Darshan 3 March 1978

Swatantra means freedom, sarjano means creativity. Freedom is true only if it creates. Creativity is the indication of a true freedom, and creation is true only if it comes out of freedom. Creativity without freedom is not true creativity, it is imitation, it is borrowed. It can be very skilful, it can be technically perfect, but something essential will be missing in it: the soul will be missing.

There are creative people who are not free, who have not known the freedom of no-mind. They simply go on repeating; all that they do is more or less a new combination of old things. The wine is old, the bottles new. Maybe there are mixtures of many wines - something from here, something from there. It appears as if it is new; it is not. It is only a combination, it is not a creation; it is a composition, not a creation.

There are people who are free but not creative; their freedom is dead. There are people who sit in the Himalayan caves and have known something of the silence, of the interior, but they are not creative; their freedom is not true. They are also imitating the state of no-mind. They are sitting like a Buddha practising a posture. It is only a gesture, there is nothing behind it. Sitting in their Himalayan caves they are simply vegetating.

So to me these two words are of immense value, and they go together; in fact they cannot exist separately. They are like yin-yang, day-night, summer-winter, the positive and the negative; they are always together. Whenever one is there, the other must be there somewhere, has to be there.

Seeking one, one finds both; losing one, one loses both. So let this be my message for you....

Feel at home - this is your home! Forget, the past, let it simply disappear. From this moment think anew, feel anew. This is your second birth, and without the second the first is incomplete. The second is the true birth, but one has to be very receptive to allow it tc happen. Immense changes are on the way; just be receptive and every day things will be happening.

A great energy is being released here; those who can be receptive are fortunate. If somebody misses, it is only he who is responsible. If he remains closed there is no way to penetrate him. The spiritual energy cannot be aggressive energy; it cannot even knock on your door. It simply waits like sunlight: if you open the door it comes in; if you don't open the door it does not knock, it does not force. It is not like wind in that it knocks and tries to enter. It is like sunlight: it simply waits there, it has infinite patience. And only those who are capable of opening up to it are benefited. Then there is great celebration, great rejoicing happens inside. For the first time one knows what life is.

So just be open, and allow things to happen.

... Vardan. It means benediction, blessing, divine gift. Sannyas is a benediction: the beginning of a true and authentic life, the beginning of sincerity, the birth of truth in you. People live in lies.

They have lived so long in lies that they themselves have become lies. People have only false faces, masks; they have completely forgotten their original face, hence there is so much misery. With the original face all misery disappears.

Sannyas is nothing but an effort to penetrate all the masks, to dig for the original face. Once the original face is known there is benediction, there is a great joy, there is immense peace, blissfulness.

That is the meaning of vardan.

To know life in its truth is a blessing; to know life as a lie is a misery. To live in lies is to live in hell.

Lies are many, truth is one. To attain to that one is to enter paradise. Paradise, heaven or hell, are not geographical situations, not there somewhere in the space; they are inner psychological states.

It just depends on knowing the knack of it, and you can turn the hell into heaven... just as if it is done by magic. The magic, the secret of the magic, is to be authentically true, vulnerable, open, not hiding, not hiding from anybody. It needs courage and guts, but once you start feeling the joy of it things become easy; every day things become more and more easy. One day one is suddenly relaxed. In that relaxation the ego disappears. That is benediction, that is vardan!

[Osho gives someone sannyas:]

Come here!... come here. Good! Close your eyes, and just feel me. Feel me penetrating you from everywhere, from all directions, like arrows entering from everywhere, trying to reach your heart.

... In your life you have been too serious about everything; about god too. That seriousness has been a barrier; it has to be dropped. It looks very strange when I say that god can be approached only in a playful mood, but it is so. When you are having fun you are closer to god than ever. The English word 'recreation' is beautiful. It really means literally 're-creation'. Whenever you are in fun, in a non-serious playful mood, you re-create yourself. You allow yourself to be recreated by god; you go through a rebirth. Whenever man becomes serious, he becomes closed. Seriousness is part of the ego.

Seekers down the ages have thought that they were very very serious people; millions have been searching and missing because of their seriousness. Their search is great, their effort is great, they devote their whole life to seeking and still they miss - not because they have committed any sin but just because of their seriousness.

