Darshan 7 September 1977

[Osho gives sannyas to a baby who throws the mala off. Then he tells the mother: And always treat him with great respect. Each child brings divine fragrance into the world and each child should be treated as a god or a goddess.

The following morning Osho spoke about him in discourse.]

Just last night, a sannyasin came with her small boy for sannyas. I looked at the boy and there was Adam in the boy's eyes. He wanted to say no; his whole body was saying no! And I loved the boy!

When I put the mala on his head, he threw it! It has to be so - the boy has some spirit, Adam's spirit.

He is saying, 'How dare you?! I am myself. I can't be defined by anybody else.' It was not in so many words - he has no words - but it was in his gesture, his reluctant look, his withdrawing of the body, his throwing away of the mala. That's what Adam did; he had to do it to be himself. And it was a design from god to provoke him, because unless he was provoked he would never have become grown up....

When this child threw away the mala I loved him as I have never loved any other small children! He has some courage... and so small but such big courage. So tiny, but ready to fight with the whole world!

And sannyas is nothing but your desire to participate with me, your desire to be together with me...

your desire to dissolve. It is a let-go. From this moment you will not be the old; from this moment you will not be able to shelter in the past. Sannyas takes away the past and makes the possibility for the future. When the past is too much in the mind, there is no space for the future. And the mind is nothing but the past. We are so encumbered by the past that there is no possibility for any new

thing to happen. The old has to go for the new to happen. So sannyas is a death and a rebirth. In the same moment both happen: on one side death, on another side rebirth.

Prem means love, hashya means laughter - love laughter. And laughter is nourishment to love; without laughter love dies very soon. Love cannot grow in the soil of seriousness. The moment love becomes serious, it is no more love; it is a corpse. It says something about the past - maybe it has been there in the past, but it is no more. The breath has left it; the soul has flown.

When you become serious love becomes duty, and duty is as far away from love as it can be. Even hate is very close; duty is even farther away than hate because hate is warm, as warm as love, and duty is cold, as cold as death.

Love breathes through laughter. When love remains playful, a fun, a joy, it grows. It can grow to infinity, but the whole way has to be travelled in laughter. And to remain in laughter many things have to be understood.

First: love should be without any expectations; otherwise laughter dies. When you expect, frustration comes in. Nobody can fulfill your expectations, and there is nobody who needs to fulfill them. They come out of a mad, neurotic mind. If somebody fulfills them then too love disappears. Then the other becomes a necessity, a need, a possession - a valuable possession but a possession all the same.

If the other does not fulfill them, then there is frustration... as if the other is cheating. If the other goes on fulfilling your demands, then by and by you tend to forget the sacredness of the other. Then he becomes a thing to be used. It is comfortable, convenient, but there is no more celebration.

If he does not fulfill your expectations - which is more possible because he has his own way of life to live... He is not obliged to fulfill them. He loves you but he does not love your demands, your expectations; he does not love your neuroses. In fact, if he really loves you he will help you to get out of your neurotic demands. If he does not help you to get out of your neurotic demands he is helping you to remain pathological. Then the relationship is ill.

There is more possibility that the other will not be able to fulfill. Then there is frustration and one feels cheated and laughter disappears. If the other fulfills expectations, laughter disappears; if he does not, laughter disappears. It becomes a routine, dull affair... and when love is dull, life is dull.

When you become accustomed to love and you know what is going to happen, it becomes a routine, predictable; it is no more of any value. Love lives only when it remains unpredictable; one never knows what is going to happen. When nothing can be taken for granted, not even for a single moment, when one can allow and one can accept that this is going to happen, when the next moment remains open with no possibility of predicting, then there is laughter because there is constant surprise.

One should only pray to god for one thing: help me to remain constantly in surprise. Let me be surprised every day, every moment of my life. Then there is laughter, then there is joy. In joy and in laughter, love grows - that is the right soil for love.

My approach is that love grows in laughter, and if love and laughter come to a meeting point, to a synthesis, that happens automatically. If they both go together for long, remain intimate with each other, soon the distinction is lost; they merge into each other. And when love and laughter merge, there is prayer - prayer is born. Prayer is the alchemical transformation of love and laughter. Prayer can never be serious, because it is out of love and out of laughter.

