The Deeper you go into Feeling the Deeper you Understand the

Anand means bliss and bhavana means feeling; feeling of bliss. And it has to be remembered that bliss is not a thought, but a feeling. It has nothing to do with the head - it has something to do with your totality. And one thing more - feeling is not sentimentalism. Thinking is in the head, sentiments are in the heart, but neither way are you total. In totality, every fibre of your being is involved, every cell of your being becomes infused. Feeling is of the total, and bliss is also of the total. So remember that.

And whenever you can relax into totality, never miss the opportunity. Watching a sunset, or just holding the hand of your friend, or listening to the music - wherever you can be total, just be total, and out of that totality is enlightenment.

Anand means bliss, neerajam means a cloud; a cloud of bliss. And that's exactly how bliss is... a very nebulous thing - like a cloud... indefinable, and continuously changing. It is neither temporary nor permanent.

The flower is temporary. In the morning it was there, in the evening it is gone... momentary. The rock is more permanent. It was there for centuries, it will be there for centuries. The himalayas are permanent. The flower comes and goes temporarily.

Bliss is neither - neither temporary nor permanent - because the permanent is nothing but an extension of the temporary. Even one day the himalayas will disappear, so howsoever long they are GOD there, they are not eternal. They stay longer - the difference is relative; the difference is not really there.

The flower stays for one day and the himalayas will stay for millions of years, but that makes no difference - both are temporal. The day of the himalayas is longer, the day of the flower is shorter.

Bliss is neither temporal, temporary, momentary, nor permanent. It is eternal. But it is not dead... it is very very alive. It is life itself, so it is not static - it is dynamic. It goes on changing. That is the paradox of bliss: it is eternal and yet changing - each moment new and yet always the old. In a way it has always been, in a way every moment you will feel ecstatic, excited. Every moment you will be surprised by it. So it is very nebulous, it cannot be categorised: momentary or permanent.

It is neither like pain nor like pleasure. It has something of pain and something of pleasure too, but it transcends both. It is like pleasure, but not absolutely like it. It is like it in the sense that it has joy in it, but it has not that heated excitement of pleasure - that feverishness is not there. It is very cool - as cool as pain.

It has something of pain in it, because it is as deep as pain. Pleasure remains always shallow, on the surface. So a person who always moves from pleasure to pleasure becomes a very shallow man. His laughter is hollow. You can see that it is just on the surface, just a white-wash. Deep inside he is completely dead.

Pain makes you more aware because it goes deeper... it penetrates you. Suffering cleanses and gives depth. So a man who has missed all suffering is not really a man, because he will not have any spine. He will not have any backbone. He will be just a hollow man, stuffed with straw. He will not have any soul. Suffering gives soul, depth.

So that part of suffering is there in bliss. It is joyful, and yet deep - as deep as pain and as joyful as pleasure. But it cannot be categorised, because we know only two categories: pain and pleasure, good and bad, day and night, temporary and permanent; we know only two categories. It is beyond categories - that's why it is nebulous, and why I call it a cloud.

Start feeling this cloud around you. Sitting silently, feel a cloud surrounding you. Relax into that cloud, and after a few days you will feel that it has become a reality. Because it is there; it is just that you have not felt it yet. It is there. Everybody lives in a cloud of bliss - one has just to recognise it, that's all. We are born with it. It is our aura, it is our very intrinsic nature. I can see it around you, but you have not yet taken note of it.

So just sit silently sometimes, relaxed, and feel that you are losing yourself in a cloud that surrounds you... constantly changing, and yet remaining with you. And as you start losing yourself, you will feel more and more blissful. There will be some rare moments when you are completely lost and the cloud is and you are not. Those are the moments of satori, samadhi - first glimpses... far away glimpses, but yet of the truth.

The real journey starts when the first satori happens. When you have had a first glimpse, trust arises. Then you are no more groping in the dark, you know now. You yourself know that it exists.

Now it is not taken from some authority - not that Osho says, not that Buddha says, not that Christ says. Now you have also become a witness to it. It is!

GOD It is your own experience - of course, very atomic, seed-like, but that is nothing to be worried about.

Once the seed is there, the tree will be coming.

Bhava means feeling and sagara means oceanic; oceanic feeling. And that's the nature of feeling.

