Sannyas is the Dimension of the Festive

Prem means love, paribhasho means definition. There is no definition of love, but one can become it. Life can become the definition of it. There is no possibility of defining love in words, but one can live in such a way that one's whole being becomes its definition. And. each one has to find the definition on his own. Nobody can live somebody else's definition, otherwise one has missed one's life.

Life is an opportunity to carve out the definition of love. It is a raw opportunity, just like a marble rock.

Each one has to carve something out of it. The whole of life is raw: we have to create it, we have to give it a form. We have to make that which is unmanifest, manifest. We have to bring the seed to its flowering. And each individual is so unique that there is no possibility of general definition, hence love is indefinable... because your definition will not be my definition, my definition will not be your definition.

And it is beautiful that no imitation is possible; hence the authenticity of love. Love makes people authentic, and those who are authentic, only they can love. There is a deep synchronicity between authenticity and love.

So live in such a way that life becomes more and more love... Less and less-business, more and more love; less and less rice and more and more roses, so something of the beyond starts penetrating you. Love makes one open to the beyond. And love has to flow in as many directions as possible. It should not move only in one dimension - otherwise life remains one-dimensional; it should be multi-dimensional. One should love people, one should love poetry, one should love music; one should love as many things as possible. Then each dimension gives a new richness to your being. And when all the dimensions are flowering, for the first time you start feeling what love is.

One can feel it, one can know it, but one cannot say it. One can show it, but one cannot say it.

Deva means divine, mimanso means enquiry - a divine enquiry. Life has meaning only when it becomes a divine enquiry... when one is not just curious about life but is ready to plunge into the depths of it, one is ready to pay whatsoever price life demands for the enquiry. And nothing is possible without paying for it. Life is a great taskmaster: it demands and demands unless you have surrendered your totality to it. Only in the moment of total surrender does life reveal its beauties and benedictions. Only in that moment when you are not does life reveal its truth.

Let this initiation into sannyas be a great enquiry for you not just a sensation and a momentary trip but a life-long devotion.

Anand means bliss, margo means the path - the path of bliss, the way of bliss. And it is only the blissful who know god. One has to learn how to love, how to dance, how to laugh, because these are the steps towards god. The serious grope in the darkness. Unless there is blissfulness and humour there is no light. Laughter brings light. Seriousness is dark, heavy. And this has been one of the calamities - that religious people become very serious. They think that to look happy and joyous is something worldly. They have to be other-worldly, so they have to wear a long face. But god does not love long faces, he avoids long faces.

God loves laughter, joy, so to come close to him, the only way is to learn the way of blissfulness. Be more and more blissful for no reason at all. For just being, be blissful - it is such a gift!

Just these sounds of the birds listened to silently will give you a profound experience. It is life, it is aliveness all over. It is such a benediction to be herenow in this moment. To be at all is such a miracle that one should dance, one should be grateful. To praise is to pray, and only the blissful can praise, because only the blissful have something to praise.

The serious and the sad always complain. His seriousness, his sadness, is a complaint against god; his complaint is written all over his being. He is saying 'I don't agree with your world.' He is saying 'You have committed a sin by sending me into the world. Why have you given me life? Why? I am unhappy here. I am miserable here.' He wants to return the ticket. As one character in Dostoevsky's THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV says 'I want to give the ticket back. I want to get out of this world.'

The sad person is always searching for the exit.

The blissful is full of praise, and in that praise one comes close to god. When the praise becomes really of the heart and you throb with joy in it, god has come to you, you have come to god.

So become blissful. And I am not saying to be blissful for any reason, because if the bliss depends on some reason you cannot remain blissful for twenty-four hours a day. Sometimes the reason may be there to be blissful; sometimes the reason may not be there, so you will go on falling into misery again and again. Bliss can become a continuum only when it is not based on any reason at all. It is just based on the sheer joy of being here... on this tremendous gift of life.

Anand means bliss - blissful moon. The moon is very symbolic. Start worshipping it... start being in love with it. Start having a dialogue with it. In the beginning it will look like madness but soon it becomes of tremendous significance because responses start coming from the moon. And once the responses start coming from the moon then you are not alone - the moon has become a person. It depends on you, on how you call it forth, on how you pray.

Prayer can confer beinghood on anything. Basically everything is alive - only prayer knows the way to provoke life. Prayer knows how to call forth the energy that is fast asleep, how to make it respond to you. Prayer is a way, a subtle technique, of creating response from the universe. Prayer is not just a monologue. In the beginning it is, but not in the end: sooner or later it becomes a dialogue. You are not saying things alone; you are responded to, and those responses are of immense delight.

Start with the moon and then move to the sun. But it is better to start with the moon, it is easier: the moon is more responsive, closer too, cooler too. The sun is more fiery and can be contacted only in a few moments, early in the morning, when it is just coming on the horizon and in the evening when it is going down on the horizon. In the daytime you cannot have any contact through your eyes with the sun, it is too much, but the moon can be contacted any time. And the best way is to start when the moon starts growing - the first-day moon, the second-day moon, the third-day moon... go on slowly slowly. As the moon grows, you will see something growing in you; and when the moon becomes full there is every possibility that you will start a response.