Prayer can only be playful. That's why jesus says 'Unless you are like small children you will not enter into my kingdom of god.' And these are the two things in small children: they are loving... for no reason at all; they are simply loving. And they have laughter.

So this is going to be your name and a message for you - to be loving and be laughing.

[A sannyasin says about his girlfriend: She is a queen. She's made me feel like a king. I don't feel like I deserve it.]

That's a good arrangement.... Everybody is a king and everybody is a queen, because every human being is so valuable. It is not a question of deserving - one is born a queen or a king - but the society creates the idea that first you have to deserve... a wrong notion. The society creates the idea that you have first to become worthy; then you can be - that's absolutely nonsense.

Worthy or non-worthy, that is not the point at all. One is born a king, one is born a queen. That is our intrinsic nature. You cannot do anything to improve upon it and you cannot do anything to disqualify yourself. That's how, in love, one starts feeling very high. Because love accepts you as you are with no conditions, with no strings attached, that's why love is such a fulfillment. You need not deserve it; it comes as a gift.

And I am not saying to become arrogant about it. I am not saying to start feeling, 'Yes, I am the king.' And I am not saying to start creating a kind of humility - that you don't deserve it. Both are ego standpoints - arrogance and humility.

When she makes you feel like a king, remember that every beloved makes every lover feel like a king. This is nothing personal! In every love affair that happens. It has to happen, otherwise the affair is not there. If the woman cannot make you feel like a king she has not loved you, and if you cannot make her feel like a queen, you have not loved her.

It is love that creates the king and the queen. Wherever love happens suddenly you have immense value, intrinsic value - no question of deserving. And in fact, if you go deep into it, it is not that she is making you a king or you are making her a queen; it is love that is making you both kings and queens.

Otherwise some day, she can take it away. If it is she who is making you a king, then sooner or later you will start feeling dependent because you will start feeling afraid. Without her you will not be a king and without you she will not be a queen. It can become a very great strategy to manipulate each other. Without you she will be an ordinary woman; without her you will be an ordinary man.

And who wants to be an ordinary man once you have known that you are a king? But your kingship will depend on her.... She has the veto power. She can go against it, she can vote against it.

So remember always: it is not she and it is not you. It is something greater than both of you - it is love! It is the love climate. It is as when the spring comes and trees start blooming and the birds start singing and there is joy on the earth. It is love, the spring, the climate of love that suddenly makes you and her start feeling.... It is the god of love that speaks through you and speaks through her.

But never for a single moment think that she is making you a king. Otherwise soon you will start being afraid of her. She can take it back; then where are you?...

Mm, that has to be understood, otherwise soon fear comes in every relationship; fear is lingering just by the side of love. And the reason is that love makes you feel so good that naturally a fear comes. Is it possible to be in such a good state forever ? Will it be tomorrow also ? Will you be able to feel so happy and turned on tomorrow too?

The fear comes because love gives you a peak, and the higher you go on the peak, the deeper the valley looks. Love gives you a light and the darkness looks more dark than ever, in contrast. And fear arises: if this light is gone, then? Then people start clinging to each other. You will not like her to go and she will not like you to go. And soon things are dull and dead - and you have killed them.

Because there are a few things which cannot be caught; love is one of those few things. You cannot hold it in your fist; it dies.

And because of the fear one starts holding love. One becomes frightened; one may lose the woman, one may lose the man... then? Then you will be again in your ordinary rut, and one doesn't want to go back to that slum, that darkness, that cloudy state. One has seen the palace, one has lived in the palace. It is very difficult ....

So ordinarily the mind and the logic says to grab hold of the woman, grab hold of the man. Make every possible effort so that he cannot escape. Make him unfree; make him more and more dependent. But then you have killed love; then already love is a memory. Then you are stuck together; you are no more friends - you have become enemies.

Remember, it is love - not she, not he; it is love. Whenever there is love you will be a king. And then you are free - because it is a question of love; it does not depend on her. Whenever there is love you will be a king; whenever there is not love you will be a beggar. It is love that gives you the glory.

Yes, the love has come through her window; it can come through any other window. It can simply shower on you without anybody. It simply needs understanding - that it is love, not the person. The person is instrumental.

