Chapter 16

Nitya means eternal and anand means bliss - eternal bliss...

And this is going to be your constant remembrance... to just feel as if you are eternal. In the beginning it is 'as if'. By and by you become more and more aware that this is a truth. In the beginning you start with an hypothesis - as if - but soon glimpses start coming. So always remember that you are not the momentary but the eternal... not the changing but the unchanging.

If you see a flower then in that flower there are two constituents: one, which is constantly changing - the body part, the form - and then hidden behind the form is the formless which is unchanging.

Flowers come and go, the beauty, remains. Sometimes it is manifested in a form, sometimes it dissolves back into the formless. Again there will be flowers and the beauty will assert itself... then they will drop and the beauty will move into the unmanifest.

And the same is happening with human beings, with birds, animals, everything. We have two dimensions: the day part when we become manifested, and the night part when we become unmanifested - but we are eternal. We have been always, and we will be always. Being is beyond time and beyond change.

In the beginning just remember it is as if, then you will start feeling the reality of it, mm?

[A visitor says: I want to change.]

That's very simple - if you want to. If you don't want to change then it is almost impossible, because change is not possible from the outside. Indications can be given, guidance can be given, but your cooperation will be needed.

This is my feeling: people think they want to change but they have not really thought about it, have not meditated upon it. If you really want to change then who is hindering you? There is no obstacle.

But deep down we want to change and yet don't want to; the mind is in a very confused state. We want to change if there is no risk, and that's impossible. That condition - that there is no risk - makes it impossible to change, because everything has to be at stake, then only is change possible.

Change cannot be partial. Either it is or it is not - it can- only be total. So the decision is between to be or not to be. It is a jump, not a gradual process. If you are really fed up with the life that you have lived, if you are really fed up with your old patterns that you have been repeating constantly, then there is no trouble.

It is easy, very easy, if there is the understanding that you have been living a life which was not worth much, which has not brought anything.... It has never allowed you to flower. It has not been meaningful and significant in the ultimate sense. You may have done many things but the meaning was trivial; whether it was done or not makes no difference. You may have succeeded in many things but you have failed. You may not have failed in many things, you may have succeeded in all that you did, but still you have failed.

It is not a question of worldly recognition. People may think you have succeeded, that you have all the qualities they would like themselves, but that's not the point. Deep down you feel a stagnancy, a frozenness, a shrunkenness, as if you are already dead, as if something has closed. The flavour of life, the poetry and flow, the song has disappeared, and the fragrance is there no more. You go on because you have to. What can you do? You seem almost a victim of circumstance, chance - like a puppet - not knowing what you are doing, where you are going, from where you have come, who you are. This is failure.

If you really think that this has been so then there is no trouble - change is very easy. It is so spontaneous a phenomenon that in fact nothing is needed to be done about it; just the very understanding brings change. The very understanding becomes a transformation. Understanding is radical revolution, and there is no other revolution.

Good! Then take a jump into sannyas too. Close your eyes....

[Osho wrote his sannyas name on a sheet of paper.... ]

Anand means bliss, veet means beyond, raga means attachment - bliss which is beyond attachment. All bliss is beyond attachment. If you are attached you will be miserable.

Attachment brings misery, unattachment brings blissfulness. So use things, but don't be used by them. Live life but don't be lived by it. Possess things, but don't be possessed by them. Have things - that's not a problem. I am not for renunciation. Enjoy everything that life gives, but always remain free.

If times change, things disappear, it makes no difference to you. You can live in a palace, you can live in a hut... you can live as blissfully under the sky. This constant awareness that one should not start clinging to anything makes life blissful. One enjoys tremendously whatsoever is available. And it is always more than one can enjoy, and always available. But the mind is too attached to things - we become blind to that celebration that is always available.

There is a story of a zen monk who was a master and night a thief entered the hut, but there was nothing there to steal. The master became very worried about what the thief would think. He had come at least four or five miles out of the town, and on such a dark night....

He had only one blanket that he was using - that was his clothing and bedcover and everything. He put the blanket in the corner, but the thief could not see in the dark so he had to tell him to take the blanket, begged him to take it as a gift saying that he should not return empty-handed. The thief was much puzzled; he felt so awkward that he simply escaped with the blanket.

The master wrote a poem saying that if he were able he would have given the man the moon. Sitting under the moon that night, naked, he enjoyed the moon more than ever before.

