Darshan 21 July 1978

Prem means love, sadhano means on the path of. It is a very pregnant word - it can mean the form, the practice, the discipline, and all the three are involved. Love is a path to be followed, to be lived.

Love is a practice, an art to be imbibed, a knack to be grown. And love is also a discipline.

The root meaning of the word 'discipline' means capacity to learn, and only love knows how to learn because love is humble, because love is empty, spacious. It allows things to happen, it allows things to come in. It is a beckoning, an open door, an invitation... it is trust. Hence there is a possibility for love to know; all other knowing is mere knowledge. Only when love knows is it real knowing, and no knowledge can be a substitute for real knowing. Knowledge is a dead thing; one can accumulate it very easily. It is cheap too and does not change you at all; you remain the same. It is an addition to whatsoever you are.

Love transforms. It takes you into new spaces, into new realities. And it is not information. It is an encounter with reality. It is direct, immediate, with no barrier - not even the barrier of words. Nothing exists, when you are in love, between you and the one you love; nothing exists between the two.

When nothing exists between two lovers there is a meeting, an overlapping of consciousness, a disappearance of boundaries, a merger; and that merger is knowing. It can happen between two human beings. It can happen between one human being and one animal. It can happen between one human being and one plant. It can happen between any two beings. If love is there it can happen anywhere.

So remember: love is going to be your path, is going to be the art you have to cultivate. It is an art.

Nobody is born with it. Everybody is born with the potential but the art has to be learned. It is just as everybody is born with feet but the dance has to be learned; everybody is born with a throat but singing has to be learned. We come only with the raw possibilities - those raw possibilities have to

be polished. Much has to be changed, much has to be dropped. We are like seeds: all that has to happen has to happen. We come only as a blank canvas; the painting has to evolve.

So let love be your art to be imbibed, let love be your discipline, and then nothing else is needed.

Then one has come to know all that religion is about.

Chaitanya means consciousness, deva means god. Consciousness is god. To be more conscious is to be more divine, so the only thing that has to be done in life is to become more conscious. That's the way to discover god within you and without you.

Man lives almost asleep. We wake up, but not really. Our inner state remains that of sleep for twenty- four hours a day. Sometimes we sleep with closed eyes and sometimes with open eyes. Sleep is the ordinary state of the human mind. Only rarely does consciousness happen. In very strange situations, in very dangerous situations, just flickering moments of consciousness come, otherwise man goes on living like a robot.

This is the original sin, because we have the capacity to become a Buddha. The word 'buddha' means one who is absolutely aware; not even a small corner in his consciousness, in his inner world, is dark. All is light, and only light that can function inwards is that of consciousness.

Concentrate on that. Do things more consciously. If you are walking, walk very consciously. as if at each step there is danger, as if at each step there is death, as if you are surrounded by enemies and from any corner the enemy will jump and kill you. Sometimes walk like that and you will be surprised at how much light starts growing inside.

That's why I like Friedrich Nietzsche's statement 'Live in danger.' His reasons and my reasons are different but we agree on the statement. His reason is that danger gives you sensation, thrill. My reason is that danger gives you consciousness, awareness, alertness.

Being initiated into sannyas is to be initiated into a world which is not of sleep. You will be doing the same things but with a different quality. You will. walk through the same doors, you will eat the same food, you will live with the same woman, you will do the same work - nothing on the outside is to be changed at all, but your inner quality.... You will be more focussed, you will live moment to moment, '. you will bring your whole attention into each act. , Whatsoever you are doing will be your devotion, your dedication. And suddenly one finds that a great flame has arisen in oneself.

The colour orange is just a symbol for that flame, that bursting of you, the flame of consciousness, and that's the meaning of your name.

Deva means divine, unmano means no-mind. That is the ultimate state of consciousness - the state of no-mind. The mind means thought, thought process. When all thought process has dissolved and there is no ripple of thought in your consciousness, that mirrorlike quality - utterly silent, with no movement, no desire, no past, no future - is called the state of no-mind.

Consciousness is, but the mind is no more, because minding is no more. The mind is a feverish state; it is excitement. Just as the sea is disturbed, so the consciousness is disturbed - many waves and many winds. When all the winds have disappeared all the waves are gone and the ocean is absolutely still, that is the moment of unmano, no-mind, and that is the moment of truth. That's the moment when one comes to know god and one comes to know oneself - and they are the same thing. To know oneself and to know god are not two things. God is your interiority. God is the interiority of all - mine, yours and everybody's.

If the mind is there it keeps you continuously engaged at the exterior; it keeps you occupied at the surface. When it is no more there you simply relax into your source. Nothing to keep you occupied at the surface, where else can you go? One falls into deep rest. That rest makes you aware of who you are, and in that very awareness you have known all the secrets of life; all the mysteries are revealed to you.

This has to be the goal. All the meditations are methods towards it. Remember continuously: the mind has to be dropped into no-mind. One day it happens. And when it happens, life has happened to you, god has happened to you, all has happened. Then looking back, one cannot believe what kind life one was living. It was a dream life - it had no substance to it. But one can understand that it was dream life, maya, illusion, only when one is awakened. Otherwise, in a dream the dream looks real. Only in the morning when you are awake do you laugh at the whole nonsense and at how afraid you had become, how involved you had become. And by the morning all is gone - good dreams, bad dreams; dreams of being a sinner and dreams of being a saint, all disappear. The real man of religion is neither a sinner nor a saint. He simply is, indefinable. His is-ness has no attributes to it. He is simply awake.