Then you are not imprisoning the person. Love cannot be imprisoned and there is no need to imprison it.

Love is your song - you can sing it any time. It is like breathing. Nobody is going to take it away from you; nobody can take it away from you.

So drop that idea from the very beginning. I saw your letter and you had written in it that she is a jewish tantra queen. I thought that [man] will get into trouble! Queens and kings can be a great dangerous trip because kings are always captives of queens and queens are captives of kings!

Don't become a captive, and don't make her a captive! Let love flow - let love flow in freedom. Give it as much space as possible. Give it all that you can, and don't be worried - because it is something in you; it is your fragrance. Good good!

[A sannyasin describes some experiences which scared her during Dynamic meditation, she felt like she was dying... ]

Everybody gets scared when things really start happening. When they don't happen people ask why they are not happening; when they happen they get scared. The reason is there.

When something really happens, this is how the mind looks at it. If you are sitting silently and something happens from the beyond, from the blue, the first fear arises that you are not in control of it. It is coming, nobody knows from where. The first fear arises because you are not in control of it...

and we have been taught to always be in control. Control gives a kind of safety.

It is as if you are driving a car and suddenly it goes out of control. Mm? you want to go thirty miles per hour and it is going one hundred miles an hour. Then you will get scared: what is happening?

You go on pushing the brake and nothing works. The car is simply going one hundred miles per hour.... Fear will come in. It is beyond you; now you cannot control it. Where will it land you? It is as if you are flying in an aeroplane and all the engines suddenly stop. Now everything is beyond your control and you start falling from thousands of feet up, slowly slowly, and you cannot do anything!

That's how it is.

When something comes from the beyond, even a small glimpse, you will feel it is beyond your control. You feel scared; you want to remain in control. You want it to happen but you wanted to remain in control too - and it cannot happen with your control; it happens only when you are not in control. When you are not in control, god is in control.

That's the meaning of trust. That's why without trust, nobody can go deep. That is the meaning of sannyas - that these scary spaces will come; then you will have to trust me. And you will have to trust me illogically, because there is no proof! This man may be right, he may be wrong - who knows? How can you know without going into it ? You will only know when you have gone into it, but that is not the point. First the question is: how to go into it? How to trust this man?

So the fear, the first fear arises because it is something beyond your control.

The second fear arises when you go a little deeper and everything is functioning perfectly well; nothing is going wrong. Nothing ever goes wrong, nothing has ever gone wrong. When you see you are completely silent and everything is going perfectly well - trees are growing, birds are singing, planes are flying, trains are running... The world is going perfectly well without anything on your part; you are not doing anything and everything is going perfectly well. You are breathing, your heart is beating, blood is circulating - without you? You are not doing anything! And we have been trained to be doers, great doers, always doing something, so we have a wrong notion that without us everything will stop.

So the second fear comes when you go a little deeper. Suddenly you see the stupidity of the ego - that there is no need for anybody to do anything; things are going perfectly well without you! That

comes like a shock: without you everything is going perfectly well? So you were not needed in the first place; you were not a necessity? You were unnecessarily posing yourself?

The ego falls flat; that is the second fear. And the third fear comes at the last - when you are just entering into the very nucleus of the phenomenon, are at the very centre. Suddenly you see that you are not separate; you are one with the whole. It feels like utter death. Zen people call it 'the great death'. The last fear comes, and one starts rushing away from it, one tries to escape from it.

These are the three points at which the master is needed. So whenever you feel afraid, just remember me and relax!

[A visitor says: I feel that I don't have a soul.]

That's perfectly right - nobody has ordinarily. But to know it is a great step towards it. If you feel that you don't have a soul, this is the beginning of a soul. People who don't know it are really in bad shape: they go on believing they have souls and they have nothing. This is the right approach.

Nobody is born with a soul: the soul has to be created. The whole life is an experiment to create a soul. It is not something given to you; it is something you have to discover. At the most it is just a potentiality, but unless it becomes actual it is non-existential. You can have a soul - that's possible - but it doesn't exist yet.... But I can help!

If you are really interested, you can have a soul!

[The visitor says: I don't know yet.]

