Chapter 18

Anand means bliss and bhakta means devotion, a devotee. And that is going to be your path.

[Osho said that Bhakta should make it his very style of life to be loving, whether someone was present or not, for the emphasis should be not on the object of love, but on the feeling of love itself.

Whatsoever you regard with love, with respect, becomes a person and is no longer just a thing.... ]

So, for a loving person the whole world becomes luminous with personality. That's what God means.

There is no way to approach God directly, only through love. So slowly go on giving things a personality. And that depends on your attitude and how you approach them. You can go to the tree and touch it as if you are touching your beloved. In that moment that tree becomes your beloved, because it is you who creates your world.

So, devotion is nothing but a tremendous creativity and the whole world is by and by transfigured, transplanted into a new dimension. Everything becomes luminous with personality. Nothing is a thing... everything has a soul. You impart the soul, or it has always been there but you were blind.

Love opens your eyes and you discover - yes, that is more correct: you discover the soul.

So let it be a continuous adventure. Look at things, look at people, at the sky, but let love be flowing.

Your love will create the world around you, a new world, a new being That new being is what in the old ages people used to call God. God is not somebody sitting somewhere. Unless you impart godhood to existence, God is nowhere to be found. Unless you create Him, He is nowhere. God exists in the love of the devotee. You get me? In the love of the devotee, God exists.

So if somebody says, 'I would like to know God,' he is asking the wrong question. He should ask, 'How should I create my God ?' That is the right question. If somebody says, 'First I will have to find Him and then I can worship and pray,' worship is never going to happen to him, because in the first

place you have to create God. You have to create the temple and you have to create the God who makes His abode in that temple.

Devotion is that creativity, that poetic way of looking at the world. Romance in the eyes is what devotion is. Poetry in the heart, that's what devotion is.

So let that by and by be imbibed by you. Create your God, because there is no other way to find Him. So only great creative people can find God. Others simply waste their energy and time. It is not a question of logic. Logic is a very destructive force. It is a question of love.

So from this very moment start moving in a very very loving way. If somebody comes, even if he is not good to you, still he is God, but God is not choosing to be good with you in this moment, so okay.

But that doesn't make any difference. Even if somebody comes and kills you, it is God who has become the murderer. Good if He chooses that way, but don't take the godhood from the person.

He may be a murderer but he remains a God. Somebody insults you, he is very antagonistic and full of hatred for you; that makes no difference... God is playing that way.

It is said about Mansoor, the great sufi mystic, that when he was killed, he laughed. He was murdered, butchered, in a crueller way than Jesus. His limbs were cut one by one: first his feet, then his hands, then his eyes, then his tongue. He was killed pan by pan and it was a tremendous agony, but when he was being killed, he laughed. He looked at the sky and laughed tremendously.

an uproarious laugh. People were shocked.. .they could not believe it - 'Has he gone mad? This is no situation in which to laugh!'

And when somebody asked from the crowd, 'Why are you laughing, Mansoor?' he said, 'I am laughing because He cannot deceive me. In whatsoever form He comes, I will recognise Him. So I am laughing at Him!' He was laughing to God saying,'You cannot deceive me. In whatsoever form you come, I will love you ! You cannot trick me. I have known you and I have known you once and for all.'

So become a devotee. This is your name - forget the old name. Now this is going to be your birthdate from now onwards. Remember this day as your birth. The old man is gone. Say goodbye to him, because he has brought you here.

Prem means love and Dhruva is the sanskrit word for the polar star. This is the star which is the most permanent, unmoving star. Everything goes on moving but this is the only star which doesn't move.

'Love is the polar star' - that is the meaning of the name. Everything moves, only love never moves. Everything changes, only love remains permanent. In this changing world only love is the unchanging substance. Everything else is a flux, momentary. Only love is eternal.

So these two things you have to remember. One is love, because that is the only thing that is non-illusory. That is the only reality; everything else is a dream. So if one can become loving, one becomes real. If one attains to total love, one has become himself, the truth, because love is the only truth.

And the second thing, Dhruva. When you are walking, remember that something in you never walks.

That's your soul, your polar star. You eat, but something in you never eats. You become angry, but something in you never becomes angry. You do a thousand and one things, but something in you remains absolutely beyond doing. That is your polar star. So walking, remember that which never walks. Moving, remember the immobile. Talking, remember silence. Doing things, remember being.

