Chapter 1
[Osho gives sannyas:]
Just raise your hands, close your eyes, and feel utterly open. These hands are the gestures of openness. Feel receptive, because sannyas has to be received; you cannot take it, you can only receive it. It is a gift: you can allow it to happen. There is no need to grab it. The only need is to give way, to let it happen.
Feel great energy showering on you, as if you are standing under a waterfall. Energy is splashing on you and the body starts swaying, the body starts feeling drunk. Go into it, and if something starts happening in the body, allow it.
Tao is the name for that which cannot be named, a name for the nameless - just like god or dhamma or truth or logos. These are not really names, but human helplessness. We have to call it something, we have to address it. Tao is one of the most beautiful names given to the unknown, because it is utterly meaningless. God has become very meaningful, hence it has lost significance.
You can worship god, you cannot worship tao; there is no image. Even people who say that they believe in no image, that they believe only in god, they too worship, and in the worship an image arises automatically. You need not carve an image out of wood or stone: the image is carved out of your thought, it is part of your imagination. You may not worship a stone image, but the moment you say 'god' a subtle image arises in you: somebody sitting there on a golden throne, controlling the whole world, a very wise man with a white beard and all that, a father figure. But with'tao' no figure arises. That is the beauty of the name, that it simply gives you no clue. It gives you no excuse to go into imagination. It gives no help for you to become a worshipper.
That is the greatest name given to the unknown. It is significant because it is meaningless; it means nothing. All that can be put into it is that it means the way - not a way to any goal but just the way
things are. It gives you no idea of future, it has no future orientation; it simply says how things are, how things work. The river flows to the ocean: this is tao; the tree grows upwards: this is tao; the child becomes a young man and the young man becomes old and the old man dies: this is tao, the way things are.
All other words - god, dhamma, logos - create shoulds in the mind. This is the only word that does not create a should; it simply says, 'This is how things are.' It simply denotes reality, the facticity of it. It does not give you an ought, it does not say anything about how things should be; it has no shoulds. It does not say that trees should be like that, it does not say that the man should be like this; it simply says: This is how things are. To try otherwise is to be in misery. Should brings misery: that is the message of tao, a very rebellious message. Should takes you astray. The moment you think in terms of ideals, ideology, you are going astray. Then you are bringing some goals into your life, you are not listening to nature, you are trying to improve upon it. And it is utterly perfect; it cannot be improved, there is no way to improve upon it. One has simply to relax into it, one has to be one with it.
That is the meaning of the second word'sudas'; it means in a total let-go, in the service of tao, surrendered to tao, a perfect servant of tao with no private goals. Tao is the master and you are just a shadow. Sudas literally means a good servant, a good slave - good, because he has no ego, there is no resistance. He is not unwillingly a servant, he is willingly surrendered. Das means servant: unwilling, reluctant; sudas means a good servant: utterly happy, willing, surrendered.
Surrender to tao, surrender to nature, drop all shoulds.
That's my whole work here. If I can give you a tongue-tip taste of tao, my work is finished: just a little taste of tao, and then it grows on its own. The first taste is difficult; once you have tasted it just a little bit, then it is so powerful, so potential, it spreads all over your being. It overwhelms you, it takes you on the greatest journey of life; into nature, into reality, into things as they are, into tao.
[Osho gives sannyas:]
Close your eyes and feel full of light inside, as if a great light is arising from your belly and filling your whole body. If trembling arises, shaking, swaying, go with it. If your body wants to take some posture - if your hands start moving - allow it. Simply be possessed by this light, and wherever it takes you, go.
... Prem means love, mandakani means the stars, the river of the stars, the Milky Way - love, the Milky Way. And love is the Milky Way. It walks on earth but it doesn't belong to us, it belongs to the sky. And it is starry; all else is darkness except love. Only love has light in it, only love is luminous.
When you are in love there is light and life: when love disappears there is darkness, utter darkness.