Feeling is never individual. Thought is individual - feeling is universal, feeling is cosmic. So the deeper you go into your feeling, the deeper you understand the language of god. If you understand the language of feeling - your own feeling - you will be able to understand the feeling of the animals, the trees, the stars. The deeper you go into feeling, the deeper you move into the very language of existence itself. Feeling is the universal language, and it is oceanic.

When you are moving into feeling, you lose boundaries. You are no more defined. You don't know who you are. When there is real laughter arising in your being, that laughter takes total possession - you are lost in it. Later on you may say, 'I laughed,' but when you were laughing there was no 'I'. If there is the 'I', laughter is not total.

When you are crying - really crying, and the tears come out of your feeling heart - you are not there.

Later on the mind will say, 'I cried'; this is a retrospective thought. The mind looks back, remembers and thinks, 'I did it,' because the mind is always thinking that it is the doer of everything that happens.

But when you were really crying there was no mind and there was no 'I' - there was only crying. You were not separate from it... you were one with it... you were lost in it. That's why I call it oceanic. It has no bank - it is infinite.

And this is what I would like you to move into, to dig into. Cry, and forget yourself; laugh, and forget yourself; dance, and forget yourself; sing, and forget yourself.

So remember only one thing - that you have to forget more and more. Forgetfulness is the key for you....

[A sannyasin says he has been in body expression and pantomime groups.]

Pantomime also?... That's very good. That will be very helpful for you. I am going to start a school for pantomime. That's very good.. .because all these things can be used for deep meditation. So do a few groups here, mm?

If people can be taught to act, they can be a witness to anything. For example if you are simply acting - anything: you are acting sadness or laughter or anger - you can be a witness inside, because you are not really involved; a part of you will remain separate. When you are really in anger, you become involved so much that you lose the witness. But when you are acting, you are in it and at the same time you are not in it. You are pretending to be in it, and a part of you remains uninvolved like a watcher - and that part is the meditative part of your being. If one consciously learns techniques of acting, one can become a meditator very very easily.

Out of all the professions, acting comes closest to meditation, because, because of this inner mechanism, something of you remains aloof. And a person has to change so many faces so many times, that false faces become loose.

GOD In ordinary life, if you are a business man, you are a business man for forty, fifty years, sixty years.

The face becomes so fixed, and you never put it away. So you completely forget that this is not your face - that this is just a face that you have learned; it is a mask! A doctor remains a doctor.

[Osho recounted the story of how he used to stay with a high court judge and his family. One day the wife approached Osho and asked if he would speak with her husband, for he couldn't drop his role of being a high court judge - even in bed!]

An actor has to move into so many roles, and has to change so fast, that he cannot be identified with any mask. One day or other he starts wondering who really he is, and what is his face - what is his original face?

And I would like to start a small school here for pantomime and acting and drama and psychodrama so people can have a taste of changing their faces,-so masks become loose and you become aware that you are not your mask, you are something else - something far, far away. In fact you are faceless.

But, good... I can see that much is going to happen to you. You have come in the right moment....

You are in the right place.... and in the right time, because sometimes people come to the right place, but the time is not right.

When both the right place and right time meet, growth happens. Sometimes the place is right, but the time is not right. Sometimes the time is right, but the place is not right. And it is very rarely that you can find the right moment, the right place, the right master, the right technique. When all these things meet together - which is a miracle - then one simply grows in leaps and bounds.

And I open the door - you are going to grow very fast. Just take courage. Good!

Prem means love, subodha means awareness; awareness of love. Become more and more aware of love. Your heart is fast asleep - it has to be awakened. And once it is awake, you will be tremendously happy. Happiness is a function of love. Nothing else makes anybody happy except love... and almost everybody's heart is fast asleep. We have never been taught the ways of love.

We have been taught the ways of hate, because we have been conditioned to struggle, fight. You have been taught that the whole world is your enemy, and everybody is after your throat. Sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly, but this is the whole condition - that you are in a very antagonistic world, and you have to fight if you want to survive... and fight by any means - honest, dishonest. If you don't fight, you will be defeated; if you want to defend yourself, attack. This has been the whole conditioning of the mind. Hence, naturally, love has dropped out of existence.

