Darshan 13 April 1977

Deva means divine, varsha means rain - and you have to keep that continuously in your awareness, that god is raining on you. And it is not imagination, it is the truth: god is raining every moment. We live only because he goes on raining; the moment the rain stops, we disappear. It is a subtle energy rain - it is invisible, but life is continuously being given to you.

It is not that one day life was given to you and then god stopped giving life to you, and that a certain quota has been given, so when you finish it, you are finished - no. Each moment life is being renewed.

We are given only one moment at a time, so to live rightly one needs only to know how to live rightly in the moment. One need not worry about the whole life. If you can take care of the present moment you have taken care of your whole life; then everything will fall into line by itself. If the now is beautiful you have opened the door of the shrine - everything will be beautiful, and more beautiful every moment because the next moment is born out of this moment. If you live god this moment, you become capable of living him more in the next moment - you can contain more of god the next moment.

So just think of god showering on you like rain. And when it is raining sometimes just go out and stand in the falling rain with closed eyes: let that be your meditation. Feel, with every raindrop, god bringing freshness, life, to you. In the morning when the sun rises, feel, mm? - the sunrays are raining on you, in the night the moon. And you can find a thousand and one ways, because he is raining in a thousand and one ways every moment.

If we become aware of all that he is giving, there will be tremendous bliss. Then there is no point in being miserable. Man is miserable because he does not know what he has got, he does not know

what is being given to him every moment, he does not know that he deserves nothing and all has been given to him.

The moment we see that we don't deserve anything and yet so much has been given, gratitude arises. That gratitude is prayer.

[The new sannyasin says: I weave tapestries.]

That's very good! That's very meditative work - Sufis have been doing it for centuries. So now you will be making new patterns and new colours, mm? with more meditation, more love. It can become a great work of art.

[Osho recommended that she do the relationship group, saying that if you know how to relate you have taken one step towards god.... ]

.... because people are divine. And when you know how to relate - even how to relate with things - your whole life changes. When you put on your shoes you can relate with those shoes in a very friendly way, or you can just be indifferent or even inimical. Nothing will be different for the shoe but much will be different for you.

Don't miss any opportunity to be love-full. Even putting on your shoes, be loving. Those moments of being love-full will be helpful to you. Relate with things as if they are persons. People are doing just the reverse - they relate with people as if they are things. A husband becomes a thing, a child becomes a thing, a wife becomes a thing, a mother becomes a thing.

People completely forget that these are alive beings. So ordinarily people relate to people as if they are things - they use and manipulate. A religious person will relate even to things as if they are persons - even with the chair he will have a certain loving relationship, and so with the trees and with the birds and with the animals and with people.

When your quality of relating changes, the whole existence attains to a personality. Then it is no more impersonal, indifferent - an intimacy arises.

[A sannyasin who is leaving said she feels more security in the ashram and at the same time she wants the freedom of going elsewhere.]

You can go - nothing is wrong in it, mm? - but that's how the mind remains in conflict. It is a double bind: you want both security and freedom. And it is not only your problem; it is everybody's problem, more or less. People are in a double-bind - they would like to love and they don't want any dependence. They would like to love and be happy but they don't want to feel miserable if love disappears. They would like to have much money but they don't want the problems that come with money. They would like to be as free as a beggar but they don't want to be a beggar. These are double-binds.

And one always remains in misery unless one sees that this double-bind will always keep one miserable. So one has to drop the whole double-bind mind.

The very idea of being free has so much appeal because the ego cannot ever be free - it cannot be. The ego is a bondage and it wants to be free. It is not possible; if the ego is there, you will be in bondage wherever you are. A new bondage for a few days may not look like a bondage; one you settle you will see it is again the same.

The ego cannot be free and the ego wants to be free!

If you really want to be free you will have to drop all ego desires - and this desire to be free is an ego desire.

That is the whole secret of discipline: discipline makes you free - not the way you want freedom but the real way in which freedom comes. The ego wants freedom and the ego cannot be free.

