Just have a Taste of Ignorance and You will have a Taste of Me

Veet means beyond, and prateeka means symbol; beyond the symbol or beyond the symbolical.

And it has to be understood. Ordinarily people live through the symbol, they have forgotten the real.

They cling to the symbol, so much so that the symbol becomes the barrier to the real.

For example, rather than being religious, a person becomes a christian. Rather than being religious, he becomes a hindu. Now he is clinging to the symbol. Rather than loving people, a person starts thinking that he loves humanity. Now wherever you go, you will always find human beings - never humanity! Humanity is a symbol.

One has to learn to love the real. The symbol is unreal. Humanity exists not - only human beings.

But the mind can play the game. The mind can say, 'I love humanity'... and this can become a trick to avoid loving human beings. You can hate human beings in the name of humanity. You can hate the real, and protect your-self in the symbol.

People can go to war for symbolic reasons. Somebody has insulted your flag: you can go to war, you can kill people, and you can be killed! And the reason is simply absurd - a piece of cloth is your flag; somebody has insulted it.

So the symbolic becomes so important to people that the real is completely lost contact with. This is a sort of neurosis. A neurotic is a person for whom reality has completely disappeared and the symbolic has become the real. The symbolic and the real have become synonymous. It happens for certain reasons....

For example, a child is born and the mother cannot give as much love as the child needs because the mother herself is neurotic. She has never loved anybody, and she has never been loved by anybody really. She pretends that she loves the child, and to pretend she will start symbolically loving the child. For example, she will force the child to eat more. Rather than feeding the child with her warmth, rather than fulfilling the child by her love, food will become the substitute. Now food will be symbolic.

The child has grown up - the father cannot love the child, because he has never loved. He does not know in fact what love means at all... he does not know what love is. He cannot give love, but he can give money. So he will go on giving the money to the child and he will say, 'Look how much I love you!'

Money is symbolic, food is symbolic, and the reality is denied. When the child becomes a grown-up person, he will be mad after money. Money is a symbol - it has nothing real in it - but he will be mad after money, because he will think, 'The more money you have, the more love you get. The more money you possess, the more you will be loved.' So he will become greedy. He will forget all about love, all about life. He will live a neurotic life of greed, and will accumulate money and will die accumulating it. Now the symbolic drove him crazy.

I am giving you this name so that you can remember it. This is one of the basic problems of humanity.

The world 'god' has become more important than god himself. The word god is not god. The statue in the temple is not god, neither is the temple a real thing; it is all symbolic - but that has become more important.

Christians can kill Mohammedans, Mohammedans can kill Christians - in the name of god! Now can anything be more foolish? - in the name of god, killing god's people.... But the word 'god' is more important.

The Bible is more important, not what is in it. The message is not important. It is as if the container has become more important, and the content has lost all meaning. The Bible says, 'Love your enemies.' If somebody insults the Bible, you will kill him, because he has insulted it.

So I give you this name so it becomes a reminder to you to never be befogged too much by the symbolical. Yes, it has to be used... it is utilitarian. You have to carry a passport, and on the passport is your citizenship - that you belong to england. I'm not saying throw the passport, but it is symbolical. England or india or christianity are all symbols. Useful - use them, but never forget the real. Always remember the real.

This is the meaning of your name: veet prateeka. And the more and more you go beyond the symbolical, the more and more you will become happy and blissful... more and more you will become alive - because life is with the real! With the symbol, it is only dream, and that too not very sweet - in fact, a nightmare.

Prem means love, and sumitra means friendship. And this is going to be your path - path of love and friendship. So shower the whole world with love and friendship. Nothing else is needed. Once you start feeling compassion and love and friendship, you will start flowering.

Ordinarily we have not been taught to be friendly - notwithstanding what the priests and the politicians go on saying. We have been taught to struggle, to compete - and how can friendship exist with a competitive mind? How can friendship exist when you are ambitious?

So the priests and the politicians go on talking about friendship - and only enmity exists in the world. Only enmity can exist if you teach competition, ambition. So everybody goes on pretending friendship, and deep down everybody is antagonistic to everybody else.

How can you feel friendly with a person who is a competitor with you in the world? If thirty boys are in a class and all the boys are trying to come first in the class, how can they be friendly? They are potential enemies; friendship will be a pretension.

