Darshan 4 March 1978
[Osho gives someone sannyas:]
This will be your new name... and a new beginning, a new birth. Count yourself as being alive from this moment. Up to now you have been a caterpillar, only living in a kind of shell. That's how everybody is living; their lives are at the minimum, and real life happens only at the maximum.
People are alive for the name's sake: only at the maximum, at the optimum, when one becomes aflame, does one start living.
The colour orange is the colour of flame. It is just to remind you that from now on you will live life passionately, intensely, that it will not be a lukewarm affair any more, it will be really hot. Only through that passion is god known; only those who live at the optimum attain to that vision. People who live at the minimum live in a kind of dark valley, they can't see the sun. The sun is available only at the peaks; those peaks are beyond the clouds and once you have reached the peak, you have reached beyond the clouds.
Soura means of the sun, from the sun. We are not of this planet, we are strangers here. We come from a faraway sun. Call it god, call it light, or call it whatsoever you like, but it is the source of all light, life, love. We come from a faraway source, just as light on this planet comes from a faraway source. It fails on this earth but it doesn't belong to it. We have completely forgotten our home, and that is the misery, that we don't know from where we come. Unless we know from where we come, we cannot know where we have to go, because the source is the goal. And life becomes a contentment when the circle is complete, when we have reached the source again.
Saddo is Buddha's word for trust. The Sanskrit word is 'shraddha' but Buddha never used Sanskrit; he used the people's language. And the people always tend to make words round, softer; they don't bother much about language, about grammar. Just as a stone becomes round the more it flows with
the river, words also become round the more they are used. So I like Buddha's word 'saddo' more; it has become more round, more feminine, and Buddha has given it a new meaning too.
The Sanskrit word 'shraddha' means trust. Buddha has given it a new turn: he says trust means trust in oneself. The Sanskrit word means trust in somebody else - in scriptures, in the tradition, in God; but the other is important, you have to trust the other. Buddha says: Unless you trust yourself, you cannot trust the other. From where will the trust come? If you can't love yourself you cannot love anybody else. From where will the love come? First it has to happen in you, in your very being, only then can it be reflected in others.
So Buddha says that saddo is trust, but more than trust it is confidence. And when one starts trusting oneself, one can trust life, God. I like his change. Otherwise trust tends to become faith; rather than becoming confidence it becomes faith, it becomes belief. And belief does not sharpen one's being; it gathers like rust.
A Christian believes, a Hindu believes; Christ trusts. It is not belief, it is existential; he has encountered reality. And unless you trust yourself you cannot encounter reality, because that encounter is possible only when you are utterly fearless. How can the man who cannot trust himself be fearless? In fact, because he is so full of fear he trusts others. It is just out of fear that he clings somewhere to somebody who may be the expert, who knows. He seeks a father figure out of fear, out of distrust of himself.
Saddo means: start trusting yourself, and out of that trust many other trusts will bloom. That becomes the root, and then many flowers come. You can trust your friend, you can trust your beloved, you can trust your master, you can trust life, you can trust death, you can trust the whole that surrounds you; but only after you have fulfilled the first condition. That is the meaning of saddo.
Let this day become a plunge into your own being. My whole purpose here is to throw you to yourself, to push you to your own being.
Premgeet. It means song of love. Life can be a song, but one can miss it too; it is not inevitable.
The potential exists but it has to be actualised. Many people think that the day they were born all was finished. Nothing is finished.
The day one is born, things only start; it is the beginning. Birth has to happen millions of times in your whole life: you have to go on being born again and again and again.
Man has such potential, so many aspects; he is multi-dimensional. But people never explore their own being, hence life remains sad, poor. That is real. poverty. The outer poverty is not a big problem; it can be solved, it will be solved. Technology has come to the point where poverty is going to disappear from the earth; the time has come for that. But the real problem is the inner poverty. Even the rich people live very poor lives. Their bodies are stuffed with food but their souls are starving. They have not yet known the song of life, they have not heard anything about it. They go on existing somehow, managing, pulling, dragging, but there is no joy.
Great song is possible, great richness is possible, but one has to start exploring. And the best way to explore the song of one's life is to love; that is the very methodology. Just as logic is the methodology of science, love is the methodology of religion. Just as logic makes you capable of going deeper and deeper into matter, love makes you capable of going deeper and deeper into the spirit, into consciousness. And the deeper you go, the deeper songs are released. When one has reached the very core of one's being the whole of life becomes a celebration, an utter celebration.
That's what god is all about.
[A new sannyasin asks for help for her sister who is blind, and a musician.]
That's very good, mm? So help her meditate! There is nothing to be worried about, because in fact in the world there is nothing worth seeing! She should be happy really; she will not be bothered by so many things which are unnecessary. And a meditator has to close his eyes anyway!