Always remember that which is absolutely permanent, which never flickers, never wavers, which knows no change. That unchanging one within you is the real. And love is the way to find it. That's why I call love the most real thing. So love is going to be the path. And that polar star within you - call it God, kingdom of the within, atma, soul, or whatsoever - but that polar star, that permanent substance in you, your very essence, that is the goal. Love is the way.

The more loving you become, the closer you come to your polar star. The more unloving you are, the father you are from your polar star. So love really is nothing but closeness to one's being. That's why everybody is hankering for love so much because when love is there, you are. When love is not there, you are not. When love is not there, then you are just a dream. When love is there, then you are really tremendously real. Only in a few moments of love, one touches the substratum of life, the ground, the very ground. Love gives you a grounding... one feels rooted.

So love, and when somebody else loves you, allow it; never create any barriers. People do two wrong things. First, they make themselves so hard that they cannot love. And then when somebody comes and knocks at their door, they refuse, because by refusing love the ego feels very very good.

The ego always feels good whenever love is refused because it feels powerful. Whenever love is accepted, the ego feels powerless.

If you love, the ego disappears. If you don't love, the ego becomes more and more concrete. So people don't love, and even if somebody wants to share his being with them, or her being with them, they refuse. They go on becoming more and more hard and father away from reality.

So remember two things: love is the way and the unmoving within you is the goal. That is the real self, the supreme self. The quality of that supreme self is witnessing. It only witnesses, it is not a doer. You walk; it witnesses walking. You eat; it witnesses eating. You become angry; it witnesses anger. It simply witnesses. It is just consciousness, that's all... pure consciousness.

So love and go on falling into that consciousness. And nothing else is needed. This is all religion is about. In these two words the whole religion can be summarised.

... it is the part that loves. So if you love, you fall into that part. It starts functioning, it becomes alive.

If you don't love, it becomes dead, far away, distant.

One can live an unloving life when one is not in touch with one's own being. When you live a loving life, you live in touch with your being. Your contents are constantly in contact with your being.

So love is the way to reach to one's own self. The closer you reach, the more you become capable of love. The more you love, the more you become capable of reaching into your own self. So they are one in a way.

But about the ultimate being, nothing can be done. But about love, something can be done. You can be loving. You can be open. You can be in a let-go.

[A sannyasin returning to the West, said he wasn't aware of a sense of centredness in himself. Osho suggested he try concentrating his energy on the hara, the point two inches below the navel.... ]

That is the centre from where one enters life and that is the centre from where one dies and goes out of life. So that is the contact centre between the body and the soul. If you feel a sort of wavering left and right and you don't know where your centre is, that simply shows that you are no more in contact with your hara, so you have to create that contact.

In the night when you go to sleep, lie down on the bed and put both your hands two inches below the navel, and press a little. Then start breathing, deep breathing, and you will feel that centre coming up and down with the breathing. Feel your whole energy there as if you are shrinking and shrinking and shrinking and you are just existing there as a small centre, very concentrated energy. Just do this for ten, fifteen minutes, and then fall asleep.

You can fall asleep doing it; that will be helpful. Then the whole night that centring persists. Again and again the unconscious goes and centres there. So the whole night without your knowing, you will be coming in many ways in deep contact with the centre.

In the morning, the moment that you feel that sleep has gone, don't open the eyes first. Again put your hands there, push a little, start breathing; again feel the hara. Do this for ten or fifteen minutes and then get up. Do this every night, every morning. Within three months you will start feeling centred.

It is very essential to have a centring otherwise one feels fragmentary; then one is not together. One is just like a jigsaw - all fragments and not a gestalt, not a whole. It is a bad shape, because without a centre a man can drag but cannot love. Without a centre you can go on doing routine things in your life, but you can never be creative. You will live at the minimum. The maximum will not be possible for you. Only by centring one lives at the maximum, at the zenith, at the peak, at the climax, and that is the only living, a real life.

[A sannyasin reports back on his relationship: I've been looking more and more into myself, feeling more and more confused, more and more childish.

I'm afraid of deceiving myself about loving her, but what I'm really doing is asking for her love.]

