Darshan 30 September 1978
Deva means god, samarpo means surrendered - surrendered to God. And that is the very secret of religion, the most fundamental secret, the secret of the secrets. All that is needed is a total surrender - relaxing oneself into the totality of existence, dissolving, merging, melting, not keeping oneself separate. The whole misery of man consists in keeping oneself separate. And then we suffer, because existence no more nourishes us. We shrink and slowly slowly we die because we lose roots in existence.
A tree has to be surrendered to the earth, to the sun, to the wind; only in that surrender can a tree bloom. If it shrinks back from the earth, is afraid of merging into the earth, then it will not grow. If it is afraid of the sky and the sun and the moon, then it will start committing suicide. It has to be available, vulnerable It has only to be in communion with the whole. The whole is an orchestra; we have to be in harmony with it. To be disharmonious with it is to be in misery - to be in harmony with it is to be in joy. So slowly slowly disappear as a separate being. Let the whole take possession of you. Let the whole sing its song through you. Just be a hollow bamboo so that God can make a flute out of you.
Veet means beyond, asmito means the ego - beyond the ego. Man lives in the ego, nature is below ego, God is beyond ego. Man is just in between; hence he has missed the joy of nature. He cannot be as happy as a tree in the rain. He cannot be as rejoicing as a bird on the wing, because that is possible only when you are either below the ego or beyond the ego.
Man has lost his natural being. The ego is an artifact; it is a false, imposed phenomenon. It is a social byproduct. It is given to you by others. It is needed, it is useful, but it is a kind of necessary evil. It is difficult to be without it from the very beginning - every child has to gain it, otherwise he
will not be able to survive; it gives a kind of protection. The child starts defending himself, and life is a struggle. And the ego helps - it becomes an umbrella, an armor around you, but it is an artifact.
It helps you to be protected from others and their assaults, but by and by it starts becoming an imprisonment too. It starts crippling your freedom, it starts closing your doors, it starts separating you from existence. So one day, sooner or later, it turns out to be the enemy. In the beginning it is a friend, in the end it is an enemy. It has to be dropped at the final stage of maturity.
Use it as a boat from this shore to the other shore, but then don't carry it on your head forever. The boat has to be left once you have reached the other shore. Once a person has become mature the ego is no more needed. The ego is needed for the immature person as a protection; it is a device.
And if somebody goes on living in the ego he remains immature. So when one matures, the ego has to be dropped, or, vice versa is also true: if you drop the ego you start maturing.
God is beyond the ego. Buddha is beyond the ego, so is Jesus and so everyone has to be. The difference between a bird on the wing and a Buddha sitting silently under the Bodhi tree is only of one thing: the bird is unconscious of his bliss, Buddha is conscious of his bliss, but both are blissful. The bird cannot be self-conscious - he has no idea of his self; the Buddha is aware of his blissfulness. But both are blissful. So bliss has two possibilities: either become part of nature and you will be blissful.... And that's why, when you go to the mountains a certain kind of bliss Starts happening of its own accord, or sitting on the beach under the sun, listening to the roar of the Ocean, suddenly you are transported into another world... or with the trees and flowers or sometimes with children, just playing, you lose track of your ego and again something opens up in you; you are no more enclosed.
So one way to be blissful is to go back to nature. That's where the artists go - the painter, the poet, the musician, the sculptor, they all go back to nature. For moments they again become part of the uncivilized existence, the uneducated existence, and from there they bring back great joy. Mm? that joy overflows in their songs, in their paintings....
It is not just an accident that all the artists become interested in alcohol, in drugs, and things like that, because those things help them to fall back, to slip out of the ego. But that is not evolution - that is regression, and you have to come back again and again. Hence the artist becomes more and more schizophrenic. Almost all artists suffer from a split personality. They want to go back to nature and that is possible only for a few moments or for a few hours at the most, and then they are thrown back into human reality. Now human reality looks so pale compared to the natural world.
That nature is so psychedelic and the human reality is so faint, so ordinary, colorless. The artist becomes divided - he wants to remain in nature more and more, forever, and that is not possible.
You can fall back only for a few moments, and that too either under the impact of drugs, alcohol or love. Love is a natural drug, a biological drug, built in your chemistry. But you will have to come back unless you go beyond - then there is no need to come back.
One who goes beyond evolves higher than human beings. That is what is called Christ- consciousness or Buddhahood, or whatsoever you like to call it. That beyond is the goal. In that beyond we again become natural and yet we don't fall back into nature; we become supra-natural...
a higher plane of being natural. And for that no drug can help; except meditation there is no way. All other ways lead backwards - only meditation takes you forward. That is the only door to transcend yourself, to surpass yourself, and the beauty of man consists in surpassing, in transcending.
