. And I say to you, you will not be a loser. Soon you will find another friend, and then you will feel grateful to him - that if he had not left you you would never have found this new friend. Never cling to the past; always remain available for the future. And be in the present even if it hurts; these hurts are part of growth.

I will take care! Just start searching, mm?