It happens that when you start really feeling yourself, many things will start surfacing. For example, you will feel more childish because when you were a child, you were yourself. Then people started controlling you. They started forcing you to be somebody else other than you. They manipulated you and started giving you masks, personalities, and you lost contact with your own being. So whenever you will feel yourself again - in love, in meditation, in prayer - whenever you feel yourself again, again you will feel childish, because that is the only way you have known yourself. In every other way you have been somebody else.

And it almost always happens that lovers become childish - because love accepts you. It makes no demands on you. Love does not say, 'Be this, be that.' Love simply says, 'Be yourself. You are

good as you are. You are beautiful as you are.' Love accepts you. Suddenly you start dropping your ideals, 'shoulds', personalities. You drop your old skin and again you become a child. Love makes people young.

The more you love, the younger you will remain. When you don't love you start becoming old, because when you don't love you lose contact with yourself. Love is nothing but coming in contact with yourself via the other... somebody who accepts you, mirrors you as you are.

So good, nothing to be worried about. But problems will arise out of it because you don't know how to cope with your childhood.

... that's what others have taught you, because children are not accepted. Everybody teaches them to become older. Everybody says to them, 'Be mature, don't be childish.' And it is natural in a way because old people manage young people, so old people like them to be just like themselves. They completely forget that they are children. They should not be forced to be old. Old they will become by themselves one day, but there is no need to force.

That forcing creates an unripe maturity, a very confusing state. The fruit starts looking as if it is ripe but deep inside at the very core, it remains unripe.

So you will have to learn to accept it. The child is beautiful - accept it and enjoy it. Don't feel guilty about it. Reclaim your childhood. That's you. That's your real face. And there is no way to be somebody else. You can go on trying but everything will prove a failure. One remains oneself.

That's why you have become false and you feel that you have been false for your whole life. Now if you fight with your childhood, again you will be false. So drop that effort. You are playing old tapes.

Your parents, society, teachers, have conditioned your mind. Drop that conditioning!

Love can be the right situation to drop all conditioning. Love is an unconditioning. It simply takes away the old patterns and does not give you a new pattern. If it gives you a new pattern, again it is no more love. Then again the politics has started.

That's what your mother has done to you, your father has done to you. Your mother says, 'If you don't do what I am saying, I will not love you.' You know how to manipulate your mother's love. You have to be somebody other than who you are and then she is loving. If you are simply yourself, she is angry, annoyed. The child by and by learns it... a simple diplomacy that one is not accepted as one is so one has to be very political. And the child is absolutely helpless. He cannot escape, he cannot fight back. If he has to survive, he has to be political. Hence everybody has become a politician.

Drop that politics and just be - whatsoever it is. Don't judge it because that judgement will not be yours; it will be your mother's, your father's, your society's. It will be their voice inside you telling you that you are doing wrong.

If you listen rightly, you can immediately catch who it is speaking. When you are feeling childish, being childish, some voice inside immediately says, 'What are you doing? That is not good:' If you are alert, perceptive, you can see who is saying this. You can find out if it is your mother's voice or your father's voice or maybe both together. It is a tape. This is what people call conscience. It is not conscience. It is a trick.

Conscience arises only out of consciousness. In French, I think, they have only one word for conscience and consciousness. That's right, that's absolutely as it should be. Consciousness is conscience, but ordinarily you have conscience and consciousness separate. Consciousness is what is happening to you as you are relaxing and becoming a child; that is conscious. And then conscience comes in, the parental voice. It says, 'What are you doing? This is wrong,' and immediately you become tense, and then there is confusion because now there are two alternatives, so what to do and what not to do?

... Again you are thinking of the other and how to manipulate the other and do what she needs.

Don't be bothered. Do that which you need. Be absolutely selfish and you will never hurt anybody, because when you are absolutely selfish you never do anything wrong to anybody.

[Osho said that if he were trying to be as his girlfriend wanted him to be - or he imagined she wanted him to be - and she, in turn, was trying to please him, they would both become false, and much would be missed in the relationship. If both could accept each other as they were, politics would disappear and then love could flow.

Osho said that he should not fear that the child in him would not be welcomed, saying that woman is essentially a mother and man a child, and the two are drawn to each other. Osho talked about man's attraction to women's breasts, saying that it was because the breasts represented motherhood and nourishment (see 'Be Realistic: Plan For A Miracle' Tuesday April 6th, where Osho talks about this in more detail)].