A man who is ready to surrender to a certain discipline is ready to surrender the ego and the whole nonsense of desiring freedom. He says 'Now I will be a slave,' and in that very surrender the ego has been dropped. And when the ego is dropped there is freedom. Now this is very paradoxical but this is how it happens.

If you want to be secure and free, how is it possible? How will you manage? Drop the idea of security and freedom, and you are free and secure. In that moment the very insecurity becomes your security. Insecurity is security and discipline is freedom.

Once you drop the idea of security, freedom... because they are both of the same mind: one part of the mind, one pole of the mind desires freedom, another pole desires security. And the whole mind has to be dropped, not part. This is the whole misery: we want to drop the part, and the part can never be dropped - either all or nothing. Can you drop one aspect of a coin and keep the other?

And when you see that this is not possible, you put aside the whole mind. And that's what I have been emphasising, that is the meaning of sannyas - to put the whole mind aside and to live so totally in a discipline. But the discipline will not be felt as discipline, because if the ego is not there, there is no problem.

If the ego is there, again and again you will feel, 'This is discipline and I don't want to be disciplined, I don't want to remain in a structure.' This is the 'I' that says 'I don't want any discipline' and this 'I' which goes on hankering for freedom can never be free.

So only those who really want to be free have to surrender their freedom, have to surrender their ego. Once the mind is put aside with both the polarities together, suddenly a new vision arises. And then one can live. One can live in discipline and freedom: one can be free and it will not go against discipline.

A free man can live in a prison and will be absolutely free, and an unfree person may be free under the sky, absolutely free, but will remain unfree. Meditate over it....

Freedom is freedom from yourself. Freedom is an inner dimension, it is an inner quality of being.

If you put me in a prison, what difference will it make? It will not make any difference. I am so free that I will adjust to the prison; a free man can adjust to anything. Only an unfree man cannot

adjust, because he has a certain structure, and that structure will not fit with anything. It will fit only according to its desire, that is its bondage.

Surrendering means surrendering the ego and living without the ego. Go, try, but come back!

[A sannyasin who is leaving says she is worried about seeing her father again: I really want him to approve of what I'm doing. I feel even though he was here and he's been talking about you as well, I still feel he's so disapproving of it all, of what I'm doing.]

Mm mm. It has nothing to do with you. Every father will feel that way, because these so-called love-relationships - the father's relationship to the children, the mother's relationship to the children or children's relationship to their father - are all possessive relationships. We don't yet know how to relate and not possess, so wherever there is a possessive relationship there will always be a problem. Now suddenly he will see that you belong to me more than to him. Mm? - that creates the problem. Nothing is wrong with the person; any father will do the same.

Suddenly he sees that between him and you somebody else is standing. That's why fathers never like it if their daughter falls in love; they hate the lover, they never like him. If they find a boyfriend for the girl then it's okay - their possessiveness remains.

So down the ages they have been doing that: the father has to choose the boy. In india they still do:

the father has to choose, then it is okay. But if you choose, his possessiveness is damaged. You are becoming free, you are trying to be yourself. And that is disobedience, that is rebelliousness: the egos of the parents start hurting.

That happens in the ordinary love relationship, so what to say about when you fall in love with a master? Then your parent's whole possession is at stake. If you were a christian, then christianity is at stake. He has believed in his church: now his church is at stake, his religion is at stake - his father's, his father's father's - his whole tradition is at stake! Mm? it is difficult for him to accept it easily.

So try to understand what his problem is. When you understand the problem of the other, when you stand in his shoes, you start feeling compassion rather than fear or anger. Just think about it.

Look at it in this way: after ten, twelve, fifty years, your child goes against me. You are trying to bring him up as a sannyasin and suddenly he goes to somebody else and denies me and says 'I don't believe in Osho, I believe in somebody else.' How will you feel? You will feel hurt! You will feel the child has betrayed you. Look at it in that light.

Mm? your father has believed in jesus or in buddha or in somebody, has lived according to a certain religion, has believed in the bible - now suddenly here comes Sahajo in an orange dress with a strange man's locket on her mala, doing crazy things and calling them meditations. Now his whole tradition, his whole family tradition, his whole mind, feels shaken. So he feels angry - it is but natural!