Hell is the space where love does not exist; heaven is the space where only love exists and nothing else. These are the names of spaces within our being.
Love opens doors to the whole Milky Way. Love is the bridge between earth and heaven, between man and god. Let love be your only law; there is no higher truth. If a man can love, then nothing else is needed; that will transform.
But a few things to be kept in mind about love. Love should not be a demanding love; otherwise it loses wings, it cannot fly. It becomes rooted in the earth, becomes very earthly; then it is lust and it brings great misery and great suffering. Love should not be conditional, one should not expect anything out of it.It should be for its own sake - not for any reward, not for any result. If there is some motive in it, again, your love cannot become the sky. It is confined to the motive; the motive becomes its definition, its boundary. Unmotivated love has no boundary: it is pure elation, exuberance, it is the fragrance of the heart.
And because there is no desire for any result, it does not mean that results do not happen; they do, they happen a thousandfold more, because whatsoever we give to the world, it comes back, it rebounds. The world is an echoing place: if we throw anger, anger comes back; if we give love, love comes back. But that is a natural phenomenon, one need not think about it. One can trust: it happens on its own. This is the law of karma: whatsoever you sow, you reap; whatsoever you give, you get. So there is no need to think about it, it is automatic. Hate, and you will be hated. Love, and you will be loved.
And the third thing: let love become more and more conscious. When it is unconscious it remains entangled with sexuality. Nothing is wrong in sexuality but that is the lowest form of love, the first rung of the ladder. It is good in itself but to remain confined to it is not to grow: there are higher rungs in the ladder. The ladder reaches to the ultimate and sex is the first rung. Use it to go beyond it.
Love should be more conscious. When it is conscious it is less sexual. I am not saying that there will be no sex: sex will be there but it will not be sexual. It will be pure sensuality; that is a totally different phenomenon. It will be sheer joy, sensitivity, but there will be no sexual mind behind it. You will not be thinking about sex, there will be no cerebral sex in it no head sex in it. It will be a simple sharing of energies. So these three things to be remembered; then love, slowly slowly, becomes light.
The English word 'light' is very very significant. It has two meanings: one is light, luminosity; another is weightlessness. Those two meanings don't seem to be joined at all but they have a subtle connection. When one becomes full of light, one becomes weightless; one can fly, one has wings.
[Osho gives sannyas to the leader and founder of the Action Analysis commune groups.]
Mm mm, so now that group has to be turned towards me, because they are on the right lines but something is missing. Unless that something happens, the temple will remain empty. The temple is ready but still empty. Something at the centre of the temple has to be installed; something bigger than life, higher than life: something transcendental. Life takes on meaning only when the transcendental is reflected in it; otherwise sooner or later all joys of life turn sour. And it is good to enjoy life, but soon you will find you are bored with it.
This age is on the brink of boredom, and the reason is that this is the first time in history that man is enjoying many things. In the past, people were kept starved so they were never fed up. They were always desiring and desiring and hoping and hoping. But this century has given you all that is possible, and once you see all those things, suddenly you feel empty. There is no more to it; what to do? This emptiness is great if man can rise a little upwards.
I have been watching the AA commune's work and I am perfectly happy; something good is on the way. But it is only the first step, and without the second step the whole effort will fizzle out. So meditate here, try to understand me and then take the message to your people!
[Another sannyasin says: I feel such a difference when I see you and when I hear your voice on cassettes. When I see you, critical attitudes always come up in me.]
Mm mm, that is there. That is your chief characteristic, and the day you drop it will be a day of great transformation. With the disappearance of that critical attitude your ego will disappear. That critical attitude is harming you. It is not harming me, because I am beyond harm; you can have any attitude, that makes no difference, but it will go on wounding you. It is suicidal, and because of it you will not be able to be benefited by me and by my presence. It will always be there, like a subtle wall around you. And you cannot gain anything out of it; it is just a habit.
