Now begin the enquiry into god

The new name is of tremendous significance: it is closing accounts with the old, getting out of the old continuity.

The name is the only continuity: everything else goes on changing, only the name remains continuous, and because of the name, the fallacy exists that we are not changing. The child changes into a young man, the young man changes into an old man, life changes into death. Everything goes on changing, it is a flux. Only this false name remains static... but that creates a great illusion: that gives you the idea as if you are permanent.

The body goes on changing.... First physiologists used to think that in seven years the whole changes completely; now they say it changes in one year. Whatsoever is true, it changes: by and by the whole body is renewed again and again and again. You don't have the same body; you will never have the same body again. It is exactly as old heraclitus says: you cannot step in the same river twice. You cannot be in the same body twice, next moment it is something else. The ganges goes on flowing, it is never the same; just the name ganges remains the same. And that creates a false illusion of our being permanent, of there being some entity, something static that exists.

There is no entity that exists. It is all liquid, there is no solid thing anywhere; there is no substance.

And just like the body, the mind goes on changing even faster than the body. The body may take one year to change; the mind changes every moment. Just a moment before there was anger and now it is not there. Now you are so loving and one moment afterwards you are so sad, so unhappy. The mind goes on changing every second but the name gives you a false idea that there is something substantial that continues to be the same.

This name becomes the ego: the name almost becomes identical with the ego - my name, my family's name, my country's name, my religion's name. They have become so important; people fight for them, people kill each other for them... for names!

And the reality has nothing like the ego. That is one of the deepest revelations in life, that nothing is static, everything is dynamic; god is change. That's my approach - that god is not something absolute, not something that remains the same. God is this whole totality, this flux of totality...

millions of forms changing into millions of other forms. This whole movement, this whole energy, is god! All these changes together is what god is.

Hence, this is very important, to change the name sometimes, mm? That gives you a break, a breakthrough, a gap. From this moment you can start thinking about yourself in a new way. With the new name you start again from abc. With the new name whatsoever you do will not be an addition to the past; it will be something separate, utterly separate. And the beauty of it, the newness of it, the freshness...

Deva mimansa. The name means enquiry into god - deva means god, mimansa means enquiry.

And that's the only enquiry worth calling an enquiry. That is the only enquiry that is significant, that is meaningful; all other enquiries are trivia. The only thing to know is to know god because to know god is to know oneself and to know all.

One of the most important indian scriptures, 'Brahmasutra' starts with the sentence, 'Athato brahmajijnasa': 'Now, begins the enquiry into god.' It is the only book in the world which starts with the word 'now'. No other book starts with the word 'now', because it looks as if one is in the middle. 'Now, begins the enquiry into god' - it feels as if something is missing: something must have preceded this now. Nothing has preceded this now.

This 'now' is very significant. It simply says, 'You have lived a life of illusions - now, begin the enquiry into god. You have lived a life of worldly pleasure, pain, misery, problems; you have searched in many directions and you have found nothing - now, begin the enquiry into god. You have lived through the ego, you have lived through the self and you are tired. You have come to a cul-de sac and there is nowhere to go any more - now, begin the enquiry into god. You have accumulated money, you have power, you have fame but nothing has been of any fulfillment - now, begin the enquiry into god.'

This 'now' is significant: it does not mean that the book starts in the middle, it says enquiry into god starts in the middle of life. It cannot start from the very beginning, that's not possible. A child cannot enquire into god, he has first to enquire into life. He has to go astray; every adam has to go astray.

Every child born of human beings has to lose god, has to go far away. Only then, when darkness becomes too much, anguish too heavy and the heart starts sinking, does one start thinking of doing something utterly different from what one has done. Then comes that moment - now, begin the enquiry into god....

My feeling is that now the moment has come. Let your whole energy be devoted to this enquiry...

this is the only thing worthwhile. If one can know what god is, one need not know anything else, and if one knows everything else and has not come across god, all that is just absurd, meaningless; it is not going to take you anywhere.

[The new sannyasin says she is in primal therapy; she has been in psychoanalysis and done psychodrama.]