... So if you love any woman you will be again, in a deep way, searching for your mother. And the woman is basically a mother because a woman carries a womb from the very childhood. That womb is her potentiality, that womb is her creativity. She wants to envelop somebody in deep love, to cover somebody in deep love. She wants to take somebody into her innermost core of being.

So don't be afraid that if you are childish [your girlfriend] will not like it. She will be tremendously happy. She will start caring about you as if a small child has to be cared for. Her motherhood will be fulfilled through it. But that's not the point.

The point is that one has to be true to oneself. That is the first responsibility. First things first. So just relax and be a child.

[Osho then turns to the girlfriend, who says: I am very confused because I feel different. I feel an emptiness.... I don't speak to people, I have no interest in anything... I just feel lost. And I have no memory left.... ]

There is no need. Things are going well. There is no need for the memory. Ninety-nine percent is rubbish. If one forgets, good; one is fortunate. The problem arises because people don't have the capacity to forget. It is a greater capacity than to remember.

The memory is not as valuable as people think, so don't be worried about it.

[Osho went on to say that one retains what one needs and forgets that which was useless (see 'Nothing to Lose but Your Head', Wednesday Feb. 27th)].

When the past drops, of course future planning also stops because the future is nothing but the past projected. So this is what I am teaching. This is what I want to happen to everybody. If it is happening, don't be worried. And one will feel empty because the junkyard is gone. You will feel empty. Now there is no need to fill it with anything. Remain in this emptiness. Just one thing - be loving. That emptiness will start by and by being filled with something new. That will be love.

There is a very famous sufi story about a great king who was dying. He had three sons and all were very wise and he was very worried about whom to choose to be his successor. They were all the same age so age could not be the deciding factor, and they were all beautiful, all healthy and all intelligent. It was almost impossible to decide so he asked a very old aged man, his old advisor, what to do. The old advisor said, 'I will do a sort of a test.'

He called all the three boys and gave to each a palace and a certain amount of money, a very small amount of money, and told them, 'With this amount of money you have to fill your palace completely; it should not be empty.' It was difficult. The palaces were very big and the money was only a very small amount.

The first young man thought and thought and brooded. It was impossible to fill that empty palace with such a small amount of money! He could not get any furniture; even curtains were not possible.

Paintings, chandeliers, impossible; so what to do? He could only think of one thing - that rubbish could be used with that amount of money. So he filled the whole palace with rubbish, because the man had not said with what to fill it but just that it should be full. So he said, 'Perfectly logical.'

The second boy thought very much but could not find a way. Up to the last moment he thought and contemplated but it was impossible. He was not ready to fill it with rubbish and there was no other thing that could be purchased with that amount of money, so the palace remained empty.

The third boy purchased a few small earthen lamps, incense, a few flowers. He burned the incense and the whole palace was full of the perfume. And he burned those small earthen, very cheap lamps and the whole house was full of light. And when the king came to see all the three palaces, there was just a small garland for him and a few flowers, that was all.

They rejected the first house because the condition was fulfilled - the man had filled his house - but with rubbish. The second was a failure because the house was empty and full of darkness because the boy had not been able to decide what to do. The third was chosen as the successor because with such a small amount of money he managed to fill the house - and not only to fill it; it was overfull, flowing. Light was going outside on the road and the perfume was going with the winds.

Your house right now is like the second boy's palace - empty. It was like the first boy's palace before, but now the junk, the rubbish has been thrown out. It is like the second man's house.

Wait! Just the fragrance of love and the light of meditation will do. Your palace will become full again, and full with something which is tremendously valuable - and of course, it costs nothing.

So don't be worried. Things are going perfectly well. Just meditate more and love more. Emptiness is good!

[She replies: I'm throwing out so much negativity in this relationship.]

It is not negativity. It is just because you are empty and you don't know what to do with your emptiness. If you don't know what to do with your emptiness, it becomes negative. Just forget what [your boyfriend] is doing to you. That is his thing. Just be loving. For three weeks just be loving, warm - unconditionally.

You have to do something, otherwise this emptiness can become negative, and once it becomes negative, it is difficult. It is as if the milk has become sour and curdled. Now it cannot be used in any way. For three weeks really make all effort to be positive, to be warm, to be welcoming. Then we will see, mm? Try!