If you cannot be playful you keep god distant. When you are flowing, relaxed, the distance is not so much. And there come moments of relaxation when the distance simply disappears, when there is no need to seek god: god is found. God is found without seeking. Seeking has nothing to do with god; seekers miss. There are two types of people - the seekers and the finders, and they are different people. Seekers never find and finders don't need to seek, they simply find.

Picasso was painting something beautiful and the visitor, a friend, asked, 'How do you seek beauty?'

And he said, 'I don't seek it! find it!' That statement is pure Zen: I don't seek it, I find it....

Drop seriousness; there is still time to drop it. And in the very dropping of it you will really start growing.

Prem means love, dip means lamp - a small lamp of love, a small flame of love, a light of love. Love kindles a light inside, and that light is such that it needs no fuel. There is never a power crisis for it because it is uncaused; it is perpetual, eternal. Once you have found that light inside, it goes on burning forever and forever. And with that light inside, the darkness around you starts disappearing.

Then you can go into the darkest night and still your path will be lit. Love is the only light that helps.

Scriptures don't, but love.... So these two things I say to you: love and laughter, and between these two you will find. Be loving and laughing; don't take yourself serously.

Once Buddha was asked - somebody had committed suicide and he was asked, 'Why does someone commit suicide? Why?' And Buddha said, 'Through taking oneself too seriously.' And that is so. The people who commit suicide are the people who take themselves too seriously. The people who take themselves too seriously may or may not commit suicide, but they live their suicide, a slow suicide. They are never alive to the optimum.

So remember these two things - love and laughter. Between these two is the gap for you. In these two all is going to happen. Between these two the world will stop.

[Osho gives sannyas:]

Feel me... breathe me. Take deep breaths and feel that I am going into you with each breath. If something starts happening in the body, allow it - any shaking, trembling, movement, gesture....

Suparna. Literally it means the eagle. Metaphorically it means the wide-winged. The eagle goes to the farthest point, to the distant; its flight is the flight towards the ultimate.

A sannyasin has to become an eagle, wide-winged. A sannyasin belongs to the sky. He lives on the earth but belongs to the sky. He uses the earth as a temporary abode, not as a goal but only as a means, not as the end but just an overnight stay. His eyes are fixed on the sky, the infinite, the unbounded.

Everybody is born with wings, but because we have never used them we have become completely oblivious to their existence. The work of a master is nothing but this, to show you that you have wings. He has to push you by and by into the unknown so that you can start using your wings. He has to throw you out of your securities. He has to uproot you in many ways. He has to destroy your safeties and he has to throw you into the unknown sky, because only that will help you to regain your wings, to recognise your wings. Only in a tremendous crisis will you be able to recognise who you are.

Suparna is one of the most beautiful metaphors....

Anand means bliss, blissfulness, and savito is the name of the god of the sun, the source of light, the god of light, the sun god - blissful sun god. And you have to work it out in your inner alchemy; let light and bliss become associated.

Whenever you are feeling happy, watch light; any light will do, just a candle, but do it only whenever you are feeling happy, whenever you are feeling relaxed. Whenever something like joy is permeating your being, then look at the moon, at the stars or the morning sun or the evening sun; any light will do.

This association has to be worked out; whenever you are feeling happy, watch, meditate on life, so that light and happiness become joined together, so that there is a kind of conditioned reflex. After three, four weeks you will be able to bring that joy whenever you watch light; then it becomes very simple. But first you have to make it a deep association. Mm? That's what Pavlov, the Russian psychologist, calls conditioned reflex.

He used to give food to his dog and while giving food to him, he would ring a bell. Each time the food was given the bell was rung. After fifteen days he simply rang the bell and the dog started salivating. There is no food and the saliva had no direct connection to the bell, but now the bell had become associated with food; it reminded the dog of food. The dog must have smelt food when the bell started ringing; he was getting ready, his inner chemistry was ready to digest food. This he calls 'conditioned reflex'.

This has been used in Yoga for centuries; this is nothing new, it has been used in the East for at least five thousand years. It has been used for inner work. For example, when you are feeling happy you can associate your happiness with anything. If you go on continuously associating it, then that thing will become the triggering.