So first feel compassion for him; his reaction is just natural. And if you feel compassion there is a possibility; if you feel fear, then fear can turn into anger any moment. It is very easy, fear and anger are not very far away. Anger can become fear, fear can become anger. In fact, whenever there is a

situation in which you feel fear, the same is the situation for anger. If you are powerful, more powerful than the other, you feel anger; if you are less powerful than the other you feel fear. Of course before a father you are not more powerful - so you feel fear, he feels anger.

One day you will be more powerful. He will become very old; then he will not be a very strong man, he will not have much power, prestige, finance. You will be more powerful one day; then he will fear and you will be angry!

Fear and anger are the same. Just watch two dogs trying to figure out who is more powerful. Both try to show it: they play a game, they exhibit their power, they bark and they jump and they each try to show that they are more powerful than the other. Then within seconds it is decided. They are not as foolish as human beings; they take just a few seconds to decide who is more powerful. They judge - and immediately they have judged, one startS showing fear. He puts his tail under his leg, shows his back - finished, the game is finished. The other knows 'Now I am powerful and the other one has shown fear.' Just a moment before, he was showing anger.

Whenever there is a dangerous situation there are two possibilities: fight or flight. Fight means anger, flight means fear. These are the two alternatives. So the fear can turn into anger, anger can turn into fear. And both will make you distant from him - and that's not good. In fact you have something now to share with him....

[She answers: Yes, I feel that, but he ties me up in knots with his intellectual questions.]

No, if you understand the whole thing, things will be very simple. He can, he can disturb you very easily, because before him you simply feel tiny. When you face a parent you are simply reduced to your childhood. You start feeling helpless, because for years you have felt helpless before him.

Whatsoever he has been saying was the right thing, the rule, the law. If he said no it meant no, if he said yes it meant yes. And you have always obeyed - or even if you have disobeyed, that too was centred on him: obey or disobey, but he was the source of it, the centre.

So when you face one of your parents again, suddenly you are reduced to being a child and you start behaving in a childish way. That has to be remembered - and this encounter will be good.

Remember that you need not be a child again, because you are no more a child.

Secondly: you have to have more compassion. If he is angry, that is natural; there is no need to react to it. It means that you have to be even more loving to him than you have ever been before.

Your love will convert him, not your argument. Argue you cannot; it is very difficult to argue with parents. Mm? there is such a gap. They don't speak the same language; they may appear to speak the same language but they don't.

The gap is such that it is impossible to bridge it. You say something, he will understand something else; he will say one thing, you will understand something else. So argument will not help. Be more loving. Hug him as you have never hugged him, hold his hand as you have never done before. And I know there are many problems which are not concerned personally with you, they are concerned with our whole up-bringing.

A father is always keeping a distance from the daughter. He is afraid that if he is too intimate sexuality will arise. And the daughter is also a little afraid, so they keep a distance. They talk, sometimes they

hug also, but only for a moment and then they are separate. The daughter is also afraid because she is also aware, although very dimly, of her own unconscious.

Freud's contribution about this is great. He says that each daughter, in the unconscious, wants to seduce the father. And naturally, each father deep down would like to make love to the daughter, because his wife is no more so young, and the daughter again reminds him of his wife when she was young, healthy, radiant, flowing.

Looking at you your father will see your mother's face of those days when he had fallen in love with her. It is difficult to forget it - you remind him again. Mm? it is a nostalgia... it is natural.

That's why all the societies insist that nothing, no intimacy, should be allowed between father and daughter, mother and son. Only up to a certain age is intimacy allowed and then it is not allowed - because the fear is very deep-rooted. All the societies have come across the fact that there is a fear.

And children are very very seductive. Mm? the small girl always wants to compete with the mother, she wants to possess the father. Why does the mother go on possessing him? She even starts flirting in her own childish ways, and the mother feels jealous!

