Chapter 4

[A visitor:

Mm, I understand. If you understand Christ there is no problem. You can put him at the back. If you understand him, you will understand me and you can put me in front; there is no problem. If you don't understand him, there will be problems. Because Christ is not a person. It has nothing to do with Jesus, son of Joseph and Mary. Christ is a state of mind. If you love Christ, you will recognise Christ in me immediately.

To love Christ has nothing to do with being a Christian. It is a deep understanding of a certain state of consciousness. Christ is a state of consciousness, of silence, peace, bliss, of purity, innocence.

Look into my eyes and if you can see Christ, take sannyas. If you cannot see him, forget all about it.

[She asks:

There is no rejection in religious life. Religion knows no rejection. If you accept me, you have accepted all those who have ever walked on the earth and have been religious - not only Christ but Buddha and Krishna also.

Religion knows no rejection. The very idea of rejection is non-religious. There is no conflict between Buddha, Christ and me. The conflict arises because of the churches and the organisations and the politics that goes on in the name of religion. Then there is conflict and even the Christ of the Protestants is different from the Christ of the Catholics.

[She adds:

Then wait, because the promise is there.

... Then wait, because any commitment should not be half-hearted. Once you commit yourself to me, you commit with your total heart. Then there is no problem about the future and what will happen and what you will do. That's not a problem at all. This moment is enough unto itself. Don't bother about the next moment. Who can say what will happen in the next moment? The next moment will be born out of this moment.

If you move deeply with me, your whole life, your whole future will be totally different. That very commitment will make such a great change, almost such a drastic change, radical, that you may fall in love, but you may fall in love with somebody other than whom you would have fallen if you were not committed to me.

Your whole understanding, your whole attitude, your vision of life will change. There is more of a possibility that you will fall in love with a sannyasin.

[She asks:

This is not the question. It is just that I am whimsical about it, eccentric [laughter].

... Just see what I am saying. I'm not explaining anything. I'm saying I am whimsical. You can say that you have gone mad with this man and this man is very eccentric about orange.

Everything in life need not be explained. We have no responsibility to explain anything to anybody.

One can remain unexplained. And all that is deep is always unexplained. That which you can explain will be very superficial. There are things which you cannot explain.

If you fall in love with a person, how can you explain how you have fallen in love? Whatsoever you answer will look stupid - because of his nose, because of his face, because of his voice.... All that will not look worth mentioning, but there is something there in the person. These things may be in it, but that 'something' is bigger than all. That something is more than the total.

So if you fall in love with me, I have a few eccentricities and you have to suffer them, mm?

... Think about it... because to bring the future into the present is just a trick of the mind to postpone.

Because who knows? Tomorrow you may die. Who knows about the future? I am not saying that in the future you have to wear orange. It is you who is raising the question. I am saying that you have to be in orange right now. Future - who knows what happens? The future is not predictable. And I am not in any way trying to dominate your future; no, not at all.

It is you who is raising the question and you are raising it for a particular reason. The reason is to weigh some excuse, to postpone something that is arising in your heart... something that you are feeling deeply, but the mind is creating a distraction about the future.

I'm not talking about tomorrow. I say be with me this moment and the next moment will come out of it. Once you are in orange you may not like any other colour ever, but that's another thing. Once you are in orange you will not be the same, so who knows what you may decide later on? There is no need to be worried about it.

[The new sannyasin asks if she should complete the last year of her bachelor's degree in religion and philosophy.]

It is good to continue and to finish it. It will be helpful. Philosophy cannot give much, but it can give you a framework. It can give you a certain language to understand things, a certain clarity about concepts. It cannot give anything existential, but it can give you an intellectual clarity. And it is good training. One should not think that anything is achieved through it, but it can clear the ground for something to be achieved. So, good... one year is there. You finish it.

[A sannyasin reports back about his fear of the dark. (see June 17th see 'The Cypress in the Courtyard'): he had been able to sleep alone in his room for the past seven nights and experienced very little fear. He said now his fear was revolving around his forthcoming return to the West.... ]

I am coming with you, so don't be worried. If you could be alone and sleep well for these seven days, there is going to be no trouble when you are gone. The contact has been made.