It is possible - one just has to accept the challenge and start working. And the work consists of a single thing: the work consists of unloading your mind of thoughts, unburdening your mind of thinking. Slowly slowly let thoughts disappear; don't cooperate with them, don't go on feeding, nourishing them. Don't cling to them. They cannot survive without your cooperation. They will flutter for a while but if you don't cooperate, if they become uninvited guests, sooner or later they disappear of their own accord. Then you are left alone in utter simplicity, in utter ordinariness, in utter silence.
That silence will give you the first taste of the transcendental and that is the first insight beyond the ego. That liberates... it is liberation. Nobody else can liberate you. No Jesus, no Buddha, I cannot liberate you. Liberation has to happen through you, in you, by you.
And this is the process: become contentless consciousness, thoughtless awareness, and you will be able to go beyond yourself. And unless you go beyond, there is no heaven, no benediction. So your name will remind you again and again of the ultimate goal.
[Osho gives sannyas to a nine-year-old child]
Veet means beyond, nakaro means negative, no-saying. Drop saying no and learn saying yes.
As far as possible, as far as humanly possible, say yes, and you will be surprised: through the yes one starts growing. The more you say no, the more you remain un-grownup. No is a kind of poison - yes is nectar. Say yes to life, yes to friends, yes to the moon, yes to the trees and the birds. Keep alert that saying yes is your meditation, and you will be surprised: life slowly slowly becomes less and less angry. Troubles don't arise, conflicts disappear, friendships grow, and everybody loves a person who has yes in his heart.
The person who has no in his heart is never loved, cannot be loved. Even if you love him he will say no.
There are people who have become addicted to saying no, and because of that no they never attain to love. They cannot love, they cannot be loved, and because of that no-saying for their whole life they always look for the wrong thing everywhere. If you take them to a rose bush they will count the thorns, they will not look at the roses. The yes-saying person looks at the roses and is not worried about the thorns. The yes-saying person always looks at the white, bright, side of life. And his life becomes a bright life, because whatsoever you carry in your heart will become your life.
It may be difficult to understand right now, but keep it in the heart: slowly slowly try saying yes. Even when your mind tends to say no, experiment with yes, and you will be surprised again and again at how beautiful life becomes.
To say yes is to be religious.
To be contented means: don't expect anything from life, just live it moment to moment, and whatsoever it gives is just fantastic.
Life goes on pouring infinite treasures on us. And because of this mind asking for more, we remain blind to those treasures. Once this constant noise for more stops, then this chirping of the bird is enough. There is nothing in it and all in it.... It is enough to turn one on; nothing else is needed. Just listening to this chirping of the bird one can fall into infinite meditation, one can disappear from the circumference, can become centered. One can simply forget the whole existence in this small music.
And this moment can become so precious that the past becomes irrelevant, the future becomes irrelevant; they simply disappear. One is now and one is here. The lost paradise is regained and Adam is back home.
Contentment is a key: it opens the door of paradise. And paradise is not there - paradise is here, and paradise is not there above in the sky; it is just underneath your feet. You are standing on it, you are standing in it, you have never left it; your mind has just started wandering, dreaming.
And once you have tasted a few moments of such blissfulness the whole life is a celebration, nothing but celebration. There is no birth, no death - only celebration that goes on and on forever. But only those who know the art of being contented are capable of entering into that eternal life.
Initiation into sannyas is nothing but initiation into this art. I have no techniques to teach but only a few devices to impart. I have no philosophy, I have no belief system to give to you, but I can give you a little bit of experience of the present. All that goes on here in this commune is different aspects of the same strategy, so that somehow you are pulled out of your dreams - even if only for a few moments - and existence explodes on you in all of its presentness. Once you have tasted those few moments you will know how to enter into them on your own.
I persuade people, seduce people, to live the present moment, because that is God.
Deva means divine, urdhwa means upward-going - a divine upward-going. Science knows one law, the law of gravitation - that everything falls downwards, that the earth functions like a magnet and pulls things towards itself. Religion knows another kind of law - the law that things can fall upwards too. Religion calls it "the law of grace." There is a Sufi story.... A Sufi mystic who was thought to be mad - as all mystics have always been thought to be - was staying with a friend. The family was a little worried because the man was unpredictable. Not to create any scene in the neighborhood they arranged for his stay in the basement of the house so nobody would know; it was underground. In the night the family was suddenly awakened by great laughter that was coming from the terrace. They rushed out - they suspected the mystic and they were right. He was rolling on the terrace and laughing madly.
They asked, "What happened? Why are you laughing like a madman and why are you rolling about?" He said, "Suddenly I started falling upwards! I was in the basement and I started falling upwards - that's why I am laughing, because this has never happened to me - and suddenly I found myself on the terrace!" The story is symbolic: one day one finds oneself falling upwards. The ordinary human being lives in the basement; his life is underground, unconscious is his life. He lives in a kind of darkness. But if a few things can be arranged, one starts falling upwards. One day one finds oneself on the terrace of life, under the open sky, full of stars, and the miracle has happened. Then there is no end to the laughter... then life and laughter are synonymous.
