When Wisdom can Dance Laugh Enjoy the Ordinary Only then it is

[A mother brings her five-day-old baby to take sannyas.]

Deva means divine, and seva means service; in the divine service. And the whole responsibility lies with you, because a child cannot take the responsibility of sannyas. So a few things to be remembered....

One is - give her as much freedom as possible, because finally sannyas is absolute freedom, so give her the taste of freedom. Don't try to make her obedient. Allow her rebelliousness - in fact, help her to be rebellious. If parents help their children to be rebellious, the world will be totally revolutionary. And that revolution will not be political. It will not be a revolution that happens once and then stops; it will be a permanent revolution - because each generation will bring it again onto new altitudes of being and new spheres of consciousness. New spaces will always be opening.

Man has been killed because of obedience. Too much obedience means that you are poisoning the child. It is difficult for the parents to have a disobedient child, but the difficulty arises because you require obedience from the child. Once you allow it, suddenly there is no difficulty. You are happy because the child is disobedient. And because you are happy, the disobedience can never be des-tructive, because there is nothing for the child to react to.

The children become disobedient because you force obedience on them. So mediocre children surrender. If the child has some energy, some intelligence, he rebels. If you allow disobedience and the child lives in the climate of freedom, he will not disobey you. This is the paradox: if you force obedience, there is a possibility that he may disobey, or he may become dull - both are dangerous.

If he becomes dull, he becomes dead. He will miss the whole of life. He will live in a sort of stupor.

Or if he becomes reactive, and whatsoever you say, he denies, then too there is danger - he may move to the other extreme. Balance is what is needed.

When you bring up children in a climate of freedom, there is no need for the child to become stupid, and there is no need for the child to become reactionary. Then out of the child's growing consciousness, a sort of discipline arises which is not enforced from the outside... which arises from within him, from his own core of being.

So give as much freedom as possible - one thing - and she will turn into a great sannyasin.

And the second thing - give as much love as you can... and it is never too much! So never be miserly about love. The whole world is suffering because the mothers have been too miserly... they have not loved. They talk about love, but they have not loved. Their love is just lukewarm - it is not passionate.

Maybe they fulfill a social formality. They have to do certain duties so they do them, but it has no passion in it. When love has no passion, it is of no use - it freezes the soul of the child. So love passionately. God is born to you! New life has entered through you! Be grateful, be thankful - your prayers have been heard.

Love as much as you can, and never be worried that too much can spoil. Love is never too much, and love has never spoiled anybody. What spoils is not exactly too much love.... Sometimes it appears as if too much love has spoiled a child; it is not really love that has spoiled - the parents never loved the child, and then they overcompensated.

The mother feels no love for the child, so she brings too many toys to overcompensate. The mother does not love the child, but then she goes on giving cookies and ice cream, mm? just to compensate.

She yields to any nonsense of the child because she feels guilty that she has not loved. If you really love the child, you never overcompensate - there is not need: you are never guilty.

If you really love the child, there are moments when you can say a strict 'no' and the child will understand. If you love the child, you can be hard too, and the child will understand. If you don't love the child, you always have to be polite and soft. That spoils. It is cunningness - that compensation, it is not love.

So these three things: First, give as much freedom as possible; second, give as much love as possible; and third, never give any ideology, never give your ideas.

Let the child be acquainted with everything that is possible - your ideas included - but only acquainted. No need for the child to follow your ideas. Just tell the child to choose on his own.

If these three things, simple things, can be followed... and you will have to, mm? because I cannot make the child right now responsible. Until the child is grown-up, you have to fulfill this requirement.

And if you can, you will be happy, and the child will be too.

Anand means bliss, and sudheera means wise, wisdom; blissful wisdom. And I make it a condition:

if wisdom becomes serious, loses the quality of joy, it is worthless... it is dead. When wisdom is happy, bubbling with joy, when wisdom can laugh, when wisdom can dance, when wisdom can enjoy the small, ordinary things of life, then only is it alive and real and authentic. So remember that.

There is a tendency in humanity to either remain foolish, ignorant... then people are very happy.

Their happiness is superficial. Deep down there is turmoil, but they can laugh. When these same people become interested in religion, spirituality, they become very serious. Now their seriousness has a depth, but it loses laughter. Again they become lop-sided.

Somewhere a deep synthesis is needed where you can be ordinary and extraordinary together...

when you can enjoy the very ordinary life with extraordinary wisdom... when you can be even foolish sometimes.

A real wiseman is capable of being foolish too. If a wiseman cannot be foolish, he is not relaxed, he is very tense. If a wiseman cannot sometimes be like a small child, he has not yet attained. Then it is knowledgability, but not wisdom. He is pretending. He may have come to accumulate much knowledge, but deep down he remains the same. He is afraid... still afraid!