Just be happy for these fifteen days that you are here and enjoy as much as you can. Joy is the antidote for all fear. Fear comes if you don't enjoy life. If you enjoy life, fear disappears. So just be positive and enjoy more, laugh more, dance more, sing. Remain more and more cheerful, enthusiastic about small things, very small things. Life consists of small things, but if you can bring the quality of cheerfulness to small things, the total is tremendous.

So don't wait for anything great to happen. Great things happen - it is not that they don't - but don't wait for the something great to happen. It happens only when you start living small, ordinary, day- to-day things, with a new mind, with new freshness, with new vitality, with new enthusiasm. Then by and by you accumulate, and that accumulation one day explodes into sheer joy.

But one never knows when it will happen. One has just to go on collecting pebbles on the shore.

The totality becomes the great happening. When you collect one pebble, it is a pebble. When all the pebbles are together, suddenly they are diamonds. That's the miracle of life. So you need not think about these great things.

There are many people in the world who miss because they are always waiting for something great.

It can't happen. It happens only through small things: eating, taking your breakfast, walking, taking your bath, talking to a friend, just sitting alone looking at the sky or lying on your bed doing nothing.

These small things are what like is made of. This is the very stuff of life.

So do everything cheerfully and then everything becomes a prayer.

Do it with enthusiasm. The word 'enthusiasm' is very beautiful. The basic root means 'god-given'.

When you do something with deep enthusiasm, God is within you. The very word 'enthusiasm' means 'a man who is full of God'. So just bring more enthusiasm into life, and fear and other things will disappear on their own.

Never be bothered by negatives. You burn the candle and the darkness goes on its own. Don't try to fight with the darkness. There is no way because the darkness does not exist. How can you fight with it? Just light a candle and the darkness is gone. So forget about the darkness, forget about the fear. Forget about all those negative things that ordinarily haunt the human mind. Just burn a small candle of enthusiasm.

For these fifteen days, the first thing in the morning, get up with a great enthusiasm, 'God within', with a decision that today you are going to really live with great delight - and then start living with great delight: Have your breakfast, but eat it as if you are eating God Himself. It becomes a sacrament.

Take your bath, but God is within you; you are giving a bath to God. Then your small bathroom becomes a temple and the water showering on you is a baptism.

So get up every morning with a great decision, a certainty, a clarity, a promise to yourself that today is going to be tremendously beautiful and you are going to live it tremendously. And each night when you go to bed, remember again how many beautiful things have happened today. Just the remembrance helps them to come back again tomorrow. Just remember and then fall asleep remembering those beautiful moments that happened today. Your dreams will be more beautiful.

They will carry your enthusiasm, your duality, and you will start living in dreams also, with a new energy.

In these fifteen days, make every moment sacred. Then go - and don't be worried, I am coming with you.

[A sannyasin said she was concerned about her husband, as he was suffering from a serious illness.

Osho advised her to wait for the results of tests and said in the meantime that neither of them should be worried.... ]

One thing we have always to remember is that death is part of life, mixed with life. It is always there. One may be perfectly healthy and one can die. So death has to be accepted; that is not a big problem. We can postpone it, but death is going to happen. So, as a fact, death has to be accepted.

There is no need to be afraid about it.

Everybody is going to die sooner or later, so basically it makes no difference. Once this understanding is there, one accepts everything. Not that he is going to die. There is no problem right now.

Let the tests come and we will see what can be done. This is the fourth time that the disease has happened?

So when we could win over it four times, why not a fifth? This is what I say: you can look at it in two ways. You can say that the person has been ill four times and now a fifth so it seems difficult to survive. Why not look at it positively? Four times he was able to win, so why be afraid? He can win the fifth time.

To me, death is not the problem. The basic problem is not to reject anything. If death comes, it comes - today or tomorrow or the day after tomorrow.

Have you heard the name of Gilgamesh? It is an old epic, an Akkadian epic, the epic of Gilgamesh.

He was a king, and up to his mid-life he lived as the whole of humanity lives - without even being conscious of death. Not that he had not known death. Many people had died, but he was in the common illusion - as is the whole humanity - that death happens to somebody else and not to him.

So he lived unconsciously and death was never a problem.

