Darshan 15 August 1976

Deva means divine and ayama means dimension, the divine dimension. And that is the goal. One has to move into the divine dimension by and by. So become less and less interested in things.

Become more interested in persons. Even while relating with things, relate to them as if you are relating with persons. Even if you take a book in your hand, take it with such respect that the book is no more a thing. You confer a personality on it. You eat food.... Eat with such reverence that food is not just food; it becomes a sacrament. Even the shoes should be used with tremendous respect. By and by you will be able to see even about things, that they are not just things. They are also people.

And just the contrary is happening in the world.

People are treating people as things. A husband tends to treat his wife as a thing, something to be used. The wife goes on treating the husband as a thing. This I call the materialist dimension - when you treat a person as a thing. When you start treating even things as persons, the dimension of the divine opens its door for you.

The dimension of the divine is nothing but a capacity to feel the presence of god everywhere, howsoever hidden. In a rock he may be fast asleep, but he is there. In a man he has come a little of age, has become more alert. In a buddha or a jesus he is totally alert, fully awake. But between a buddha and a rock there is a bridge. The rock can become a buddha one day. And one day buddha was also a rock.

Every sinner has a future and every saint has a past - and that is the bridge. So I give you this name, deva ayama, so you can start figuring out how to change from the materialist dimension towards the divine dimension. It is just a shift of consciousness. One need not escape from the world. But one needs to look into things so deeply that everything attains to a centre and becomes a shore.

So this is going to be your path. Treat every person with tremendous respect - even your child,

because he too is god's only begotten son. He is also a manifestation of the divine. In a thousand and one forms the same energy is manifested.

And when you start looking into others and you drop the materialist illusion about people and things, you will become capable of looking inwards more and more. Whatsoever you do to others, you will do to yourself. If you have a deep respect for people's souls, your own soul will come.

Prem means love and nadam means the subtlest sound; the sound of love. It is the most subtle sound. You can hear it only when you are very very receptive. The ears won't be of much help.

Unless your heart listens to it, you cannot listen. It is continuously present. The whole life is nothing but a vibrating love energy - Call it god, but basically it is a vibration of love energy.

You cannot find a man who is not, deep down, in need of love and who is not, deep down, in need of being needed for love. One may not be capable, but the desire exists. One may fail, but the urge exists. Love seems to be the most common phenomenon. The man may be foolish or wise, beautiful or ugly, black or white, a criminal or a saint, poor or rich, a beggar or an emperor - it makes no difference. Love seems to be the most characteristic quality of human beings.

We are created out of love, and our climax is going to be only through love. And this is not true only of human beings - it is true about the whole existence. First you have to understand human beings... their tremendous need of love, their tremendous urge to love. Then by and by you see the stars and the trees and the rocks - they are all vibrating with love.

Physicists say that it is electricity that is the substratum of reality. Religious people say it is love.

Electricity may be just a phenomenon of love energy. So this you have to seek and search for, and you have to vibrate with love. You have to become receptive to the love sound that is continuously happening all around.

Every bird that sings is singing for love. Every flower that opens is opening for love, and every eye is in search of love. Every heart beats for love. Love is the very meaning of life. If there is no love, life becomes meaningless.

When people start asking, 'What is the meaning of life?' that simply shows that they have not been able to find their love; hence the meaning is missing. Now there is no way to find it. If you cannot find it in love, then there is no other place to find it. Then you can go on searching, but it is in vain.

So feel more loving. Love people and allow others to love you. Don't create barriers. Whenever love knocks at your door, remember it is god who has knocked. Reject love and you have rejected god.

Welcome love and you have welcomed god.

God comes as love, flowers as love.

Deva means divine and yama means night; divine night. And night is going to help you tremendously - that's why I give you the name. Whatsoever is going to happen to you, will happen in the night. In the night you will feel more and more harmonious. So you have to be alert about it. Day is not your time - good, but not your time. Your time is the night.