Just help her.
And if meditation and music join together she can have one of the most beautiful experiences possible.
Sometimes curses can become blessings.
Eyes take eighty, ninety percent of your energy. If your eyes are not functioning you are like a reservoir. If you don't become unnecessarily depressed that you are blind, that reservoir of energy can be used in great jubilation; you can rejoice in life.
So rather than doing anything, help her to enjoy it. Help her to think about it as a blessing. If her attitude changes completely, it will become a blessing, and if sometimes you can bring her here, bring her....
You just be my messenger. I will try. And I have so many blind people, one more won't.... Bring her!
[A sannyasin who is leaving says: Teach me about playing like a child.']
It need not be taught; if it is taught it will never be like a child. Simply relax and start playing! It needs only courage, no training; it just needs the courage that if somebody thinks you are a fool, let him think. The courage to be foolish, that's all that is needed; that makes a man a sage. There is a very simple difference between a fool and a sage. The only difference is that the fool is unconsciously foolish and the sage is consciously foolish.
There is no need to prepare, no need to plan; simply start. Do anything and slowly slowly you will come to know, because you have been a child once, and you can be again; nothing is ever lost.
Whatsoever you have experienced once always remains there in the reservoir.
And if it is taught, it will be totally different; it will be artificial and then you will not be a child. You will only be pretending to be a child, you will only be imitating, but the imitation can't be true. The authentic childhood is available inside you; you have just to put aside your cultivated ways of being adult. It is just like nudity: you take off your dress and you are nude. There is no need to ask how to be nude, how to plan to be nude: 'Teach me to be nude'; that is not needed at all! Children have to be taught how to dress, not how to be nude; they have always been nude.
[A sannyasin says: I live in a dream, Osho, he says; and I'm very dull and sleepy. Every time I wake up I just get so frightened, I put myself back to sleep again... Can you help me?]
I am helping, but don't be impatient. The sleep has to be broken in homeopathic doses, because if it is broken too suddenly you may lose all bearings; you may not be able to cope with reality as it is.
Man has lived in lies so much that only so much truth can be absorbed at a time. If the whole truth suddenly becomes available, you may die; you may not be able to survive it, it may be too much.
The shock of it, the realisation of it, will simply drive you mad. So truth has to be absorbed very slowly, very slowly. It is a dangerous process, dangerous because we have been so accustomed to lies.
It is almost as if a man has been sleeping for years, then suddenly you wake him up, take him out of bed and tell him to run. How can he do it? - he will simply fall then and there, he will die. All that he knows about running is in dream. The body remains resting; he only dreams and runs in dream. He has been running, he may be participating in Olympic races and things like that, but in his dream.
Actually he cannot take one single step; he will be paralysed. How do you expect him to suddenly run? He will have to be spoon-fed, slowly slowly.
Just a few years ago it happened near Lucknow that a child was found in a wolf's cave; he was a wolf child, fourteen years of age. He was not able to stand on two legs but used to run on all fours; and so fast that no man, not even the fastest runner, was able to run with him. That was on all fours, but as far as standing on two legs was concerned it was almost impossible. k took six months of massage, body work, and then he was only able to stand - not walk, just stand. That was a great miracle, because his whole bone system had become fixed in his way of living.
After six months he died, and my own observation is that he died because of this whole effort that was being made to make a man out of a wolf. He was a strong child, very stong, stronger than any man - he was a wolf - but every day he became weakened. All kinds of things were happening: he was being forced to do this and that and he was being taught at least to pronounce his name. They had given him a name Ram, so he had to pronounce it. In fact the day he died, he had pronounced it; that was the first time he had pronounced Ram. Then he died; it was too much. Doctors were puzzled about why he died: everything was perfectly okay, physically there was no problem, but it was the very shock.
So don't be impatient. You have to come out of your sleep slowly slowly. You will come out of it and then you will fall again, you will come out and you will fall again. This is how it happens; it has to be accepted. You will be able to be awake more and more; there will be less and less temptation to fall.
Slowly slowly, you will have the taste of truth as against the taste of dreams. You are accustomed to dreams; when you are accustomed to a certain thing it feels delicious. You are not accustomed to truth: it will be so unfamiliar, almost bitter. You may not be able to swallow it, you may vomit it.
The German poet, Goethe, used to say again and again that man can tolerate only so much awareness; that's why every night he has to fall asleep and dream. The dreaming and the sleep help him to cope with reality again. Tomorrow he is awake, and again for a few hours he will be able to cope with reality. But this awakenedness is not much of awakenedness at all; it is again a kind of dream with open eyes.
