Life is eternal dance, a non-ending hallelujah!

[Osho suggests groups to a newly arrived sannyasin, who replies that he has been running groups himself in London. Osho stresses the importance of his putting aside all his knowledge, for it is a barrier. When people become knowledgeable they lose the childlike quality of innocence and the ability to wonder, to be surprised. They cling to their knowledge, hence to learn the new is difficult.

They become efficient in what they know - but are dead, unlike children for whom each day brings new mysteries to be wondered at.... ]

So just do this group as if you don't know anything about groups... and you will be thrilled; you will learn more than anybody who has not known anything about groups can learn. Later on when you have passed through this experience, you can sort it out - of course, you can sort out what has happened more efficiently than anybody else. Use your memory when you are looking backwards, when you are recapitulating, when you are considering what has already happened, but never bring in your memory when something is happening.

That is the difference between these two words, 'experience' and 'experiencing': when you are experiencing something, when it is in the process, don't bring in your knowledge. When it has become an experience, you can bring in your knowledge, your expertise, your know-how... and it is perfectly good. Experience means the process is complete - now it is a dead thing; now you can dissect. Experience is a dead thing, a body, a corpse - you can dissect it - but never dissect an alive body; that will be murder.

Never dissect experiencing; when you are experiencing something just go into it whole-heartedly with no knowledge, with utter ignorance. When the experience has been transferred to the memory

and it is no more happening, it is no more a process but has become a thing, then you can dissect and then you can bring in all your expertise, all your knowledge, all that you know. You can focus your whole past and your whole experience onto it, but don't bring it in while you are passing through an experience.

This is my observation - that people who should be able to go deeper into life don't really go, because the thing that can take them deeper becomes a barrier; they don't know how to use it.

They use it in the wrong moment and then it becomes a hindrance. If used in the right moment it can become a great help.

Good... it is good that you have come. Much is going to happen. Just don't resist me... just remain open to me!

[A sannyasin says for a couple of weeks he's been feeling hazy... as if there is a veil over his eyes or he hasn't quite woken up. Osho checks his energy.]

Good! Just accept it, mm? - it is nothing bad. You are just starting to grow something mystical in your eyes - very good! The eyes are becoming a little more poetic. The logical mind is getting uprooted, hence you are feeling hazy; the logical mind is being shattered. The defined world of concepts is becoming confused; a chaos is arising, a beautiful chaos, and chaos is always creative.

You are slipping out of the hold of the logical... and it is a great blessing to slip out of it. It will look like a kind of haze, a kind of madness. You will start thinking: what is happening? Are you losing clarity?

A different kind of clarity is going to arise but before it arises, you will have to lose the old clarity.

[The first kind of clarity was of the head, says Osho, the new will be of the heart - and you are just in the middle of the two.... ]

One day, suddenly you will find that another clarity has arrived, a totally different kind of clarity. It is not the clarity of conceptual minds, it is the clarity of the loving heart... not the clarity of thinking but the clarity of feeling... not the clarity that language brings but the clarity that comes in silence....

Just go into it - accept it and enjoy it. Things are good!

[A visitor says she would like to take sannyas but is afraid she cannot dress in orange and wear the mala at home in the West: otherwise I'd take it right this minute!]

No, you will not be able to do that! You can wait if you want to, but if you become a sannyasin you will not be able to do anything that can make you hypocritical... that I can see. You have a very sincere heart and if you commit yourself to something you really commit yourself - that's why the fear.

Deceptive people are not afraid. From the very beginning they have the idea in the mind 'What is the difficulty?' Here they can wear orange, the mala, be a sannyasin, and feel good, be at home with people, and when they go home they can drop it; that is there in their mind from the very beginning.

These are the deceptive people, dishonest people - they are not afraid; they are ready.

But whenever an honest person comes, the problem is natural. One has to think what one is going to do there; will one be able to remain true to the commitment? It is a love affair... and I know when I see people who are in love with me!

[She laughs: I knew that if you made me laugh it would be all over!]