The moon is very very subtle energy. One can live on it. Gurdjieff had the idea that the moon eats people, that man is food for the moon. If man is unconscious, that is true: then man is food for the moon. But if man is conscious, prayerful, then the moon is food for man. That he never talked about; that is the other polarity of the same phenomenon. And my whole teaching is how to make the moon your food, because it is the best food possible, the most nourishing energy in existence, because it is mother-energy; you can feed on the breast of the moon.... Start communing with moon!

[Tara says her name is Irish and Indian too.] Mm mm, it is Indian as well. And it must mean the same in Irish as it does in India, because it is the same root that has moved in many languages.

'Tara' means the star. The English word 'star' also comes from 'tara'. So there is every possibility that the meaning will be the same.

Deva means divine and tara means a star - a divine star. It is there, it is in everybody's being. Even though the night is very dark, even though we are completely lost in darkness, the star is there. We just have to search for it a little bit to uncover it, to discover it.

At the very centre of our being there is light, eternal light. And darkness is not our nature. Darkness is surrounding us but our nature is light. That's why we cannot accept darkness; it is against our nature. We cannot accept misery; it is against our nature. We cannot accept things only when they are against our nature. Disease is not acceptable because it is against nature. But health? Nobody rejects it; it is how things should be. So is light, so is love, so is bliss.

Remember: whatsoever we long for naturally is part of our being; that's why we long for it. Unless it is attained we will not be true to our being; hence the longing, hence the search. And whatsoever we reject is something alien, foreign - it has to be rejected. The journey may be long but one can hope that one will succeed. One succeeds if one goes on searching long enough. It is only a question of patience... patience and intensity of search. Search as if you want it today, this very moment; and be patient even it happens in eternity. With these two paradoxical qualities together one is on the right track, one cannot go astray then.

Deva means divine, nishkam means desirelessness divine desirelessness. The mind always wants more, and because of that constant hankering for the goal, it remains restless. And it cannot be satisfied: you can give it anything that it longs for, but the moment you do it wants more. Its very nature is a demand for more, so there is no way to quench its thirst. And the sooner one understands this, the better. To go with it is a sheer wastage. It says 'A little more and then everything will be okay, and then a little more, and then again a little more,' and it is never enough. It is a bottomless pit: you can go on throwing things in it and they all disappear and it remains empty.

A famous Sufi story is: A beggar asked a great king 'Can you fill my begging-bowl?'

The king was surprised. He said 'What kind of demand are you making? This small begging-bowl - can I not fill it?' The king was very egoistic. He told his grand vizier, 'Fill the bowl with gold!' The bowl was filled but the moment it became full, suddenly it was empty again, the gold disappeared. It was filled again and again and again, and the whole treasure of the king disappeared. Desperate, humiliated, the king fell at the feet of the beggar and said 'You tricked me. What kind of bowl is this?

Is it a magic bowl? You defeated me, you humiliated me, you put me right. You have destroyed and shattered my ego! I was thinking that I have the greatest empire in the world and I could not even fill the beggar's bowl. What kind of bowl is this?'

And the beggar started laughing. 'There is nothing magical in it,' he said 'it has been made by the mind of man. Every man has it inside his skull; I have just brought it out from the skull, that's all. It is a very ordinary bowl, and every man is carrying one in his skull. You come across it every day but you don't recognize it.'

Man is in misery because of his constant demand for more. Man immediately becomes blissful if he drops this constant madness for more, this mania for more. That state is called 'nishkam': no desire any more. Then the whole energy turns inwards, because desire keeps it occupied outwards, desire keeps it occupied with the future. When there is no desire, there is no future either; when there is no desire, there is no going anywhere either. One is suddenly herenow, utterly herenow, totally herenow. In a state of desirelessness your whole energy is centred in you. In that very moment bliss happens. You are back home.

You have to work it out; the name has a great key for you. Watch the mind. It has deceived enough.

Now is the time to get out of its enchanted circle. See the futility of it, become disillusioned by it.

Then one is surprised that one could have always enjoyed bliss, because it was always here, it was always now, but the mind was taking one farther away, farther away, for more and more and more.

The mind keeps you out of your home, keeps you away from yourself.

In the beginning just a few moments are enough to give you the taste of desirelessness and then they start growing on their own. Once you have tasted a single moment of desirelessness you know the secret; then the secret can be spread all over your life. And that is the meaning of sannyas: to live a life of desirelessness... to live in utter joy, to enjoy whatsoever is available, to enjoy it to the very last, to squeeze all the juice out of it.

My sannyas is not that of renunciation. You are not asked to renounce the world, you are only asked to renounce the mind. Live in the world and enjoy the world and be in it - it is divine. Just drop this hankering for more. And suddenly this very earth is paradise and this very body the Buddha.