Of course people were dying - he had seen many people die; he had been to the battlefields - but it had never penetrated deeply. The arrow had never hit his own heart. He knew in general that death happens, but he was not aware that it was going to happen to him in particular also.

It is natural logic. You always come across somebody dead, never across yourself dead. It is always somebody else who dies, so why be worried? Others die - you never die.

But one day he was sitting on the bank of the river Euphrates and he saw many corpses floating; a great epidemic has spread and people were dying like flies. There was no way to bury or burn them because so many people were dying that there was nobody to bury them. They were simply floating in the river - dead bodies, stinking. That hit him hard and for the first time he became aware: death is going to happen to me also. How long can I survive?' That day he really became a man.

Heidegger says, 'A man is a being-towards-death.' Animals die, trees die, birds die, but they don't know anything about death. It is only man... the frailty of man that he knows that he will die.

It is something tremendously valuable, because if you don't know that you will die, you cannot live rightly. In the background is death; then the figure of life becomes completely clear. It is just as on a dark night the stars shine clear. In the day they disappear because the contrast is not there.

Heidegger is right when he says, 'Man is a being-towards-death.'

Up to that moment Gilgamesh had lived like an animal. That moment he became a man. A revolution happened. He started thinking that he was going to die and something had to be done. But what to do? He visited wise people, he consulted scriptures. The other thing he found was that you can do something very significant so that your name becomes immortal.

You cannot remain in history but your name can become immortal; that's all that is possible. So he was happy - at least something was possible. 'Maybe this body will go but my name, "Gilgamesh", will live. I will do something: I will write poetry or I will paint or create a beautiful palace or something that history will have to take note of.'

He was happy with that thought. Many men live with that thought - just somehow to make their name immortal. That's a way to avoid death again.

But then one of his closest friends died. He was his only friend. Now death had happened very close.

Those dead bodies in the river were strangers. There was no relationship, no emotion involved. He was deeply involved with his friend. He was a very very close, intimate friend and he had died.

Suddenly a second revolution happened. He started thinking, 'Even if now my friend's name lives, I will remember him, but what does that matter? The man is gone. I will remember him, I will cherish his memory and continuously think about him, but what does it matter whether I remember or not?

The man is gone. So even if I am remembered by thousands of people, I will be gone. It is all the same whether they remember me or forget me. It does not give me life.'

Then he was very much afraid. Another illusion was broken. He started searching in the mountains, in the desert, for somebody who knew the secret of immortality. After many journeys wandering all over the earth.... And those journeys were very arduous. Gilgamesh went everywhere; he became very old and ancient, but he continued on his quest....

Finally he came across a man. who, it was known, knew the secret of immortality. The old man said, 'Yes, you can become immortal. The secret is there, just in front of me, in that bush. You can eat some fruit from that bush and you will become immortal. But nobody has become immortal up to now. The secret is there but something always happens. One never reaches to that bush.'

Gilgamesh laughed and said, 'This is absurd. The bush is just a few feet away. What is the problem?' He ran, and he was just reaching out to the bush when a snake came and Gilgamesh was bitten and died before he reached the bush! So Gilgamesh is a failure... but the epic is beautiful.

It is the whole of humanity's quest. In the first part, humanity lives like animals, not knowing. Many die in that stage. The second part, people become aware - painters, poets, philosophers. Then they start trying to create some type of immortality to substitute. Many die with that. Then in the third part, a few become aware that even your name's immortality makes no sense. They start searching, like Gilgamesh, for some secret to be immortal. But that too proves a failure, so the whole quest is a failure.

In fact death has to be accepted. And once you have accepted it, then you have transcended it.

So it is going to be a great experience for you and Chinmaya both. Whatsoever happens, just accept it as peacefully as possible. Not that he is going to die; don't misunderstand me. He may survive, because I feel he still has enough stamina to overcome the illness. But whether he survives or not, that is irrelevant. One day he will have to die. One day you will have to die. One day I am going to die. So death has to be accepted.

Whenever death knocks at your door, in any way, accept it. That very acceptance will change your whole being. And remain happy. That is arduous, but remain happy. That will be helpful for him.

Don't become sad. That is very ordinary to become sad about death.

When death knocks, be happy. And if somebody is going to die, then give him a beautiful goodbye, mm?