I am not saying that a critical attitude is always harmful. If you are working on a scientific project it is not harmful; it is the only way to work. A critical mind is an absolute necessity if you are working on a scientific project. But the critical mind is an absolute barrier if you are trying to reach your own interiority, subjectivity. With the objective world it is perfectly okay. Without it there is no science; with it there is no religion. This has to be understood: when one is working objectively one has to be capable of using it, and when one is working subjectively one has to be capable of putting it aside.
It should be used as a means. It should not become an idee fixe; you should be able to use it or not, you should be free.
There is no possibility of going into the inner world with a critical mind. Doubt is a barrier, just as trust is a barrier in science. A man of trust will not go very far in science, cannot go at all. That's why in the days when religion was predominant in the world it remained unscientific. It is in only three hundred years that science progressed. For near about five thousands years there was no science.
Religion was so predominant that people were accustomed to trusting. And the conflict that arose between the church and science was not accidental; it was very fundamental. It was not really a conflict between science and religion; it was a conflict between two different dimensions of being:
the objective and the subjective. Their workings are different.
So it is up to you. You can keep it; if you feel that it is somehow beneficial, you can keep it, you can enjoy it, there is no trouble about it. I can give you a thousand and one chances to be critical, I can provide all kinds of opportunities for you to be critical; but that will be suicidal to you.
You have to look at it, watch it, observe it. And it will be good if you do a few groups here. First participate in a few groups and then lead some. When you start feeling trust arising you can lead a few groups, and that will be very helpful.
[The sannyasin, who is a director of a growth centre in the west, says: I have a process that I developed.... I call it Prema. I don't feel much prema. I would like to feel prema so I hope, with your guidance, I will be able to feel it.]
Mm mm. My guidance is there if you can take it. That's the problem, that is the crunch! I am ready to give; I am giving, whether you take it or not. If you can take it, it will be possible.
It almost always happens that when you are missing something you start thinking about it, you start creating a philosophy about it. Love is that which you are missing so you have created a process you call Prema, a love process. This is my observation, that people who have not loved write books about love; that is a kind of substitute. People who have not been able to love, write poetry, they write very great love poetry, but they don't have any experience of love so all their poetry is just speculation. They may have great flights of imagination but it has nothing to do with the reality of love. Love's reality is totally different; it has to be experienced.
Do a few groups.... By that time things will have changed; then you can lead a few groups. You will have the vision. Good!
[Another sannyasin says: I feel without any love. I feel like a stone and always just full of anger and hate and aggression. I don't love you and I don't love anyone.]
So it is perfectly good!
I'm not asking you to love me. There is no problem in it. If I ask you to love me and you don't, then there is a problem. I am not creating any problem for you. This is the way you are! Accept it; what else can you do? Just relax into it. You are a stone, so you are a stone. Stones are also very precious.
Yes, precious stones are cold, even diamonds are cold. But what can you do? The stone cannot suddenly take a jump and become a flower; the stone will remain a stone. You can enjoy being a stone or you can be miserable being a stone, but the stone will remain a stone. And I don't see that there are any problems: a few stones are needed. The world has variety. All are not needed to be the same; this is how it is rich. And you are a beautiful stone, so there is nothing to worry about. If energies change on their own some day, good. If they don't change, then why waste time in thinking about impossible ideas? Enjoy it! Mm? And you can enjoy it.
You are always asking me to give you some idea so that you can start fighting with yourself; and that I am not going to do. You ask from this angle and then from that, but it is the same thing. What you are asking is for me to support some idea in you so that you can start fighting with yourself. You cannot remain without fight: you want to create some conflict, you want to create misery for yourself, and I'm not going to help you do that. I want you to be happy, and the only way to be happy is to be yourself as you are. Unhappiness comes when you start trying to be somebody else. So what is wrong in being cold? Hot people need a few cold people; it brings balance! (chuckling) Otherwise hot people will just burn up. Who will cool them?