Life is always available - and more than you can enjoy, and you always have more than you can give. The very idea of clinging makes you poor, miserable.

Veetraga means a mind that is not clinging to anything, unattached. It moves through the world untouched. In India we use the symbol of the lotus flower for Veetraga. It remains in the water but untouched, always above the water.

[People who had done the Enlightenment Intensive group were at darshan. One of them said: ...

the most honest and the most deeply felt realisation at the end of it for me is that I am the body that has carried me around for twenty-nine years, and the brain and the mind - and it's there. I'm afraid I'm not ready yet to realise anything deeper....

I had a few flashes but there was always the mind coming in. But it was a nice thought at the time.

It was a good group, and when I come back I'd like to do it again, and maybe I can get more out of it.]

You can get more and more, mm? It has been good; as far as it goes, it has been good.

It always starts with glimpses, and it is good that it does; a sudden opening of the sky will be too much, unbearable. One can sometimes go mad if the realisation happens too suddenly. So we make every effort so that it doesn't happen too suddenly. I have to look to that too. Sometimes you can be foolish enough to go into it too suddenly, and then it can be dangerous because it will be too much for you; you will not be able to absorb it. The question is not of realisation, but how to digest it by and by so it is not an experience but becomes your being.

If it is an experience it will come and go; it will remain a glimpse. No experience can remain permanent - only your being can be permanent. It has been good, and by and by, slowly....

And don't be greedy about inner matters. It is bad even in outward matters and very bad in inward matters. It is not so dangerous when you are greedy about money and power and prestige. because those things are just futile, and whether you are greedy or not does not make much difference. But greed inside, when you move on the inward path, can be very dangerous . . . many people have gone almost mad. It can be too dazzling to their eyes and they can go blind.

It is always good to come and go - to be in the world and to come to me again. Let it be a constant rhythm so that you are never out of the world and never in the world. By and by you will realise that you transcend it. This has to be so gradual - just as a flower opens so gradually that you cannot see when the opening really happened. It is just like when a child becomes a young man: nobody knows on what day or date it happens. Just think, if a child suddenly becomes a man he will go mad; he will not be able to understand what has happened.

And use the techniques that you were doing here: just sit facing the wall and move inwards.

Sometimes when you are feeling good and happy, do something. It almost always happens that when people are miserable, anxious, tense, nervous, they try meditation, but then it is hard to enter.

When you are feeling hurt, angry, sad, then you think of meditation, but that is almost going against the current and will be difficult.

When you are feeling happy, loving, floating - these are the right moments when the door is very close. Just a knock will be enough.

Suddenly one morning one is feeling good, for no visible cause at al. Something must have happened deep in the unconscious. Something must have happened between you and the cosmos, some harmony; maybe in the night, in deep sleep. In the morning you are feeling good; don't waste that time. Just a few minutes of meditation will be more than a few days of meditation when you are miserable.

Or suddenly at night lying on the bed, one feels at home ... cosy surroundings, the warmth of the bed. Just sit for five minutes; don't waste that moment. A certain harmony is there - use that, ride on it, and that wave will take you far away, farther than you can go on your own. So learn how to use these blissful moments.

[Another group member says: When you spoke about us being eternal, not the changing, things. I realised at one point during the group that when I was really ignorant, I identified with the outside.

Then when I got into Yoga, I said that it's all an illusion, and I tried to identify with the inside.

Then I got a little bit tantric and I said, well, I'm both. I can't just be the inside. I must be my identity, the world, these things. Then in the group I suddenly thought well, I'm not so sure about either now:

when I go inside, maybe the outside isn't there anymore.]

It has been good, mm? It has been very good. Outside, inside, are just false divisions, as all divisions are. Useful - because it is difficult to talk without words, so we say outside and inside. But then you come to understand that there is only one. It has no outside to it and no inside, because inside and oUtside means two. It is one and you are that.

That's the meaning of the Upanishad's 'Tattwamasi Swetaketu': that art thou. That means the outside, thou means the inside; they are bridged. That becomes thou, and thou becomes that...

suddenly there is no division. There is no division - death is life and life is death.

All divisions exist because the mind is incapable of seeing that the contradictory can be one. It is because of its logic that the mind cannot see how a thing can be both The mind thinks of either/or; it says either this or that. And life is both, existence is both together - so much so that to say that existence is both together is not right. It is a tremendous oneness.

So you will feel these things come many times. But good, the whole thing has been good.