Once the child, the girl, becomes a little grown-up, the mother starts becoming a little more jealous and afraid of her. But all these things exist only in the unconscious. We never bring them into the light, and hence their great power over us; once brought to light they start dying. And now you are capable of getting rid of these taboos and repressions. Yes, now you can he free of them. Becoming aware of them is to be free of them.

So very much intimacy is never allowed. This is ridiculous! This fear does not allow us really to relate. So drop all fear. When you go, be really loving to him. Your love will show that you have changed. Nothing else ever shows one as much as love. You can know much more but you remain the same. You can collect much information - that will not help. But if your love has changed, if your energy is more flowing, if your love is fearlessly there, if you are ready to become intimate without any fear of any sort, if you open yourself, you help the other person to become open. Your vulnerability provokes his vulnerability.

Authenticity calls to authenticity.

If you are open, you challenge him to be open. If you hold his hand, you will feel he wants to take it away from you... unconsciously. He will become a little fidgety. What if somebody comes and sees?

Just watch all this and relax into it and help him also to relax. Once the relaxation has happened, all fears disappear.

So be loving, be more meditative while you are there. Sometimes invite your father to meditate with you or just to sit silently, looking into each other's eyes. Just look into his eyes for five or ten minutes every day - sit silently and see what happens. This will be more communicative.

And you are ready to do something, that's why I am saying these things; otherwise I would not say it. You are ready: if you just start, things will be flowing. Dance around him, don't argue. Just let him

see how joyful you have become. And every parent feels joyful when he sees that his children are becoming joyful, celebrating, happy. Then he will not bother about whether you are a christian any more or not.

And let him feel that for the first time you have come closer to jesus. Let him feel that for the first time you are able to love your mother, your father, your family - you never loved them before. Then coming to me is no more a betrayal; in fact, by coming to me you have come closer to them. This is the basic thing that has to be conveyed, communicated - that by coming to me you have come closer to them than you have ever been before, and that I am not standing between them, that I am not a wall but a bridge. The bridge and the wall both stand in between. Just let them feel that your master is not a wall, that he is a bridge.

[A visitor asks: What is the relationship between ecstasy and enlightenment? What is the relationship between the ecstasy that I felt at that point and enlightenment?]

Mm mm. Enlightenment is not a state of ecstasy, it is beyond ecstasy. Enlightenment has no excitement in it; ecstasy is a state of excitement. Ecstasy is a state of mind - a beautiful state of mind, but still a state of mind. Ecstasy is an experience. And enlightenment is not an experience, because there is nobody left to experience.

Ecstasy is still within the ego, enlightenment is beyond the ego. It is not that you become enlightened: you are not, then enlightenment is. It is not that you are liberated, it is not that you remain in that liberation, liberated: it is a liberation from yourself.

[The visitor continues: I've been studying T'ai Chi for a year, a year and a half.]

T'ai chi is very good - continue. T'ai chi is very good, looking into yourself is very good. I think just a little balance is needed, because T'ai Chi or looking into yourself are inward-going methods. If you balance them with some outward-going methods, the progress will be more harmonious. Otherwise one can become lopsided. They are good, nothing is wrong in them, they are very good - but the benefit will be more if you can balance them.

It is almost like breathing in and breathing out: if you only breathe in and you never exhale, that will not be right. In fact to breathe in really deeply, you have to exhale deeply; the deeper the exhalation, the deeper will be the inhalation. And the situation is exactly the same between in-going methods and out-going methods.

So do a few in-going methods and a few out-going methods.

[The visitor adds: I've been studying with Oscar Ichazo. I've done his forty-day training.]

Good, that's very good! Just a little more balance... I can feel that just a little more balance is needed. You have become too self-centred. And it happens - people who become interested in their own nature and want to know who they are, interested in self-knowledge, become self-centred; it is just natural.

And when you become too self-centred, the very self-centredness becomes the last barrier; that has to be dropped. All chat you have been doing is right; something more is needed. Nothing has to be changed in it, something has to be added to it, and that will bring balance.