Whether you are interested or not in having a soul? Mm mm... that too is very good; that is being true and honest.... Do a few groups! That will be very helpful, mm? You will have little glimpses of the soul. And whenever the desire for sannyas arises, come back. It is on the way! It may be just waiting in your hotel room! Mm? Good!

[A sannyasin says he feels very strongly to go and learn Kriya yoga... and is it right for him. Osho says: You can go and do it.... That you should not ask because if I say it is not right, it will create trouble for you. You have the desire, so, right or wrong, go into it... waste a few days. Don't be worried. If you want to go and have a little trip, nothing to be worried about. It will be just a wastage of time and nothing else, mm?]

[A sannyasin says I feel as though I see the positive and negative to everything; I see both sides of dichotomies. I move as though I were mad in a way, and it's very frightening to me.... And yet you know that I love you.]

Mm mm, that's there. That's your only hope!

This ambiguity is natural, so the first thing to be understood is that it is to be accepted as natural.

Don't make a problem out of it. In fact it is a good sign that one is becoming perceptive, look at it in that way.

Each thing has the positive and the negative to it. When you are not very perceptive you see only one part. The other is there but you don't see it so you don't feel ambiguous. The other is there and you will see it one day, but there is a basic built-in mechanism in the mind that allows you to see only one at a time. So when you hate a man, you hate; when you love, you love. But you don't see both together - that you hate and love the same man. It is a built-in biological mechanism so that you can remain in a comfortable state.

If the mind becomes more perceptive - that's what is happening, and that's what should happen to everybody. It is a growth. When you become more perceptive, you immediately see both, the negative and the positive. It is a good sign that your consciousness now has a bigger vision, that it has broken a built-in mechanism of seeing only one thing at a time. Naturally, to see one thing at a time is more comfortable because you can choose easily. There is no dichotomy to it. There is no question of choice; there is only one thing.

When you become more perceptive and your vision is bigger and you see both the sides together, you start feeling ambiguous: you cannot choose this, you cannot choose that. Now you have to learn one thing - and that is choicelessness. Let both be there; there is no need to choose.

This itch to choose has to be dropped now. This itch is okay when you only see one. But when you can see both then this constant urge to choose will create misery for you. And you will not be able to choose because you see both the points and they are fifty-fifty.

That's how it is: it is fifty percent darkness and fifty percent light; it is fifty percent hatred and fifty percent love. Not even a single percent more to this side or to that; it is completely balanced - negative and positive in balance. That's how existence is in balance. Life and death balance, otherwise one would have won by now. Either life would have become victorious and death would have disappeared, or death would have become victorious and life would have disappeared. But both are equal energies; there is no way for either to win - they both balance.

So now you have to drop the itch to choose; that is your work now. There is no need to choose. The negative is there, the positive is there - let it be so. Et is how it should be. You remain choiceless. In your choicelessness ambiguity will disappear, because ambiguity is arising not because the negative and positive are there but because you want to choose.

For example, two women are standing there. If you are not interested in choosing there is no ambiguity. Two or two thousand women may be there but if you don't want to choose, if you are not interested in women, there is no problem. Once you want to choose, then the problem arises - this woman or that? And if they are equally beautiful then the dichotomy; then you will be tom apart.

What to do? Where to go? Wherever you go you will feel wrong. If you choose this you will miss the other; if you choose the other you will miss this. Either way you are going to be in frustration.

So ambiguity is not arising because the positive and the negative are seen together. The ambiguity is arising because of an old habit: to choose. You have come to a new vision; you can see both together. Now you have to learn a new discipline of choicelessness. That means - let them both be there! There is no need to choose. Things will settle on their own; you need not settle them. For example about your love affair....

Now you are ambiguous: to choose this or to choose that ? There is no need to choose; let things settle themselves. What do you think? - that if you don't choose things won't settle? Things will settle. Something is going to happen... things always happen. It is not that we do and that's why they happen; they simply happen. We unnecessarily take the trouble of doing. Even if we don't do anything something is going to happen. Life automatically goes on balancing itself.

Albert Einstein used to keep his letters for one month; then he would answer them. So thousands of letters would collect. Somebody asked him what the point of it was. He would have to answer them anyway, so why not finish them when they come? Why go on collecting them?