Mm! So what should I do? Would you like to wait or?... Become a sannyasin! There is no point in waiting, so you can suffer a little - an orange dress for me... I don't ask much!...

Anand means bliss and leela means play... and don't take life seriously. The moment you start taking life seriously it becomes serious - You make it serious and then there is sadness. Take life as a play and then there is no seriousness and no sadness. And when you are playful whatsoever happens is good, even to fail is good; there is no obsession to succeed. That obsession comes from seriousness. In a play it is good: to fail is good, to succeed is good. Both are the same - it doesn't matter... all that matters is the play. The end doesn't matter, the result is meaningless.

It is like one is going for a morning walk: it does not matter whether you reach somewhere or not - there is no destination. You can go to the north, you can go to the south, you can go this way or that and you can turn back from anywhere. It is not work; it is just play. You are enjoying the walk itself, not that you are going anywhere.

That is the difference between a serious life and a playful life.... The serious life is always end- oriented, result-oriented, and when you are too much result-oriented you miss the whole joy, because the joy is in the journey, not in the goal. The joy is in the very walk and the birds and the trees and the sun rays and the people passing by: the joy is in the process. When your mind is too much concentrated you don't listen to the birds, you don't take any note of the people passing by. The sun doesn't exist and you don't know whether the wind is there or not: you are just rushing towards the end.

The western attitude is end-oriented - hence so much anxiety and so much hurry because one has to reach fast: time is short and time is money. The western mind thinks in terms of how to reach faster.

The eastern mind thinks in a totally different way. It is not a question of reaching somewhere - the existence is not going anywhere: it is simply herenow... it is simply a joyful dance. The joy is in the very activity itself.

This is the meaning of leela, and this is one of the most pregnant terms in the East....

We call the world god's leela; in the East we don't say 'god's creation' - no, creation stinks of work.

So the old biblical story says that for six days god worked hard and on the seventh day he rested.

Of course when you work hard for six days, the seventh day you rest. But in the East god has not created the world - he is playing a game! And it is not finished: it is a continuity, it is an on-going thing. It is still playing!

The Christian god is a dead god: in six days the world was completed; now he is no more needed!

Even if he died after seven days, it doesn't matter to the world. It is as when a painter dies, his painting will exist: the painting has no need of the painter any more.

So if the West has become atheistic it is not just an accident, it is basically the christian attitude that god's work is finished. Then whether he is ill or healthy, whether he is still alive or not, who bothers?

In the East we say that god has not created the world like a painting - he is the dancer... nataraj. If the dancer stops, the dance disappears. It is not like a painting - the painting can exist without the painter; the dance cannot exist without the dancer. So he is still in this breeze, in this tree, in your eyes, in my eyes, everywhere. He is still working, he is still playing, he is still creative... and there is no end to it! He is happy! Not that something will be created and then he will be happy; it is out of his happiness that this world is created. This is a totally different dimension.

There are moments when you sing because you are happy... then it is play. And if you sing because you want some result, some prize then it is a totally different thing, and the quality of the song will differ. When you simply sing in your bathroom it has an utterly different quality, mm ? - it is just out of joy... it is divine ! And when you go and perform on a stage and sing, you are paid for it; then your heart is not in it. You cannot be totally in your work - you can only be totally in your play.

[The new sannyasin says she has done EST and some TM.]

EST? That's very good....

TM is okay to begin with - that's good - but est is really good. TM is okay, it does bring many people to meditation, gives the idea of meditation, and if it doesn't work then they start looking for some other technique. That's the only utility of tm: it introduces people to meditation and then they start looking... and that's good! Then they are condemned about meditation.

But EST is really meaningful. The meaning cannot go very deep - it is like lightning. It is a very concentrated effort to break down the mechanism of the mind, the old pattern and the old gestalt.

For a moment there is a lightning-like flash... and it changes the quality of your life.

But it is a very small dose. These small things can give you a glimpse but they cannot transform you in your totality....

To be transformed in totality the whole life has to be devoted. Meditation has to become your very style of living - not that you do it sometimes for twenty minutes: it has to enter into your ordinary life.