So use the night more and more. Just be alone, sit silently, look into the darkness. Become one with the dark, disappear into it. Look at the stars - feel the distance, the silence, the emptiness, and use night for your meditation. Just sitting in the bed doing nothing... just feeling. Many people are completely unaware of the beauties of the night... and night is tremendously beautiful. It is the right time for meditation.

In yoga psychology we divide human consciousness into four stages. First we call the waking state of consciousness, the day consciousness. You work, and you appear a little alert. And the second we call the dream consciousness. You are asleep, but dreams are running like a procession. The whole mind is in a traffic jam. Then the third state we call sleep, when dreams have stopped. And the fourth, we simply call the fourth, but it is closest to sleep. It is just like sleep with only one difference, and that is that one is alert in it; that's the only difference. It is as silent, as deep as sleep, with just one plus - that one is alert. In sleep you are completely unconscious. In samadhi, the fourth state, you are absolutely silent, yet aware.

So night in the past has been used for meditation, for prayer. The day is too worldly - the night is very spiritual. So remember that, and start using the night more and more. By and by you will feel so tremendously in tune with night.... By and by the whole world goes to sleep. Everything stops; traffic stops, noises stop... the mundane world is over. People - their in consciousnesses, their criminal attitudes - have all disappeared into sleep. The atmosphere is absolutely clean... no jarring note.

The middle of the night is exactly the best time for meditation - for you at least. So just start enjoying the beauty of the night and feel more and more for the night. Wait hopefully every day - the night is coming. So become an owl, mm?

Do you have something to say?

[The new sannyasin said she had been married for ten years and could return to her husband, but on the other hand she felt she had started living a new life in the time she had been in india and wondered if going back to him would be a regressive step. She felt she used him for security, and felt the main thing that divided them was a different attitude about love. She felt he didn't love her, and up to recently felt negatively about his lover.

Osho asked if she was financially dependent or in need of her husband's financial support, to which she replied that she was not and could manage alone.]

Then I don't think that you should go back - no need. Never decide for security, otherwise you will always decide wrongly. Always decide for love, never for security, because security is just out of fear, and one cannot live only because one is secure. Then one feels life has no meaning. One cannot live by security alone. That's the meaning of 'One cannot live by bread alone.'

You need something more, something more ecstatic, to live. Security is too mundane - and many people decide for security. When you decide for security, you are deciding out of fear, and when you decide out of fear, you enhance fear, you feed fear. How can you be happy with fear? It is impossible. It is impossible to be happy with fear. It is impossible to be happy only with security. a person can be happy in a tremendous insecurity if there is love. who cares about security if there is love?

You have lived with this man for ten years and then you decided to leave. Now after two years, to go back is certainly a regression. So I think it is better that you decide not to move in the old pattern. First become so independent and so fully yourself that you are happy alone. Then only you can be happy with somebody else, never before. If you are unhappy alone, you will be unhappy - more unhappy than before - with somebody, because the presence of the other only enhances that which you already have, nothing more. It cannot give something new. It simply brings into focus whatsoever you have, so two unhappy persons meet, hoping that this togetherness will give them something. It gives more unhappiness; the unhappiness is multiplied. they reflect each other's unhappiness and it becomes too much. That's what is driving the whole world crazy.

As I see it, you should simply decide to be yourself. I am not saying that the doors are closed, but decide to be yourself and if sometimes this man comes, never start the old life again - not in a continuity. There is a possibility that he has changed; there is a possibility that you have changed.

Your being together may not be an unhappy affair as it was before. Man is unpredictable. But that has to be restarted. Do you follow me? It should not be a continuity with the past.

And you are a new woman now. If he falls in love, he will be falling in love with one of my sannyasins.

But close it. It is always good to dose accounts with the past and again start afresh. And he may have started understanding more. You have changed; you may start understanding more. In fact it is almost always so. People start understanding by the time they are too old to fall in love again.