The real wise person is always childish. He can have fun and he can laugh. A real wiseman always has an ingredient of foolishness in him.

So remember that, mm? Wise you have to become, but you are not to lose laughter, and you are not to lose joy and delight - not at the cost of laughter!

Nijananda means the one whose bliss is infinite. Nij means one's own self, and ananda means bliss.

There are two types of people in the world: one, who will find god through relationship. He will need somebody else as a mirror, and the relationship will function as a mirror - what the Jungians call the extrovert. And then there is another type who will find his mirror in himself; he has no need for any relationship. Not that he has to avoid relationship, not that he has to escape from relationship, but there is no necessity for relationship. He can close his eyes and find himself. He is what jungians call the introvert.

You are the second type. You can simply close your eyes and be in yourself; there is no need for anywhere to go. Just dropping inside your own being you will come to know all that is needed to know.

I'm not saying avoid relationship - I am never against relationship - but relationship will not be the door to self-realisation for you. Or we can say in other words: there is one type who moves through love - love needs the other - and the other type moves -through meditation. Meditation doesn't need the other... and you are the meditative type.

Once you know it, things become very much easier. And that is the function of the master: to see exactly where you are - because your journey will start from there - and to say exactly where you can go, what your potentiality is. Otherwise much energy is wasted in doing this and that... moving from this path to that path. Once you certainly know that this is how you are, then things start happening and everything falls in line.

So remember this: walk - remain centred; talk - but remain centred; eat - but remain centred. Move slowly, walk slowly, eat slowly, so that you can constantly remember yourself. Remain witness of each act that you are doing.... And that is going to be your sadhana - to become more and more aware.

Nikhil means the whole existence, the total existence, the total, and prem means love; love for the total.

Never be satisfied by the part. Go on moving towards the total, the huge, the enormous. Existence is vast, and we have become satisfied with very small things.

Somebody is satisfied with a small bank account - mm? Just look at the stars, and look at the universe - and somebody is satisfied with his bank account! Is there any possibility of being a more stupid man? Or somebody is satisfied by just becoming a little famous.... This earth is very mediocre. Even if you become famous to the whole world, the whole humanity knows you well and your name becomes a household name, still this earth is very small! The sun is sixty thousand times bigger than the earth, and the sun itself is a very mediocre star. A million times bigger stars are there, so what is the point of it all?

Never be satisfied with that small, otherwise you will be imprisoned in the small. Always look at the boundless - because only with the boundless is there freedom. Look at the vast. It terrifies, it makes people afraid. That's why people go on looking at the earth - they don't look at the sky! It is scary because it is so vast! And in that vastness we are nobodies.

If you look at the vast you are a non-entity, so you stop looking at the vast. You start looking only at the non-entities, and in comparison with them you are bigger, and this and that - richer, more intelligent, more educated, more powerful....

I would like you to watch the vast. When you are near the ocean, just sit, and just see the vastness of the ocean. Or just lie down and look at the stars in the sky - at the sun, at the moon.... Become more and more in tune with it, and that vastness will turn you on! It will take you to far away stars.

Let that be your meditation.

What have you been doing in brazil?

[The new sannyasin answers: I'm working as a gardener.]

You like gardening? That's very good - that will go with your new name. It is better to be with trees than with man, because trees have never been as ugly, as mean. They have not produced a single adolf hitler, no vietnam. Trees are still pure. Gardening is fantastic. To be with nature is very very good. That is very close to god. Only one step more... and nature can become the stepping stone.

If a person works with mechanical things, by and by he is reduced to a mechanism himself, because it is very difficult to remain aloof from your work - you become more and more identified with it. A person continuously working with a machine is keeping very bad company.

Machines are not going to become men, but the man is bound to become a machine. When you are with nature, it is better. Something more is possible.

And you have to work for me - brazil needs me. Much response is there... just a little groundwork, mm?

[To a seeker taking sannyas, Osho says:]

... forget the old name completely, mm? Drop it from the consciousness as if it never belonged to you. Be completely new from this moment... just a blank paper, so I can write something on it. I can make you a beautiful scripture, but the old writing has to be washed away.

And it is very simple - just a decision is enough. Once you decide consciously, 'I drop the past,' it drops. Not that you have to do anything else - just an intense desire to drop it is enough, and then you become available for the future, for the present.

Deva rajen. It means divine king. And that's how I look at everybody. Everybody is god-incarnate...

maybe incognito, maybe hiding, maybe not saying so to everybody, maybe himself having forgotten - but that's how everybody is: a divine king. That is the meaning of jesus when he goes on saying, 'The kingdom of god is within you.'

So I declare you a divine king. Now it is up to you to remember it or to forget it. If you remember, soon it will become very very natural, because it is your nature; you just have to claim it.