So when I say, 'Be friendly,' I mean drop all competition, drop all ambition... it is futile. And life is not a struggle. Darwin is absolutely wrong to say that it is a violent struggle... that only the fittest survive.

Even if you die loving people, even if you die loving existence, it is good. In your death there will be immortality. Even if you survive, hating, fighting, struggling, your life will be worse than death.

God is revealed only through friendship. So let this become your climate. To drop ambition just a little conscious effort is needed. And now is the time. For small children maybe it is difficult to drop ambition, but you can drop it now. Now there is no need to carry the hang-up. You can drop competition, you can drop enmity. You can simply be a friend - and not to anybody in parti-cular, but to everybody is general.

Even when you are sitting alone and there is nobody, remain friendly. Mm? It is a state - what I am talking about - not a relationship. If you sit on your chair, be friendly to the chair. Be friendly to your own body. Be friendly to the food you are eating. Be friendly to the clothes you are wearing. Just be friendly, and don't lose any opportunity to be friendly. In the beginning it may even look a little crazy, because whatsoever we call sanity is almost madness, so when you start becoming sane, it looks crazy!

And meditation will be very very easy if you can create this climate of friendship. Start from this very moment - and it will be possible, because I can see it is there, mm? It just has to be allowed.

Deva means divine and rajendra means king; a divine king. And that's how I see everybody - as a divine king, as a divine queen. And if we are beggars, only we are responsible, nobody else. We are meant to be divine queens and kings, and nothing less than that is ever going to satisfy you. But we have been brought up in such a way, and conditioned in such a way, that we start life as a beggar.

My whole teaching is that you can start being a king from this very moment. If you start enjoying life, you become a king. It has nothing to do with money or kingdom. It has nothing to do with power over people. And if somebody waits to enjoy life only when he has so much money, and so much power, and such a big kingdom, then he is never going to enjoy. He will die a beggar.

[Osho told the story of alexander the great, meeting the mystic, Diogenes. Alexander felt envious of Diogenes' obvious contentment with life, but said he first had to conquer the world before he could enjoy life like diogenes. See 'dance your way to god', wednesday august 19th where Osho recounts the story in full.]

When I say that everybody is a divine king or a queen, I mean you can just declare it this very moment, because no kingdom is needed for it. It is just a change... an inner change of consciousness.

Rather than preparing, you start celebrating - that's the only change there is.

Rather than preparing for tomorrow, you start living today.

Rather than sacrificing the present for the future, you forget all about future, and you dance the dance that is possible this very moment, herenow - and immediately you are a king.

And the kingdom is such that it cannot be taken away from you - that's why I call it a divine kingdom.

That's what Jesus means when he says again and again, 'The kingdom of god is within you,' He was not talking about the political - he was misunderstood. The Roman Emperor became afraid that he was talking about a kingdom... maybe he was after his kingdom! The priests became afraid - maybe he was after political power. He was not talking about politics at all.

So when I call you a king, I'm not talking about politics... not the kingdom of this world, because these kings are just beggars - rich beggars, maybe, but beggars all the same!

And by giving you sannyas I declare this. Now it is up to you to accept it and start living or not, but you are responsible. I don't say that you have to prepare for it. From this very moment start enjoying the simple things of life... and they are fantastic! Simple food, simple sleep, simple love... the stars and the moon and the trees... the wind passing through the trees, and the sound of the water...

children laughing, and a small girl giggling - all is tremendously beautiful. Just start enjoying....

[A sannyasin, returning to the west to run a centre, says: Osho, life has become a meditation.

And I find doing chaotic and any other meditations is an escape for me. I've been rolfed, and the feeling has been there ever since i've been rolfed.... So how to run a centre when I don't do the meditations?]

No, you can.

... Perfectly okay, because meditation is not the goal. If life becomes your meditation, there is no need for any meditation. Meditation is needed because people are not ready to make their whole life a meditation, so they devote at least one hour to meditation. It is good to begin with. Later on more and more life will become involved in it. One day suddenly the life becomes meditative; then there is no need. Very good - if life has become meditation. That's what I would like to happen to everybody.

Meditation is perfect when you can drop it - that is the criterion. When the need disappears, then the meditation is fulfilled. So you simply love your life, live your life. And now this centre will be your meditation - help people, mm? And here also, just enjoy - don't force! There is no need to force.

If you enjoy, do whatsoever meditations you enjoy. Just dance, listen, mm? Just be here and float.

You have to do much work for me there....