George bernard shaw used to say, 'God cannot be very wise because he goes on wasting youth on young people.' Youth should be given to old people when they have become understanding and they know what love is, and they know how they have destroyed their own love... when they know how to live with another person; they know how to be harmonious and not to create a discord. But by the time a person comes to know, life is gone.

But you are still full of energy so there is no need to think in terms of security, no need. So simply tell him that you would like to be free. And when you go back, meet him, but meet him as you meet anybody else. Maybe it is going to start again, but if it does, it starts from abc - or if it is not going to start, good. The world is so full of so many beautiful people, why be worried? You can fall in love with somebody else.

One should never betray love. One should always remain capable of love - that's the only thing.

With whom it happens is accidental. If you are in india, you eat the indian food. If you are in china, you eat the chinese food. But hunger is essential. Food is accidental - love is essential. Love is like hunger.

So keep deep trust in your love and remain insecure. Insecurity has its own wisdom. A person who is insecure is always more alive, more full of zest, because he has to face life every moment. The challenge is there every moment and he has to face that challenge. A secure person becomes dull.

He has no need to face any moment. He has arranged for everything. He has arranged for the future also. He can live a dull life and he can die a dull death. That's what security is. It is a convenient way to live and a convenient way to die.

But life never happens to these people who are too much obsessed with convenience. Life only happens to those who are ready to live dangerously.

So if you ask me, my suggestion is - live dangerously. If you were asking for my support, you have asked the wrong man. Live dangerously. I'm not against your husband, but this is the only way you may be able to help him also.

If you go into the old pattern again, you may drag him into it again too. Why move into the same misery? You have tasted it enough. Ten years is too much - almost a lifetime. There is no need.

Simply write to him very happily and very lovingly that you have changed a lot, and something tremendously valuable is happening to you; you are no more the same. Send a picture with orange clothes and invite him to come also - to come and be here and meditate and see, because something might happen to him too. But don't go back. Be friendly towards him, but don't become a wife again.

First close it completely and then if something happens.... I have the feeling that something is possible, but only when you have closed the chapter completely. Be again a schoolgirl and fall in love!

Anand means bliss and dheeresh means wisdom, mm? - bliss and wisdom. And remember that knowledge is not wisdom. Knowledge is a Pseudo substitute for wisdom. Wisdom is that which comes out of your own experience. Knowledge is borrowed. Knowledge is from others, from tradition from scriptures.

Wisdom is just out of your own being. It is your own flowering. And unless something is yours, it is worthless. If something is not yours, drop it; don't carry it. It is simply a weight and a burden. The sooner you get rid of it, the better, because if you carry it, you will not have any space for wisdom to happen. So never become addicted to knowledge. It is cheap, and it looks like wisdom, but it is a counterfeit coin.

You can read the bible and you can just repeat the same things that jesus said. You can say them exactly the way he said them, but they are not your blooming. They simply appear wise - they are not. Deep down you remain the same. They don't make you jesus.

In fact you cannot understand what jesus is saying unless you become a jesus; there is no other way. Just by becoming christian, nobody can understand christ. To understand christ, one needs to become a christ. Being a christian won't do. The same is the difference between knowledge and wisdom, as it is between a christian and christ. Christ means wisdom. A christian means knowledge.

So remember it and go on discarding. Don't make your being a junkyard. Whatsoever you know, only that is what you know. Everything else is borrowed. And if you can become wise the way I am saying, you can become blissful.

You can go and see the learned men - the great scholars in the universities, the pundits - and you will see that they are as miserable as anybody else. They talk about the sky - and they crawl on the earth. They have not even looked at the sky. They have heard about it, they have read about it.

They have not even taken the trouble to look up. The sky has always been there - as it has been on jesus, as it has been on buddha - but they have not taken the trouble to look. They have been reading about the sky in the scriptures. Their eyes are focused elsewhere.

So one can become tremendously efficient in knowledge, and will remain miserable. A little wisdom is better than great knowledge, because even with a little drop of wisdom, you will feel tremendously filled with bliss... ecstatic, elated. You will feel euphoric.