People think that if you repeat a mantra you will feel blissful; that is wrong. First you have to create that association, otherwise you won't feel blissful. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi goes on giving mantras to people; those are meaningless because he is missing the basic part of it. The basic part is: your chemistry has to become associated with the mantra. Any mantra will do, your own name will do.

Whenever you are feeling happy, just repeat your own name again and again and again; then the sound of the name and the feeling of happiness become intertwined. So whenever later on you repeat your whole name, suddenly you will find that some source has been touched and a great blissfulness has been released.

This can be done with sound, this can be done with light, this can be done with anything; but for you light will be the most suitable phenomenon. So just work it out for three, four weeks. But never do it when you are not feeling happy, never; otherwise you will confuse the chemistry.

Mm? you are listening to good music and suddenly you feel a joy arising. Watch a candle. The joy is there inside and the candle starts getting joined together with it; let them become hooked with each other. Once it has happened you need not wait for joy; just put the candle in front of you and suddenly you will see that you are transported. That's how all religious rituals were created in the beginning, but then things got lost; otherwise they are all meaningful, originally they had a great significance.

[A sannyasin says that he isn't feeling any closer to Osho in the three months he's been here and he feels he's not opening up. He has broken up with his wife and is not in a relationship.]

That can be one of the main causes, because when your love is not flowing it will be difficult for you to connect with me too. It is very easy when the love is flowing.

You have become afraid of love. Maybe the experience that you went through with your wife made you afraid so the feelings are no more flowing easily. Feelings don't know; they are unaddressed. If one love experience proves bitter, if something goes wrong, the heart does not know that you are not to love this person only; the heart simply shrinks, it becomes afraid of love.

This happens many times here, in many ways. For example, somebody comes here, and after coming here separates from their wife, their girlfriend, their boyfriend or their husband. It is a shock to the whole feeling mechanism; things suddenly stop, the juices no more flow. Then it is difficult to relate with me too because those same juices have to flow towards me. You don't have any other juices; those are the same juices. So that experience has made you a little hesitant. The feelings are not as trustworthy as you had thought before; one experience went wrong. You can't trust your feelings, that's the problem. This happens to many people.

Sometimes the same thing happens from the other extreme also: somebody comes here searching for me and wanting just to be with me, then he falls in love with a woman. All his juices start flowing towards the woman; then again he starts feeling that he is not connecting with me. It is the same thing, it is the same phenomenon. Now he becomes too involved with the woman, his whole mind is turned towards the woman; he tends to forget about me.

But whenever love is flowing easily and there is not any fear or obsession about it - one is neither very much in it nor very much against it; when things are normal, in the middle - then you relate with me very deeply and very easily. A happy couple - not in their honeymoon, the honeymoon is over and they have settled - if they are here, they relate to me very easily, very simply. The juices are flowing, there is no fear, and there is no honeymoon either so that they have to pay their whole attention to the woman or to the man.

That may have caused it....

I think you should start moving with women a little, start growing into love. And there is no need to fall in love madly, mm? otherwise that will do the same thing again. Love should be taken as a very very natural phenomenon. Just as one eats and drinks and goes to sleep, so one loves. Down the ages people have either worshipped love or have condemned it; both attitudes are wrong and lopsided. Either they think love is the door to hell, mm? so saints go on condemning it, or they think love is the only heaven, so poets go on praising it. Both are wrong.

Love is neither hell nor heaven. It is a natural phenomenon like breathing, like eating, like sleeping.

A normal healthy person, a psychologically healthy person, will take love just as a nourishment.

There is nothing to brag about in it; it is not worship. And there is no need to be afraid of it. It is neither from god nor the devil; it is just human nature.

Keep that in mind and start moving into a love relationship, but take it very naturally. That will help the juices flow.

[Another sannyasin is not happy because she and her partner as splitting up.]

That's good, it is nothing to be worried about. Mm? these are the games one has to learn to play: separation and meeting and separation. These are the games; don't be too worried about it. It naturally shakes one because everything gets disturbed. So, find somebody else! All human beings are potential lovers, so there is no need to be focused unnecessarily. If it has finished, it has finished; move into new relationships. If you don't move into a new relationship you will remain in a complaining mood, grumpy, and you will feel angry at [your partner], as if he has done something.