Buddha used to insist on meditation and compassion together. He used to say 'When you meditate and feel ecstasy, immediately shower ecstasy on the whole existence. Immediately say "Let my ecstasy be of the whole existence."' Don't go on hoarding it, otherwise that will become a subtle ego.

Share it, immediately give it, so that you are empty again. Go on emptying, never hoard. Otherwise hoarding can be the same: as you hoard money, you can hoard ecstasies, peak experiences, and the ego can be strengthened very much.

And this second type of ego is more dangerous because it is more subtle - it is a very pious ego, very pure poison. So whatsoever you have done is good, you have been moving in the right track. I would just like you to balance it with some activities which are meditative but out-going.

For example, dance will be very helpful because it is out-going. You expand, you move towards the periphery, the energy flows from the centre towards existence. When you are sitting in zazen - just sitting and doing nothing with your eyes closed, watching your navel or watching your breathing - the energy moves from the periphery to the centre.... Both have to be balanced.

And this is my experience with all Arica people: they become too method-oriented and somehow start missing love. Love is an out-going thing.

.... And if love is missing you will start feeling dry, the juice will not be flowing. You will become more silent, you may be a little more collected, calm, quiet, centred, but the juice will not be flowing. You will not feel like singing and dancing, you will not feel like celebrating. And unless you celebrate, you go on inhaling but you don't exhale.

So my emphasis is on both. If I see a person going outwards too much, I try to balance him by inward-going methods. If I see the reverse, then I balance him by outward-going methods.

... Almost all groups are out-going... all that are available in America are outward-going, so a few outward-going groups will be good. We have both types of groups because I have to balance many types of people; those who have never been in any inward-going journey need outward-going groups.

[Osho suggested he do one group. The visitor then said he was due to leave soon but could possibly stay longer... ]

It will be good if you stay - you will need to. So if you can manage to stay a little longer it will be good. At least do two or three groups, and that will give you a glimpse of how energies can become balanced and how it is easier to move in both ways. And that brings a subtle freedom; you are not fixed anywhere.

When you cannot go outside your house you are a slave, when you cannot come inside the house you are a slave. When you can simply come and go as you wish.... When it is too hot you come in, when it is becoming too cold you go out. When you feel you need the sun you-go out, when you feel that the sun is too much and that now you need shade you come in. And you are free - it is your house.

And don't make any distinction between in and out - in fact there is none! The reality is not divided between in and out; it is in/out. Out is one polarity, in is another polarity of the same energy, and it

vibrates, it swings between the two. These two are like two banks of a river - and life flows between the two; it cannot flow with one bank.

[The visitor says: I was afraid to drop my ego because I feel that I have to plan, because I have to have enough money to live.... I'm afraid to just drop it, for I fear I will have no one to give me guidance on where to go.]

In fact, if there is no ego you have more freedom to decide about your future, you become more of a master. When the ego is not there to interfere, your mastery is not less, it is more. And surrender does not make you a slave, it makes you a master.

The ego continuously interferes. What is the ego really? It is all your past experiences accumulated.

The past is never going to be repeated in the future, that's the problem. And the ego is always trying to do something according to the past - which is not going to be possible, so the ego is always frustrated.

The ego means to live according to the past: you have to live in the future, and live according to the past. They never fit together, there is always something or other going wrong, your plans never come together. Whatsoever you propose is disposed - and then frustration.

... When you stop the ego, when you drop the ego, you are free to live in the future; You are free to think about the future without the past. You have more freedom and more possibility of being fulfilled, of succeeding, and there is less frustration.

If you don't succeed there is no problem, because you know that the future is an opening. It can be dropped; and it is wise to drop it. It is just an unnecessary burden to carry and it doesn't help. It simply goes on promising that without it you will not be able to do anything; it simply threatens you.

Try - for three months drop it and live freely. In three months the world will not disappear; and what can you lose in three months? Just try for three months and you will be suddenly surprised at how free you become and how life becomes a joy, and how things start falling into place according to you.

A man without the ego is a man flowing with the current of life. A man with the ego is a man flowing up-current, trying to swim up-current - of course, he is bound to be defeated, mm? Good!