Primal therapy? Very good. Mm mm, that's one of the good things to do and to be in. It certainly prepares people for me because after primalling only sannyas is left!

Mm mm... it is great. There is much great insight possible through it... but it is only a beginning. And Janov has fallen into the very ancient trap: now he thinks that this is the end; that's where things go wrong.

Primal is a beginning, mm? it cleanses you, but then something has to be sowed in that clean heart, otherwise you cleanse the ground, you prepare the ground, but it is not yet a garden. When you are preparing for a garden you cleanse the ground, you uproot the grass, you throw the weeds away, you remove the rocks, but it is not a garden yet. Mm? you have to bring rosebushes. So primal is a good cleansing but is just a beginning; then you have to bring rosebushes.

Now this orange is your rosebush. You have to sow some new seeds of being and life otherwise you will again accumulate the same rubbish... because a land cannot remain fallow for long. If you don't sow rosebushes the weeds will start growing up again... and the weeds don't need to be brought, mm? they grow on their own. The rosebushes don't grow on their own, they have to be protected, brought, cared for and loved... only then.

Now Janov has fallen into the old trap - it is one of the oldest traps that the human mind always falls in: when you discover something valuable you start thinking, 'This is the end. Now nothing else is needed. This will do.'

That happened with Wilhelm Reich. He thought if a person can have a beautiful orgasm then nothing is needed: to be orgasmic is enough. A good insight, to be orgasmic is very very helpful, but it is not enough. Just to be orgasmic is not going to lead you anywhere.

Marx thinks that once people are well-fed and they have good shelter and good clothing, all is solved.

It looks very very simplistic. Nothing is solved, but that doesn't mean that people don't need good shelter and don't need good food - they do. Something is solved; it is a good beginning.

The same thing happened with Freud and the same thing has been happening down the ages: every thinker when he stumbles upon something valuable, gets into the trip and starts thinking that now he has come to know the whole and the all of the truth. Now this is going to solve all of the problems; now this is going to become the panacea that humanity has been searching for forever.

Nothing ever proves the panacea, nothing will ever prove the panacea. All that you come across remains partial, and one....

Nothing is ever the ultimate cure - everything helps towards it. It is always arriving but it never arrives, so one has to remain open, open-ended; that's one of the greatest signs of a healthy mind.

So never think that anything is the end, nothing is ever the end; everything is again a new beginning.

A new door opens, a new journey starts, a new peak is arrived at, but once you have come upon the peak you will see greater peaks are waiting for you just further ahead. When you have climbed those greater peaks again you will find still greater peaks waiting for you ahead. It is a non-ending pilgrimage, this life.

Deva sumargo. It means the right path to god - deva means god, sumargo means the right way. And man has to become the way, there is no way to be travelled: man has to become the way for god to come in. It is not that god is somewhere and you have to travel. You are not to go somewhere, you have to disappear herenow. The moment you are not, the moment you disappear, you become the way, and through that way god comes in.

Man is the hindrance. Man cannot travel towards god - man himself is the hindrance; how can he travel? Wherever he will be it will be impossible for god to enter into him. Man can only become a vehicle, a passage, a hollow bamboo, so the song can descend and it can become a flute. The flute is nothing but a hollow bamboo, but great music is born out of it, out of that hollowness. The moment man becomes hollow he becomes a flute and god's song starts flooding him.

And you can become that passage very easily. You have the capacity to imagine, to visualise: you don't have a mind which is too much burdened with reason and analysis. You still have intact your intuitive capacities; you may not be using them but they are intact there. They just need a little tapping and they will start functioning.

So you have to become the way for god!

[The new sannyasin says: I'm a nurse. I've been working in a therapeutic community up until a while ago. I stopped to look after myself right now.]

Your energy is perfectly on the right track... it is on the way to become very orgasmic.