Nobody is doing anything. Human beings are so unconscious, they are robots, zombies. You neither do anything when you fall in love nor do you do anything when you separate; these are just natural accidents. So when one accident has finished get into another, because without accidents also it is very difficult to live. Then one has nothing to worry about and nobody to fight and nobody to nag, and things are so simple. One needs a little complexity and occupation. One wants misery. Without misery it is such a simple life; for what will you live without misery? How will you live without misery?

And love is the greatest source of misery. It is really beautiful, mm? - it gives all the promise of joy and brings all kinds of misery! It is an hallucination.

So create another!

And soon [you] will become a buddha, then there is no need for... but that comes slowly. And every kind of experience of meeting, separation, falling in love, fighting, falling out of love - all these experiences help you transcend life. It is only through hard experience, bitter experience, that one attains to awareness.

All these things are good, they all help in their own ways. When one arrives at the ultimate peak, one can see that everything has helped: enemies have helped, friends have helped, lovers have helped, haters have helped, everybody has helped. One simply feels a thankfulness towards all that has happened. I know when you are passing through a certain problem it feels very difficult because the problem looks so big, out of all proportion. When you look back, things are in their real shape; nothing is important.

And always remember that each love affair will give you something, will reveal some aspects of your being. For example if you are in love with 'a' then only that person will reveal something in you. He cannot reveal that which can be revealed by 'b' because 'b' will be a different kind of person. He will hit you differently, he will penetrate your energy differently, he will reveal another aspect of your being. The third person, 'c', will remain still another experience, and so on and so forth. Man is such a big phenomenon that one can go on and on changing lovers and can go on feeling one's own territory; it is big!

So each love affair has something to give to you. Remain thrilled and always feel good. Even when you have loved, and when a love finishes, feel good because one door has closed; now you can knock at another door. Feel thrilled that some new discovery is going to be made. Life has to remain a continuous invention, discovery, exploration.

So just start searching, mm? Good!

[The leader of the Gestalt and Samarpan groups, says the first group was a little tricky; he was depressed. The second was just beautiful, a rainbow.']

Very good! Sometimes it happens, mm? It is human sometimes to be depressed, sometimes to be sad. When you are sad it is very difficult to move the energy of the group into a happy space. But by and by one has to learn, and then it becomes possible; you can function there without bringing in your sadness at all. And that is the function of a real therapist. The real therapist should not bring his problems there; he will have that much detachment from himself. When he enters and starts working he puts himself aside; there he is simply the expert. He brings in all his skill, all his understanding; he does not bring in his problems. That becomes possible.

That will be a great help to you, because then you will see that your problems can be put aside, so why not put them aside even when you are not in a group? If you can put them aside, why not put them aside forever? If you can put your problem aside even for a single moment, you know the knack of it; then it can be put aside forever. Then when you want to enjoy it, you can take it back; otherwise it can wait! And that is one of the secrets of being a good therapist, a group leader, that when you go into a group you have no problem, no problems are there to hinder you. You are unclouded, you function as your intelligence, as your alertness. If it is difficult for you just remember me and I will do it. Whenever you feel that Rajen is coming in between too much, just remember me and I will take you away.

Slowly slowly, one learns, and that has to be learned, because much depends on the group leader; it is up to the group leader what is going to happen to the group. If the group leader is in a sad mood, depressed - and he is the nucleus - then all those people around there will simply bring in their sadness, will bring in their depression; you will provoke their depression. People are very ready to become depressed, to become sad; that is their life. They are skilled in it, they have been cultivating those habits for their whole life. So if you trigger it, they all become depressed immediately; then the whole energy goes on. The group leader has to pull them up. He has to fight against their habits, and that can be done only if you put yourself outside.

So just make it a point: whenever you are feeling depressed or anything, before entering the group room stand outside with closed eyes for three minutes, and put everything in a bundle.

Deposit it just by the door and enter, and then forget about it. And you will be surprised; it is such a simple thing! Then when you are out of the group, again stand for three minutes, collect everything, go back and see [your partner]. Right?