Do you have something to say?

[The sannyasin: Well, from what you've said, should I finish being a student?]

No, you can remain a student. Never become a learned man. A student you can be.

... Study - but don't become a pundit!

[A sannyasin, said that after his last darshan he became aware of a kind of energy, of black feelings, and he described himself as feeling like a 'skinny devil'.]

Nothing to be worried about. There are many shadows lurking in the unconscious. Sometimes they confront you. They are nothing like devils, but just your own rejected parts that you have never cared about, denied expression, that you have never accepted as your parts. Sometimes they assert themselves. In some relaxed moments they come out of that imprisoned state, and because you have rejected them, they look too big. You don't want to accept them so you condemn; you say a 'skinny devil'. It is you! There is no devil.

So whenever it happens again, please try to absorb it. Invite the skinny devil to come. Embrace him and go to sleep with him. Just tell him, 'I accept you. It is good that you have come home. I was waiting for you. Now be one with me.' And you will be tremendously surprised. You will feel that a certain gap in your life has disappeared, a hole has disappeared. You will feel richer.

When you can absorb your devils within you, you will become very very rich, and your life will have more aspects to it. Otherwise people are monotonous. A saint is monotonous, a sinner also, but when there is a perfect man, he is both. He is as much god as devil. He is as much day as night.

He accepts everything. He is a complete circle of yin and yang. Nothing is rejected. Then one has tremendous grandeur.

So learn this. When you meditate more and more, many times your rejected parts will bubble. up, because you will be more relaxed now. The weight will be removed and they will come up. So don't go on denying them and don't be worried about them. Accept them, welcome them home. And you will see immediately that the moment the devil part is absorbed, you will feel more fulfilled, more alive, more vital, and you will see that something that was missing has been found. These are your pages, missing pages of your bible. They all have to be brought back.

It has been a good experience. It will be happening more and more, so don't be worried.

[A fourteen-year-old boy, who had previously refused to leave the house in which he and his mother were staying, said: I feel I hide my feelings behind my mind, behind reasons.]

Why do you do it? You don't know?... Because if you hide your feelings, you will miss many things in life, because feeling constitutes ninety-five percent of life. You will live a very poor life. Thoughts

are poor - feelings are very rich. All that is beautiful comes through feelings. All that relates you to people comes through feelings. All roses bloom through feelings. Thoughts are dead; a computer can think. For that, soren is not needed. A mechanical thing can do that.

A computer cannot feel; a computer can think. Mm? Just see it. That means thinking is mechanical; feeling is not. Sooner or later thinking will be taken over by computers. They can think better than you, better than anybody else. They think very fast, and they never commit mistakes because they don't have any mind to commit mistakes. They are simply machines. But they will never be able to feel.

Feeling makes man a man - thinking reduces you to a computer. So come out of that... and nobody is going to bring you out of it. You will have to come out of it - it is your thing - otherwise you will miss your life. It is nobody else's loss; it is not [your mother's problem. You have to decide.

But somehow, somewhere in your life, you must have become afraid of feelings, hence you go on suppressing them. Somehow you have become addicted to your thoughts and you think thoughts are more important, and things like feelings are a little feminine. Somehow you identify your ego with your thoughts.

Meditate here. You will come out of it; there is nothing to worry about. I have got so many mad people here - they can help you (laughter). If you just cooperate, they can bring you out of it. You need a little madness, that's all.

[Osho suggested he try a group.... ]

... and that will be very helpful, because the whole training of tathata is to bring your feelings out. And when twenty persons are bringing their feelings out, one simply looks foolish if one is not bringing out one's feelings. When one starts moving with people and seeing that people are enjoying themselves so much, then why stand aside? Take a jump!

And it is not only a question of being acquainted. Once you start moving into your feelings, you will be so happy. But the taste is needed. You have not tasted feelings at all. You have lived in your head - thinking, thinking, thinking. And after tathata I will see if some other group is needed.