He said, 'But there is a point in it. Out of one hundred, ninety-nine need not be answered. When one month has passed they have answered themselves. Only one remains; I can answer that. If I answer letters every day then naturally I have to answer all! Just two, three weeks, four weeks waiting and the letter has answered itself.'

If he had told this to me I would have told him, 'You wait one year and that one will also be.... Why bother? You have learned a secret - use it!'

Try this, this time while you are here. No need to choose; become choiceless. And whatsoever happens happens; whatsoever happens is good. Let things happen rather than trying to do, and you will be surprised that all ambiguity disappears. It is a by-product of the chooser's mind, the choosing mind, that creates ambiguity. Otherwise there is no dilemma. Negative and positive are perfectly balancing in life.

And it is the same about me: one part resists, one part is ready to surrender. Let both parts be there. Simply tell them 'You do whatsoever you want to do; you settle among yourselves. Let me alone! I am not interested this way or that; you settle it yourselves.' One day you will suddenly see that those warring parts have disappeared - and not because of your choice. Then there is beauty, and then there will be a totally new kind of relationship with me which will not be of resistance and which will not be of surrender. And that will be higher than surrender.

If you surrender to me fighting with your resistant part, it will not be surrender. You will have to do it, and a surrender done is not much of a surrender. The resistant part will lie down there fallow in your unconscious, and will wait for its time to take revenge. And there will be a thousand and one moments. One day you are annoyed with me. I have said something and that has hurt you; I have not agreed with you, or something or other.... I have hit you hard, I have pricked your ego or something, and that moment the resistant part will come up and he will say, 'I was telling you from the very beginning.... Escape from this place!' With vengeance that part will come up, and all surrender will disappear.

If you follow the resistant part the same will happen again - you can escape. But the other part is repressed; it will wait. Back in California you will start remembering me more and more.

My suggestion is: there is no need. Let both be there - you be the third! Why bother? Tell them, 'You wrestle amongst yourselves and you decide, and whosoever wins is perfectly okay.' Nobody ever wins. If you don't choose, by and by they come closer, closer, closer, and become one. And you remain high, because you are not choosing; you remain a watcher on the hills. And when they

meet together in deep balance, harmony, then there will be a totally new kind of relationship. In fact, that's what I call surrender.

So my surrender and your surrender are different. Your surrender is against resistance, and my surrender is when there is no resistance; not even the need to surrender is there. Because the very need depends on resistance. You want to surrender because there is resistance. And you want to surrender; that's why there is resistance. They continue. You can become split between these two.

There is no need. This is how schizophrenia is created, this is how the whole earth is schizophrenic:

always choosing, choosing, choosing. You need not be worried.

And let this be your very fundamental insight... about everything. Just for one year, don't choose.

The world will not stop - nothing stops. I have not chosen for twenty-five years. Nothing stops; things go so smoothly and so perfectly.

Once you have learned the knack of not choosing then there is nothing else to learn. Everything settles on its own accord, and then there is great beauty because there is no violence to any part.

They have dissolved into each other on their own. And the negative and the positive have a pull towards each other; they are attracted towards each other. They are like man and woman: they can meet, they can merge. And when they have met and merged a new totality arises.

That totality is what I call surrender. It is not against resistance; it is not for surrender. It has nothing to do with being against and for. In fact the dualities have disappeared into each other and you are freed from dichotomy. But the beginning: to have that freedom is choicelessness.

Krishnamurti's insistence on choicelessness is particularly for this reason. That is the most potential method to destroy schizophrenia. Don't choose - let things be. And while you are here just let things be. It is going to happen. Good.

[Another sannyasin asks: Don't you have to choose effort, Osho?]

No, nothing... one has to choose nothing. One has to allow. If effort is coming, allow it! If it is not coming then the question of choice arises. If you are feeling like dancing, then dance. If you are not feeling like dancing, don't dance! Whatsoever you are feeling, let it be... in that moment. If you are feeling two oppositions simultaneously - for example, in a moment you are feeling that one part wants to dance, another part doesn't want to dance - then just stand between the two and watch.

Don't do anything, because there is nothing to do. Let them decide, let them meet together and let them become decisive; then you move.

[The sannyasin says: I'm a lazy man.]

Perfectly good! I am a guru for lazy men! Don't be worried - you have found the right guru. I am the laziest guru around the world!