Everybody is born to become orgasmic. If we don't it is our own fault, we cannot complain against life. Life has given everything that is needed to become orgasmic, to become ecstatic; nothing is lacking. But if we don't use all those potentialities, if we don't make them actual - if the seeds remain seeds and they never find soil anywhere, they are never watered, nobody takes care, and even if sometimes they sprout they are trampled on by the animals or children - then nobody is at fault except ourselves. Our responsibility is tremendous... and the responsibility is not towards anybody else, the responsibility is towards your own being, towards your own destiny.

A great promise is what man is. The jewish Torah says that man is a promise, man is not yet. Man can be, but that is the encounter with all one's capacities, potentialities.

[A sannyasin who is a doctor asks about studying acupuncture.]

The idea is good, mm? worth trying, but remember one thing - that acupuncture is utterly eastern.

So when you approach any eastern science with the western mind you miss many things. Your whole approach is different: it is methodological, it is logical, analytical.

And these eastern sciences are not really sciences but arts. Even to call them sciences is not right:

they are arts, intuitive arts. The whole thing depends on whether you can shift your energies from the intellect to the intuition, whether you can shift from male to female, from yang to yin, from the active, aggressive approach; on whether you can become passive, receptive. Only then do these things work... otherwise you can learn all about acupuncture and it will not be acupuncture at all.

You will know all about it but not it. And sometimes it happens that a person may not know much about it and knows it, but then it is a knack, just an insight into it.

So this is happening to many eastern things: the West becomes interested because they are profound the West becomes interested in an eastern thing but then it brings in its own mind to understand it. The moment the western mind comes into it the very base of it is destroyed. Then only fragments are left and those fragments never work. And it is not that acupuncture was not going to work; acupuncture can work but it can work only with an eastern approach.

So if you really want to learn acupuncture it is good to know about it but that is not the most essential thing. Learn whatsoever information is possible then forget all the information and start groping in the dark. Start listening to your own unconscious, start feeling en rapport with the patient. It is different....

When a patient comes to a western medical man the western medical man starts reasoning, diagnosing, analysing, finding out where the illness is, what the illness is and what can cure it.

He uses one part of his mind, the rational part. He attacks the disease, he starts conquering it: a fight starts between the disease and the doctor. The patient is just out of the game, the doctor does not bother about the patient. It is as if the disease exists on its own without the patient. He starts fighting with the disease, the patient is completely neglected.

When you come to an acupuncturist the disease is not important, the patient is important - because it is the patient who has created the disease: the cause is in the patient, the disease is only a symptom. You can change the symptom; another symptom will come up. You can force this disease by drugs, you can stop its expression; then somewhere else and with more danger, more force, with a vengeance, the disease will assert itself. The next disease will be more difficult to tackle than the first. You drug it too, then the third disease will be even more difficult.

That's how allopathy has created cancer. You go on forcing the disease back from one side, it asserts itself from another: then you force it from that side. The disease starts becoming very very angry... and you don't change the patient, the patient remains the same so the cause exists and the cause goes on creating the effect.

Acupuncture deals with the cause. Never deal with the effect, always go to the cause. And how can you go to the cause? Reason cannot go to the cause, the cause is too big for the reason: it can only tackle the effect. Only meditation can go to the cause.

So the acupuncturist will feel the patient. He will forget about the illness, he will forget about treating him, he will forget his knowledge; he will just try to get in tune with the patient. He will fall en rapport, he will start feeling a bridge with the patient. He will start feeling the disease of the patient in his own body, in his own energy system. That is the only way for him to know intuitively where the cause is because the cause is hidden. He will become the mirror and he will find the reflection in himself.

This is the whole process of it, and this is not being taught because it cannot be taught. So my suggestion is that it is really worth going into. First learn in the West for two years, then for at least six months go to some far eastern country and be with some acupuncturist. Just be in his presence, just let him work and you watch... just absorb his energy.

And then you will be able to do something, otherwise it will be difficult. It will be difficult but worth devoting your energies to, mm?

So whenever you can manage, come. And start acupuncture!

[A sannyasin says: Last year I smoked hashish... I felt like some energy was coming up from my legs. I was so overwhelmed that I tried to stop it.... And sometimes after that without smoking or drinking it would happen.