And you are such a beautiful person - it will go. Nothing to be worried about, mm? Good!

[A visitor says: I have spent a great deal of my time with some movements - one is esperanto, and another to do with ecology. I think they are very important for the world at the moment.]

They are good, the work is good and you can continue, but don't get involved so much that you lose your own growth. These things are important, but not more important than you.

Ecology is very good. Work for it, but look for the inner ecology also. Because as I see it, the outer ecology is being destroyed because the inner ecology has been destroyed. It is just an outcome.

When man is no more whole inside - divided, in conflict, like a fighting mob, in a crowd - that man creates disturbance in nature also. And these are related.

When nature is destroyed and the natural systems are destroyed, then man is more destroyed. Then again nature goes on affecting man and man goes on affecting nature. It is vicious circle. But as I see it, the basic problem is somewhere inside man. If you are relaxed inside, if you have come to a settlement with your own nature, then you will be able to understand the natural functioning of the world, and you will not create any problem. You will not create any gap in it. You will see that everything is interconnected and nothing can be.... But the basic problem is inside man.

Continue your work - it is very important work, but one should never lose one's own inner work, that's all. Otherwise it is dangerous. It may happen, it may not happen, and there is more possibility that these mad politicians are not going to listen to anybody. Things have gone too far, and it seems that only a great catastrophe will stop it. Not that I am pessimistic, but just the actuality is such. The whole world is ruled by fanatic, violent people. And it has always been ruled by them, because a peace-loving person does not bother to rule anybody. He has no political ambitions. So all ambitious people are mad and insane, and they are always in key positions. They don't understand anything...

they understand only their ego.

When nixon was going to drop out of his presidential chair, the thought occurred to him that he could destroy the whole world. Now reports have come that for three nights he continuously pondered over it - should he resign or should he start a third world war? He could have done that. Rather than getting down from his chair, he could have dragged the whole world into a third world war, into total destruction. It was possible. It is a miracle that he decided to resign. But all mad people will not be so sensible. He proved sensible in a way.

So go on working, doing whatsoever you can do, but never hope too much. Hope for the best and expect the worst. And meanwhile, go on working on yourself.

And esperanto is also beautiful work, but that too is almost hopeless. But work - it is good work, and man needs one language. So many problems simply arise because of language. Out of a hundred conflicts, ninety-nine can drop if one world language exists, because these problems are of communication. If people cannot communicate, then they fight. They have only one way to prove who is wrong and who is right - and that is war.

One day or other, humanity is going to learn. But I don't think that moment has come yet. But go on working because that comes only that way. As I feel, some day or other, if some planet starts a war with this world, then esperanto will win, not before it. People will immediately start learning one language, because then they will have to fight. People have done things only when war was there. All these beautiful big roads, highways, super-highways, were made for war - not for people to travel on, not for lovers to meet and friends to meet together. No, they were created for militaries, armies to pass. All that you see in the world has been more or less created for war. Other uses come later on, but the first use is war. The atom was created for war; now we think how to use it in a peaceful way. Esperanto will come into this world only when we are in conflict with some planet, and the whole planet has to be together, otherwise not.

But go on working. The work is good and beautiful and religious. But don't forget yourself.

In sanskrit, hansa means the swan, and parmahansa means the great swan. There are two species of swan - the ordinary swan which is found all over the world, and the great swan which is found

only in a far away lake in the himalayas, mansarovar... and that is the great swan, the whitest, the purest.

In india that is a symbolic name for somebody who is moving towards purity... to the highest peak of the himalayas, and to the purest waters of that innermost lake. In indian poetry, hansa is a mythological symbol. In indian poetry they say that hansa has the capacity - if you put milk and water together and give it to the hansa - to drink the milk and leave the water. It is just symbolic, but very beautiful. It simply says that a hansa has the capacity to discriminate between what is essential and what is non-essential.