How can one stop laughing when one starts feeling that one is falling upwards? It looks so ridiculous, but it has been found to be so again and again, although not many people have learned the secret of it, only some thousands. Down the ages a Zarathustra, a Lao Tzu, a Mahavira, and so on, so forth. A few people have found themselves falling upwards.
That dimension is called "urdhwa." And I hope one day you will find yourself falling upwards! It is time to get out of the basement. Enough is enough. You have lived long in darkness and unconsciousness. The time has come to come out of the darkness, out of the tunnel. The sun is just on the horizon... it is dawn.
The orange color symbolizes the morning, the sky becoming red, ready, spreading red carpets for the sun. The orange is the color of the morning, the early morning color, symbolic that the night is over, that one need not creep and crawl into a basement, that one can start rising higher, that one can start flying.
Yes, sannyas is the art of flying... the art that stops the process of gravitation and starts the process of grace. All that is needed is a state of let-go. All that is needed is a readiness to be possessed by the upward dimension, a readiness to open to the sky.
We are clinging to the earth. The sky is ready to take us, we have the wings - we just need courage.
All that we need is to drop the fear of the unknown and the vast and the infinite.
So keep it in your heart that the time is very close by, and prepare for it. The meditations will unburden You and the therapy groups will help you to drop unnecessary luggage, because one who wants to fly can not carry all the nonsense-luggage that one has accumulated down the ages. If one wants to fly one has to be utterly nude, one has to drop all kinds of weights. That's what I call the state of let-go: one has to be surrendered to God, and then miracles start happening. We are preventing them, we are hindering them, we are our own enemies.
So just don't stand between yourself and God, that's all. And the first lesson will be: don't stand between me and yourself. Let there be a direct contact between me and you. Put your personality aside, don't let your ego stand in between. This will be the first lesson in let-go. The disciple has to learn the lesson of let-go with the Master and then the same lesson has to be spread over all one's experiences, all over one's life. Then it becomes the state of let-go, and when the time is right and the spring has come, God descends.
Mallik is a name for God, a Sufi name. It means exactly what the English word "lord" means - the master of all. Love is the god or the goddess, because there is nothing higher than love. Love is the supreme-most experience. Everything else is in the service of love. Love is nobody's servant; love is the master, and whenever people make love a servant to something else they destroy love. Love cannot exist as a servant; it can exist only as a master.
When two persons fall in love they both become servants of love, not servants of each other; and that's where the whole misunderstanding happens. Because they cannot see the love - love is invisible - they start feeling as if they have become a servant of the other, and then the resentment - because nobody wants to lose one's freedom - and the fear that love brings, the fear that one is getting into a kind of bondage, that one is getting fettered. Hence the fear of all love, and out of fear, the effort to dominate the other so that he cannot dominate you. Before he starts dominating or she starts dominating, you have to impose your domination.
That is the conflict of all lovers, and the whole misunderstanding is because they cannot see some invisible phenomenon which is higher than both. They have not fallen in love with each other, they have fallen in love. Love is a third force. Once this is understood love takes on a totally new dimension. Then there is no conflict, no fear. They both serve something higher, something beyond both.
In real love it is not a duality, it is a triangle. The love god is there, high on top of both lovers, and the lovers are there. This god need not be fought, because to fight with it is to fight with your own ultimate possibility of flowering... because this god of love is your intrinsic core, your ultimate expression.
Surrender to it! Efface yourself completely. Let it descend in you. Become so totally available and empty for it that not a slight hitch, not a slight bit of cleverness, cunningness, remains in you. And if one can be so totally one with the god of love, one becomes love itself; one becomes God itself.
My approach towards life is basically a love approach. It is not of logic - it is of love. It is not of theology but of art. It is closer to a song than to a syllogism. It is closer to the heart than to the head.
Prem mallika means: become so totally a slave of the goddess or god of love that you become one with it. You disappear, you abandon yourself, and then there is no problem. Then all is good, because all is God. And slowly slowly you will be surprised: the beloved is all over the place. Then all beauty is divine, and from the smallest thing to the greatest, all are his expressions. He is in the drop as much as he is in the ocean; he is as much in the seed as in the blooming tree. Once you have understood, you cannot meet anybody else but God.
A man came to Ramakrishna and asked, "Where is God?" Ramakrishna started laughing and said, "What a stupid question to ask! Tell me where he is not? He is everywhere, so I cannot tell you where he is. He is everywhere, hence you cannot find him in any particular place. He is this very space. I ask you," he said, "tell me, where is he not?" I have never come across a single person where he is not, and I have never come across a single situation where he is not. Wherever you walk, you walk on the holy ground. But this experience, this insight will become possible only when you are utterly surrendered to the god of love. And surrendering to the god of love, you become it.