The awareness I am talking about is totally different. It is coming out of unconsciousness, coming out of the cell called the ego, coming out of your mechanical habits. It has to be slow; but it is happening, it will happen. And when it starts happening one becomes greedy, that I understand, because one wants to finish it soon, one wants to have the whole truth....
It is frightening, but it has to take its own time, it has to grow. Sudden awakening sometimes happens, but for that too one has to prepare for years. Even in a Zen monastery where they talk about sudden enlightenment, you only know the conclusion, you don't know the process. You say 'The master hit the disciple and he became enlightened', but you don't know that for twenty-six years he was meditating! Mm? it is not the whole story. It is tricky! You don't know his whole story, what was happening to him for those twenty-six years; Zen stories are just the conclusions. If you know the whole process of the training of the monk - his meditations, his fasts, his living in the monastery, his discipline - then you will not say that this is sudden. When it is said it is sudden, what is meant is that the person has been training himself, preparing to absorb this insight suddenly.
There are two ways. For example, a person may prepare for twenty-six years and then one day it becomes available, the truth is there and he is awake; this is one way. the other way is that slowly slowly, truth becomes available, slowly slowly the aperture open, and after twenty-six years the whole truth is available. In both ways those twenty-six years are a must; you cannot avoid that.
In one, only training goes on, goes on, goes on, and then suddenly one day you explode. In another, you start opening your aperture slowly, slowly. And the second process is more human, less drastic.
Just be patient, mm? Don't be worried. Good!
[A sannyas couple are present and say: we would like to have a child, and I think we are ready to have a child.]
It is good to wait a little longer, because this is just an unconscious desire, a biological desire.
It happens to every man and every woman; more to a woman than to a man, but it is not very conscious.
You will be creating a situation in which you may get too involved; your own growth may suffer. A child is a great occupation and when one enters your life you can't be the same; you will change through it. Mm? that small child is not so small, that small child is a universe: it will change everything in your life. It will change your relationship too, because then it becomes a triangle. So my feeling is that you should wait a little more - it is always good to wait - and let it become more conscious, more deliberate.
Rather than just becoming a mother, first think of becoming a meditator; go as deeply into meditation as possible. First feel fulfilled, first feel contented, and then it is perfectly good to have a child. Then that child will come out of your contentment, out of your fulfilment, and that child will have a different quality to him. It will be a different kind of soul, it will be a more conscious soul. And when a conscious soul enters your womb that will also transform you but it will transform you for the better; it will also change your relationship but it will deepen it. If a conscious soul can come into your womb and become your child, your life will take on such richness that you have not known before. Just by becoming a mother that is not known.
It is just as anybody can paint a picture, anybody. If a canvas is available, colour is available, anybody can throw the colour on the canvas with the brush or directly from the tubes; but that is not going to give you satisfaction unless you create a masterpiece. If you can create a Van Gogh there will be great joy.
And that's what happens when a buddha is born: the woman is so fulfilled. Do you know the story?
The story says that Buddha's mother died seven days after he was born because she was so fulfilled; there was no point in living at all. It is said that whenever a buddha is born, the mother dies after seven days; since then that has become part of the Indian mythology. Why? - because she feels so fulfilled there is no point in living any longer. She has known all that can be known. There is no need even to breathe now; life is complete. The very entry of Buddha into his mother's womb and she was transformed. She started dreaming things that she has never dreamed. She was puzzled:
why these dreams?
Freud is very new in this science; in the East we have been working on it for five thousand years. But we have never looked into the dreams of the pathological; in that Freud is the first. We have always looked into the dreams of those who were really of a different quality, a superhuman quality. It is said in Indian psychology that whenever an awakened soul enters the womb of a woman the woman has certain dreams, she has to have those dreams. Those dreams unfold in a sequence, first, second, third; as the child grows those dreams unfold. Those dreams say that something from the beyond has entered into the womb. Even the mother's unconscious starts being stirred by the beyond. She starts dreaming of things which are not available on this earth. She starts having visions, she starts hearing sounds which are not of this world.
But that is possible only if you prepare yourself first. My feeling is that you should just wait a little more; and you will be happy that you waited. Let it become a great thirst. There is no hurry.
How old are you?
[She answers: Twenty-five.]
So you can wait, there is no hurry. It is better to give birth to one single child, but let it be a lion!
What is the point of creating a queue of children? The earth is already too crowded, mm? - avoid it! Otherwise you will not be happy either, because how can a mother be happy when the child turns out to be ordinary? But the child is bound to turn out ordinary if the mother was not ready, because only then will that quality of soul enter. You cannot have more than you deserve; that is the law. You can only have a certain kind of soul in your womb. All kinds of souls are available but the womb has to be ready.