It has to become like breathing. Not that you do a group and then after a certain process you come to a point and you feel something, but that your whole life becomes a process and each day brings you a new satori, a new light, and each day goes on becoming accumulative: more and more light, more and more light. No day is without new experiences, and you are growing.

[Osho had sent a message (see July 30th) to a visitor that he would not give him sannyas, because the visitor was afraid to come and see him. Tonight the visitor asks for sannyas!]

Hello! Come here! Very good! No more afraid?

That's good. I knew it... you will be coming soon... because people who are afraid are already in love. In fact a person who is indifferent to me, will not be afraid - why should he be afraid? If you are really not indifferent, then naturally fear arises because if you come closer something is going to

happen and who knows what? It may be good, it may not be good, so fear arises. When you want to go into something, only then fear arises; if you don't want to go into something there is no point in fear - you can by pass it.

When [your friend] told me that you are afraid, I told her to wait... soon things would start happening.

[Osho tells him not to put himself down as being cowardly because fear is part of intelligence. You are taking a jump into an abyss, a totally new dimension, an experience for which a language does not even exist... a place beyond the mind. You move into a more poetic dimension but one where the mind cannot label, analyse, control, and so naturally the mind feels impotent and fearful.... ]

In India we have a saying that camels don't like to go to the Himalayas because there they feel very much confused. They like to live in the desert because there they are the mountains and they are the masters. Coming to the Himalayas, of course they feel confused - such huge peaks and they are nobody!

The mind is very at ease with science, with mathematics. The mind is afraid of poetry and more afraid of religion because religion is the ultimate in absurdity. It is almost going into a vuluntary madness. Hence mystics and poets tend to be a little mad, but all joy arises out of being intoxicated with something or other. It may be god: when you are intoxicated with god, there is joy!

When you are left alone in the tiny room of the mind, yes, everything is defined and clear but you are bored to death because there is no more to it - everything is already known!

Hence a great meaninglessness is arising in the west - particularly in the minds of those who are very very clear, logical, thinkers - a great boredom: what else to do? Everything seems to be finished. They have explored the small room totally and they don't go beyond the boundaries. Great mysteries are waiting, but those mysteries are so big that they will possess you; you cannot possess them.

When you come to god, god will possess you - you cannot possess god. When a small, tiny river comes to the ocean, the ocean will possess the river; the river cannot possess the ocean. The part cannot possess the whole, hence the part is always afraid: if the river trembles and thinks thrice about coming too close to the ocean, it is just natural.

Sannyas is entering into the illogical, into the paradoxical... but life is there! With the mind there is only death, only death.... The mind functions perfectly well with things; with persons it cannot function at all because a person is a mystery. And the mind goes on keeping to the earth. It looks only a few feet ahead and goes on keeping to the earth: it never raises its eyes to the sky, to the mysterious stars, because then there is fear. then man feels so tiny, so lost, that it is impossible even to think that he can be the master.

To come to know that we cannot be the masters because we are not masters - we are parts of an infinite whole - is a great relaxation. Then tension disappears, anxiety is no more relevant. Then we are in the bosom of the whole and the whole will take care....

This is what religion is, this is what trust is - that the whole will take care. We come out of the whole and we go back to the whole... and it is the whole's business to take care of us. We need not be worried, we need not create private worries.

And this is my observation - that misery is private; joy is universal. Misery is man-made; joy is natural. Joy already exists, you need not create it: we are simply to participate in it. Misery we have to create; misery takes much effort. Great work is needed to become miserable and people do great work to become miserable. Joy needs no work, and if it looks at all that joy needs something to be done, it is only because we have done so much to create misery that we have to undo it, that's all; otherwise joy is simply there. Once we have undone the mechanism that creates misery, joy is there - an eternal festivity, an eternal dance... a long, long, non-ending hallelujah!

So you are entering into a great, festive dimension. it will not be logical - no, i cannot promise that! It will not be possible for you to define it. But anything that can be defined is small, tiny, trivial, mediocre. Search for the indefinable, search for the oceanic, search for the vast and the enormous.

Search for something in which you can be lost....