And parmahansa means one who has come to that great discrimination between what is useless and what is useful, what is real and what is unreal.

And ramakrishna you must know. He is the master of vivekananda - one of the greatest men ever born. In those days he was one of the most illumined beings. And rama is one of the names of a hindu avatara, and krishna is the name of another.

So ramakrishna is just a combination of both, because ramakrishna tried to find truth from so many ways, from this path and that. And he always arrived at the same truth. He tried from rama, he tried from krishna. He tried even from jesus, from mohammed. He was doing pioneer work. Nobody has ever tried it before, because once you have reached, who bothers whether other paths lead to the same place or not?

And reaching, he tried to follow other paths still to see whether they also lead to the same, and he came to the same conclusion again and again.

[A visitor said she found the meditations wonderful, but since her father taught her to listen to christ she did not wish to take sannyas. She says she is with Osho in her heart, to the extent of her own limits.]

Then wait. Soon you will go beyond your limits, mm? And if you really understand jesus, you will understand me immediately. And if you cannot see divine wisdom in me, you cannot see it in jesus either, because it is a question of vision.

It is not a question of where you can see and where you cannot see it. If you can see, you will see it in buddha and jesus and in mohammed. And sometimes you will be able to see it in a small child, because the human and the divine are not divided.

The human is divine.

[She answers: I agree, but to put something on a pedestal makes it out of my reach and out of my possibilities.]

You just wait. I will make your possibilities bigger. Just wait. One has to go beyond the limits - only then one grows. If you remain within your limits, you will never grow. One has to grow beyond one's limits a little by and by. One has to adventure a little beyond one's possibilities. One has to move into the unknown, the unfamiliar. Remain close to your boundary but go a little beyond. But if you remain confined to the boundary, you cannot grow.

But wait... it is coming. It will come.

[A visitor says: Since I'm here I've been in a conflict about taking sannyas.]

So don't take it! Why be in a conflict? Don't take it. When you can take it without conflict, then take it. If you cannot taken, then forget about it ... The conflict can be stopped only in two ways: either take it or decide not to take it - both are good - or remain in conflict! (laughter) Everybody comes into that conflict; it is natural. A few people linger in it a little longer and finally everybody decides to take it, because that is the only way to get out of it (laughter). What to do?

[She answers: I want to be accepted and loved though I am not a sannyasin.]

You are accepted. As far as I am concerned, you are accepted, but if you are not a sannyasin, it will be difficult for you to receive my love.

[Osho went on to say that sannyas made for a kind of bridge, a link, between him and the disciple.

In the discourse the following morning he referred to this conversation.]

... Being here with me is an act of love. I have nothing else to give you except my love. I have nothing else to share with you except my love. While you are here with me... you will feel that you have been with me and that you have not been with me. Both are true, and both are true together.

That's the paradox of love. The more you have been with me, the more you will feel that you have not been with me. The less you have been with me, the more you will feel that you have been with me.

If you are here for a longer period - and the period is not as important as the depth of the relationship.... That is the meaning of sannyas - it is a plunge into a deeper intimacy, into a deeper commitment.

Just the other night a woman was asking, 'If I don't take sannyas, will you accept me?' I told her, 'Yes, I accept you - whether you take sannyas or not is irrelevant - but you will not be able to accept me if you don't take sannyas.'

If you are able to accept me, then sannyas is just a gesture of your acceptance, nothing else. It is just a gesture that you are coming with me, that you are ready to be with me... that even if I am going to hell you are coming with me; you would rather be in hell with me than in heaven alone, that's all.

I am not promising you that I will take you to heaven; nothing of the sort. Nobody should be hoping that. I am not promising you anything of the sort. Maybe I am going to hell....(laughter) A sannyasin is one who has trusted me; who says, 'Okay, sol am coming with you.' Then something starts transpiring between me and you. It is not only changing your clothes, it is not only changing your name. It is simply dropping your whole past and starting from abc.

That's why I give you a new name - just to give you a new start, as if you are born again.