Osho checks his energy.]

Come closer, raise your hands and allow that energy to come up... it will start coming. And if something starts happening in the body you allow it.

Let me be your hashish!

Next time it happens don't be afraid at all. It is nothing to be afraid of, it is something very beneficial, but it is better to get into it through meditation than through hashish....

Without drugs it can happen. It can happen; it has nothing to do with the drug, the drug can only trigger it. But it can be triggered by many other things, and it is better never to take the help of the drug because then one becomes dependent, and all kinds of dependence are a slavery. It is better to remain the master of your home.

When a thing can be done very easily without any dependence it is better to do that in your freedom - otherwise, more and more of the drugs will be needed and it will be less and less effective because the body becomes accustomed to it.

And then there are other consequences of the drug. It is very destructive to the chemistry of the body, very destructive to the consciousness and very destructive to the subtle nervous system of the mind and the brain. It creates a dull mind, it creates stupidity, stupour; it makes a man mediocre because it is very very violent on the system.

And this can happen in any way. Just allow it - when it happens, just allow it; don't be afraid. And once you drop the fear it will be coming more and more.

[A sannyasin says: I feel sometimes it's very difficult for me to be really open and loving with a man and I worry about it.

Osho checks her energy.]

It will go... nothing to be worried at all. Leave it to me, it will go. And this is the place where it is not possible to continue in that way.

It is in a way a natural defence of the mind... and there is nothing wrong in it. One cannot be open in this horrible world every moment of one's life, one cannot remain vulnerable, because then one will be exploited. One will be exploited very much, oppressed, because there are wolves all over. The world is not yet really such a place where people can always remain open. Mm? they have to see:

sometimes they can open when the right situation and the right person is there and sometimes they have to remain closed; that is a natural protection.

But here we are creating an alternate world; there is no need to be in any way protective. Nobody is going to exploit, nobody is going to oppress you. My whole idea is, sooner or later, to create a small world of our own where everybody is allowed to be utterly vulnerable with no fear... where nobody is the enemy and nobody is competing and nobody is in any ego-trip... where everybody is as open as you are. When others are open it is very easy to be open. When everybody is open around you how can you remain closed? It is impossible to remain closed! It is so foolish and meaningless.

Just the opposite is the case right now: everybody is closed and you try to be open. It is very difficult.

To be open in the marketplace means danger: then all kinds of infections will enter in you. And you cannot even be open to your friend because when you open the door the enemy is also standing outside; so you are always afraid. If the door is open the enemy will also enter and sometimes may enter before your friend.

So one is suspicious, one lives in suspicion, and when one lives in suspicion how can there be a really beautiful life? This world is not yet the place for people to open and bloom - that's why so many millions of people remain buds. They never open, they die. They are born as buds, they live as buds, they die as buds. They never see the light, those petals never open, and they have never that joy that comes when you release your fragrance to the winds.

But it will become very very easy, and once you start enjoying it by and by you will be capable of going into the world too. But that is a next step. Everybody needs an alternative world, a small world where one can learn to be open. Once you have learned to be open, once you have seen how beautiful it is to be open, then you can take all the risks - they are worthwhile. This is going to happen... nothing to be worried about!

[A black American who is a centre leader in the States says: There are many Afro-Americans... and by using your meditations they are beginning to come. But there's a block: they are afraid of eastern things; they are not so relevant to black American or African things. The dance and the music brings them but there's still a block.]

That will be possible, mm? - soon those blocks will disappear. Those blocks are there for a natural reason: they have been exploited so long that they have become afraid of everybody. And naturally when a society is repressed too much, exploited, oppressed, it clings to its own world just for a protection. So they are afraid of everybody... but tell them that I am a black man!

And you people will be able by and by.... Once people start coming... a few people will come, then it will be dissolved, mm? With me, everybody can feel at ease and at home, because I belong to nobody so I can belong to everybody. I have no religion and no country and no colour so whosoever comes to me, I am of his colour and his country and his race and his religion, and there is no problem.

It is going to happen, many more Africans will be coming. Don't be worried. Good!