Anand means blissful - blissful Maria. Jesus came out of the womb of Maria. Become the womb so that your own Jesus can also come out of it. Everybody has to give birth to their own Jesus, or call it Buddha or Krishna; it doesn't matter. These are just names for the same truth. The fire that burnt in Krishna was the same fire that burnt in Jesus. And the light that was shown in the eyes of Buddha was the same light as was shown in the eyes of Jesus. Every human being is an opportunity to become that, and unless we become that we can't be blissful.

The misery is just because we are missing our destiny. The misery is because the tree is not blooming; something is hindering the blossoms from coming. And the misery is natural: the spring is all over but the tree is not blossoming. There is deep pain in the heart, and anguish. But one should not become too concerned with the pain and anguish; one should simply take note of it and start working for blissfulness. Because nobody can drop the negative; once the positive is attained, the negative disappears. You cannot fight with darkness. Bring light in and the darkness is gone.

Prem means love, mouna means silence. Love is always silent. Its language is silence. Its language is wordless: it can commune without bringing any words in. It can commune through energy. When love is there, it is simply transmitted, you need not say it. We have to say because we have forgotten how to love. We have to say it because people have forgotten how to understand silence. In fact whenever there are two persons silent, they both feel embarrassed and they immediately start searching for something to say about the weather, politics. Anything will do, but talk, because talking keeps them engaged, occupied, and talking functions not as a communication but as a screen to hide behind - a screen of words and one can hide behind it.

Silence seems to be dangerous, vulnerable. The other may look into your being, the other may discover you. You know your ugliness and you know your inner nightmares that continue day in, day out. You know all kinds of madness are inside you, and you are afraid. A great screen, a curtain of words keeps you hidden, and the other also keeps hiding behind his own curtain of words.

People don't talk to communicate; people talk to avoid communication. Love can communicate without saying a word. But one will have to remember the language again; we have forgotten.

Centuries of civilization and centuries of cultivation - of the mind and the conditioning of the mind - have destroyed something very precious in us. They have destroyed silence. It is not only that there is the noise of the traffic and the train and the aeroplane and the market. It is not only that it is noisy outside - even more than that society has created noise within. That inner noise has to be dropped.

That's what meditation is all about: dropping the inner noise. And once the inner noise is dropped your love can start flowing again. That is prayer. Meditation prepares the way for prayer. Silence prepares the way for love.

So these two words you remember: become more and more silent so that you can become more and more loving. Become more and more loving so that you can become more and more silent.

They are two wings. Once you have those two wings, the whole sky is yours.

[A sannyasin says she is still 'holding on'] Simply accept it. You are trying too hard not to hold, and that is creating a contradiction in your energy. That contradiction is more dangerous than holding. On one hand you are holding and on the other hand you are trying to drop it. You are becoming divided because of it. Always remember: you cannot force these things. You can understand but you cannot force; and through understanding one day they disappear. Transformation happens: it cannot be done. And one has to learn the difference between happening and doing. That is one of the most important things in life to understand.

You are trying to do it. And because you have been trying to do your whole life, that's what has created the holding. Now again you are trying to do - now you are trying to do against it, but it is the same process. You don't allow things to happen; you always want to remain in control. Now, you even want to remain in control of let-go, and that's what is creating the conflict. It is so clear that your energy is moving in two directions.

The first thing: accept it, so that the energy starts moving in one direction. Accept it as one accepts one's height - that one is this height, this weight, that one is black or white, that one has two eyes, blond hair or brunette... one accepts. Just accept this too, and accept it totally. That will be the first act which will help, because that will be the first thing that you will not be controlling. You accept.

You have moved towards acceptance and that means you have moved towards let-go. Accepting is another name for let-go.

And then wait: whenever your acceptance is total, it will leave. And there is no hurry either. So for the days you will be here, simply enjoy, don't fight. Nothing has to be done.

[Osho suggests she do the Massage group, then Body Awareness, followed by the Sarjana group.] But relax, and these groups are meant to help you relax. Don't be in a hurry and don't be speedy.

Even walking, slow down. Do everything very slowly. Dancing, singing, meditating - in everything slow down. And accept yourself. If for these three weeks you can remain in silent acceptance, it will be a great experience and you will start feeling that that tension inside is relaxing. It will disappear.

[A sannyasin, who teaches archery, has been told by Somendra the group leader that she was a healer in a past life. She wondered if she should explore this latent skill.] Somendra is right... the possibility is there that healing energy can flow through you. But there are many blocks also. Those blocks will have to be melted.

Because the work of an archer and the work of a healer are totally different, they need a different kind of training inside. They create different kinds of minds inside. The archer is active and the healer has to be inactive. And Somendra's feeling is right, that in your past life you may have been a healer. So the potential is there, it can be provoked. If you want to become a healer, you can be turned into a healer. But my feeling is that it is better you remain an archer, because healing will destroy your archery. And healers we have many, archers we have not many (laughter)... so I would like you to remain the archer, right?

You have to be the commune archer!