The heart goes on throbbing like a physical mechanism, but it is no more a spiritual vehicle - which is what it is meant to be. It is not only a physical mechanism - it is also a spiritual vehicle. So when you start throbbing in love, only then are you really alive, fully alive.

So become more aware of it. And the more aware you become, the more and more loving you will feel. When you hold the hand of your friend, do it very alertly. See whether your hand is releasing GOD warmth or not. Otherwise you can hold the hand and there is no communication, no transfer of energy. In fact you can hold the hand and the hand can be completely cold and frozen. There is no vibration, no pulsation - energy is not streaming into the friend; then it is futile. It is an empty gesture, an impotent gesture.

So when you are holding the hand, watch deep inside whether energy is flowing or not, and help to direct the energy; bring the energy there; move the energy there. In the beginning it will be just an exercise in imagination, but energy follows imagination.

You can do it.... Sometimes just count your pulse and then imagine that the pulse is going higher and faster for ten minutes and then count again, and you will see that it has gone faster. Or imagine that it is getting slower and slower and slower. Just imagine it - and within ten minutes it will have become slower. Take the temperature of the body, and for ten minutes sit silently and feel that the temperature is going higher, and you will see the temperature has gone higher, or the otherwise.

Imagination creates the root... it channelises energy.

So when you hold the hand, hold consciously, and imagine that the energy is moving there, and the hand is becoming warmer and welcoming, and you will see a tremendous change happening. When you look at somebody, look with eyes of love, because other-wise the physical eyes are just stones.

They are very cold... they have no welcome in them.

I have heard about a miser. A man came to ask for money for some charity, and the miser said, 'I will give something if you can tell me one thing - which of my eyes is false?' The miser said, 'One eye is false, one is real; if you can tell me which one is the false, I will give you something.'

The man looked at him and he said, 'Your left eye seems to be false.'

The miser was surprised. He said, 'How could you come to know it? I have never told anybody. How did you judge it?'

He said, 'Because I can see some feeling in the left eye - it must be false. The right eye is your true eye - there is no feeling in it.'

When you look at people, pour love through the eyes. When you walk, walk throwing love all around.

In the beginning it will just be imagination and within a month you will see it has become a reality.

And others will start feeling that you have now a warmer personality... that just to come close to you feels tremendously good - a well-being arises.

So this is to be your conscious effort - become more aware of love, and release more love.

[A visitor is afraid to take sannyas because: In getting to the centre of myself, I have to drop manners and habits that If eel are not mine any more.... And if I go deeper I get the idea that there's going to be nothing when I get to the centre. That is frightening.]

In a way you are right - at the centre there is nothing. But that nothing is the goal, and that nothing is blissful. That nothing is not just nothing. It is nothing - that's right - but it is not a negative state... it is a very positive presence. We call it nothing because all that you know will not be there, something GOD absolutely new is going to be there which you don't know anything about - so in a way it is nothing.

The mind cannot say what it is... for the mind it is a blank. The mind cannot comprehend it. But it is not a negative state; it is a very positive state.

You will not be there - that too is certain, because you are also part of the mind. You think that you have to drop habits - in fact, you are again nothing but a habit! It is not a question of your dropping the habits - you are the basic habit, and all other habits just cling around you.

Sannyas means you drop yourself. And I am not worried about small habits. They are nothing to be worried about. It you can drop the ego, then there is no need to drop anything else. And if you don't drop the ego, you can drop everything else but it is not going to help, because the ego is barring the path towards the centre, and the centre is absolutely empty.

So you are not going to find something there to cling to - there is nothing. You will disappear completely. At the centre, god is - you are not. It is a death and yet a beginning of a new life - crucifixion and resurrection both. So your fear is right, but because of the fear, don't stop!

Go in spite of the fear.... Because there is nothing to lose. Even if all is lost, there is nothing to lose, because you don't have anything in fact. What can one lose? This body is going to be lost one day. This mind is not reliable - it changes every moment. Death can come tomorrow or the next moment, so what is there to be lost? Everything is bound to go on its own accord, so why not try the adventure?

Before death comes, if you voluntarily die within yourself, you will come to know something which is deathless. And death is going to come anyway. But if you have known something death-less within you, then death comes and you remain untouched, you remain beyond.

I don't think that there is any reason to be afraid. Go into it... and I am with you.