So just prepare the womb first. Don't be; a hurry. Meditate, become more and more silent, become more and more loving. Let the desire be there - desire is beautiful - and one day I will tell you to become a mother. One day you will become one, but just wait, mm? Good!
[Sheela, who works in the ashram office, says: I got stepped on twice by Maneesha, and it just sort of got me aggravated.
Sheela comes to darshan in Laxmi's absence if Indian people are present. Maneesha had queried her coming when there were no Indians present, and had also queried whether Sheela had been checked at the gate by the 'sniffer'.]
Always remember Sheela: that is her work. So if you are doing anything and it comes under somebody's charge, you have to listen to the person. Don't feel stepped on, otherwise how will work happen? It was natural; because there were no Indians she thought that Sheela was not needed. You became angry. You told her to mind her own business, but she was! You must have felt that you have been stepped on, but that is your attitude.
As the work becomes complex we will have to see that whosoever is in charge has to be listened to, otherwise nobody will listen to anybody. If you are doing some work and you are in charge then everybody has to listen to you... even sometimes when they don't like it. Even sometimes when you are wrong, they have to listen to it, otherwise it will become impossible; this commune cannot function then. More and more work will have to be divided, and everybody should be supreme in his work.
When Maneesha enters your work, you are supreme, so she has to listen to you; but this is her work - whether everybody has been checked or not.
[Sheela replied: But I have been going through the check.]
Mm, that's okay, but this is her work; it is not stepping on you. And that has been the structure, that when Indians are there, somebody has to be there, so it was natural for her to ask. You need not get angry about it and you need not feel offended, otherwise rivalries will enter. That's what has happened to every commune. Then power trips come in: she has stepped on you, so you have to step on her. Then people become bitchy to each other, and that's bad.
Everybody has to think this, that whosoever is in charge you have to surrender to... even though sometimes, I say, he may be wrong. That is not the point at all, that can be sorted out later on. But nobody should feel offended, otherwise it becomes impossible.
Now, if nothing is said about it, the next time that Maneesha feels that you are unnecessarily there, she will not be able to say anything to you; she will be afraid that Sheela has to be left to herself.
But if Sheela is left then why not Arup, why not Vivek, why not Mukta? Then things go on becoming more complicated. Now you are feeling miserable, she is feeling sad... for no reason! Be a little more alert and aware, and always remember, right or wrong, the person who is in charge has to be listened to.
It happened once when Leon Trotsky was the defence minister in Russia after the revolution.... He was in charge of the whole army and he was the home minister of the whole police and everything.
He went into a party meeting where passes were needed. Of course, he thought, 'There is no need for me to have a pass.' He was the issuing authority so there was no point in having a pass; that looked meaningless. So he simply went there without a pass. But the man who was at the door said, 'Sorry, where is your pass?' For a moment Trotsky felt offended; everybody knew he was Trotsky, he was not somebody unknown. He said, 'You know me.' The guard said, 'I know sir, but where is the pass?' Trotsky said, 'But I issue the pass!' So the guard said, 'Go home and issue a pass, but I need a pass here!'
Trotsky went mad, but when he went home, he cooled down a little and he saw the point, that it was right. He came back, apologised to the man, a very ordinary guard, and the guard's pictures were published all over the country. Great respect was given to him because he had taken a risk.
So always remember: whosoever is in charge has to be looked to, he has to be respected. And if there is something wrong, later on you can talk about it; but never get angry, never get arrogant.
Only then can this commune function, otherwise it will be....
Do you know that all communes die? The longest life of a commune up to now has been three years. I would like this commune to live, and it is going to live, but then the functioning has to be totally different. Those communes die because they have a democratic structure; that's why they die. You cannot have a democratic structure in a commune, otherwise nothing will work.
The commune has to be in a totally different way; it has to be a discipline. Not everybody has to assert themselves, otherwise fights and then cliques will happen; and then people will join together - a few people with Maneesha, a few people with Sheela - and then conflict over who is more powerful will happen. These things will go on and they will destroy the whole thing that I am trying to do; your energy will get involved in those things. They have to be avoided, and I am very alert from the beginning.
So apologise to Maneesha. And if she is wrong, that is my business, I will see to it. Mm? but that is not for you. If sometimes you find that somebody is wrong, just report it to me, but don't react to the person immediately; just report it to me. That's for me to think about.
I would like this commune to function so smoothly that it can become an example. Communes have become very condemned because they start with great enthusiasm, then everything falls flat. It falls flat because of the politics of people; and this is how politics enter. I am very keen that no politics should enter, and the only way is: always look to the person. You should have written a letter to me that this happened. I am always there; it would not have created any trouble. She cried, she is suffering, and you have been sitting there, miserable for no reason at all!
So apologize to her, mm?