There is no need to think about these things: that you don't love me or you don't love anybody. So what? It's perfectly good! Enjoy this, that you don't love anybody. This is very good, because you will not be in trouble. Love brings trouble: the more you love, the more trouble - anxiety and anguish, the fear of rejection and this and that. You are completely beyond all that: nobody can reject you because you don't love at all. You are finished with the world. You are a real sannyasin!
[The sannyasin answers: But I miss love... I miss it!]
So miss it; what can be done about it? Or find somebody who is even colder than you. One thing has to be settled, that you are whatsoever you are and there is no way to be otherwise. The day
you see this all misery will disappear. In that very seeing great bliss will arise in you, and maybe then love will become possible and you warm up. Nobody knows. But you cannot do it, it can only happen. It will be a gift from god, not something manipulated by you.
So just wait, and meanwhile, enjoy! Whatsoever you can do, do and enjoy. I see that you can enjoy it perfectly.
This idea also that you need love, this and that, comes from seeing other people. It is not really your idea; you are seeing that somebody is being loved and somebody is holding hands and hugging and they are in such love, and you feel you are missing, you must be missing something.
This is just your inference. It is not your deepest urge, because I don't see the urge anywhere. You are a born nun!...
Yes! And to be a born nun is something beautiful. When somebody tries and becomes a nun it is ugly, it is perversion.
[A seeker asks: Please help me die.]
I am ready to help - you are obstructing it. Become a sannyasin. Close your eyes.
Look into my eyes and have a tongue-tip taste of tao!
Deva means divine, amrita means immortality. Mrita means mortality, amrita means immortality.
The English word 'mortality' comes from the same Sanskrit root; immortality, morte, mortem, post- mortem, mortality, immortality, all come from the same root mrita. Mrita means death; amrita means deathlessness. The only way to attain to deathlessness is to die, to die as far as the ego is concerned. To die in the ego is to be born in god. To die as an individual is to live forever in the universal. To die as a drop is to become the ocean.
You are very close to the point where it can happen: just great courage is needed. Every person comes around this corner many times in life, because life moves in a circle and again and again we come to the same point, but because of lack of courage we escape from that point. Otherwise the ego is a falsity. In fact, to let it die should be the easiest thing and to keep it alive should be the hardest thing, but we keep it alive and we think it is easier. But it is a dream; it is just an idea, it has no facticity behind it.
'I' is an empty word: there is no one behind it. The deeper you search, the more you will know that there is nobody behind it, there is no substance in it. But we cling to it, and by our clinging we give life to it. Let me say it in this way: the less you live, the more alive the ego becomes; the more you live, the less the ego lives. When you live totally, the ego disappears. When the ego lives totally, you disappear.
And there are moments, a few moments, far and few between, when sometimes it disappears because you are in such a total drunkenness. In love it sometimes happens; in orgasm it sometimes happens. In deep orgasm your history disappears, your past goes on receding, receding, and disappears. You don't have any history in orgasm,, you don't have any past, you don't have any
mind, you don't have any autobiography. You are utterly herenow. You don't know who you are, you don't have any identity. In that moment the ego is not functioning, and hence the joy of orgasm, hence the refreshing quality of it, the rejuvenation of it. That's why it leaves you so silent, so quiet, so relaxed, so fulfilled. But again the ego comes in, the past enters, encroaches on the present.
Again history starts functioning and you stop functioning. The ego is your history, it is not a reality.
And this is your enemy, the ego is the enemy.
I will help the ego to die. you just have to be courageous, because whenever those moments come on feels scared, one feels as if one is being absorbed into some abysmal, unknown phenomenon.
One shrinks back, one starts clutching at anything. It is there for just a moment and then the opportunity is gone and may not happen again for many days, for many months, for many years, or sometimes for many lives.
Now let this sannyas become a great occasion for it. If you co-operate with me, it is going to happen.
You are ready, I am ready: don't escape!