Once Buddha was asked 'Who are you?' He said 'I am awake.' It looks as if his answer is not to the point, because the questioner is asking 'Who are you?' and Buddha says 'I am awake.' He is not talking about himself at all. He is saying 'In one dream I was an elephant, in another dream I was a tiger, in another dream I was a man, in another dream I was a woman. I have seen all the dreams - now I am simply awake. All those dreams are gone and I cannot show you my identity, because all identities are dream identities.'

Unmano is your real identity - no-mind.

[A sannyasin says she has a problem with waking up at three in the morning when her mind becomes very active, and this disturbs her for the rest of the day. Osho checks her energy.]

Do one thing: go to bed a little later - twelve - and everything will settle. Don't go to bed before twelve; go at twelve and there will be no problem. You aregoing a little too early for your time.

Everybody has its own clock, and if you go according to the body clock, everything feels smooth, relaxed, calm; if you go against the clock then things feel difficult.

There are people who are night people, and you are one. The later you go, the better, and you will feel very relaxed the whole day. Your best time is the night time; your morning will never be so good as your night. You will feel more fresh, more alive. You can do many more things - you can sing, dance, play music, read; and there is no hurry. Twelve has to be the limit - never go before twelve; twelve-thirty is okay, one is okay, but not before twelve. And then this habit will disappear automatically. Your sleep is complete by that time so if you go to sleep again, the second sleep is always troubled with dreams, superficial, hazy. You are half awake, half asleep, and that disturbs you the whole day, that lingers.

After a good sleep, you get up fresh, clear-cut, but if you go to sleep again, even for a few minutes, then you will never feel good the whole day. Something will remain lingering, because you started a process again which remained incomplete. And the body is a mechanism; one has to be very alert about the mechanism.

My feeling about your body is that your energy is the night energy. There are morning people and there are evening people. People can be divided into these two categories very clearly. There are people who are so beautiful in the morning but by the evening they become dull, insipid, lifeless. In the early morning they can get up and they will feel very good, but they cannot remain awake late in the night. And there are people who can go on dancing ans singing and go to clubs and movies and watch tv and the later they go to sleep, the better.

Your energy will be better used. Just try this and things will settle. Nothing to be worried about.

[A sannyasin asks: When I took my sannyas darshan... you said that something would happen, in a matter of days.... Very many things have happened, but I wondered if you would want to explain it a little bit more to me.]

No, many things have happened, mm? - more than I had expected - and the time has been used beautifully. No need to go into analysis. And whatsoever has happened will go on growing wherever you are; many more things will be happening.

Analysis always becomes an obstacle. There are a few processes which happen only if you don't understand them. If you understand them, the very understanding stops them, because understanding is of the mind and the happening, all happenings, are of the heart. Once the mind starts trying to understand - it dissects, analyses, categorises, conceptualises - it disturbs the whole heart process.

For example, if you fall in love and you start trying to understand what love is, one thing is certain:

the phenomenon that was happening will disappear. You may understand many things about love but love will disappear. You may understand its chemistry, its biology, its physiology - you will understand everything - and by the end of your life you will have become a very knowledgeable person about love, but one thing you will have missed: you will have missed love!

When love happens it is better not to try to understand it - let it happen. Live it, enjoy it, celebrate it, but don't try to understand it. These are things which grow in darkness, like the roots of a tree.

You should not pull the tree up to see the roots, to see from where life is coming up, from where the juices are flowing. If you do that you have killed the tree. Enjoy the flowers but don't bring the roots to the light. In the sunlight they die. They cannot be exposed to sunlight; they need the dark womb of the soil. They have to remain hidden. They need intimacy, privacy. Make them public and you have killed them.

There are many things which can simply be killed by making them public. If you love a woman, just kiss her in the marketplace and something sacred has been destroyed. Something that was intimate and private and which could have grown in privacy, you have made public.

Have you seen 'Playboy' pictures of naked women? How dead they look! If you look deep into their eyes they look as if they are made of stones, stony. Their faces are inhuman; they have been dehumanised. They have become a public thing. They are exposed to the cameras. Their body is no more a sacred phenomenon. It is not being shared in love - it has become a commodity; it is a thing. Something has died. All those pornographic pictures are ugly: I have never come across a single pornographic picture which is beautiful. Roots have been brought to sunlight and something has died. Those women look as if they are without souls. The mystery is no more there.

So don't try to analyse these experiences that have started happening. Enjoy them, nourish them, feel grateful that god has become gracious towards you, that you are under the impact of grace, and many more things will happen. But never analyse.

If you are feeling happy, feel happy; don't start thinking 'What is happiness?' otherwise you will destroy it.

[A sannyasin had written to Osho about an experience she had since she was small, of getting bigger and then very small. Osho checks her energy.]

Very good. It is one of the ancient-most meditation methods. You need not be worried about it. Just come close to me. Turn your back towards me, raise your hands.

Perfectly good. Start doing it deliberately. Every night before you go to sleep, first go into it. Grow as big as you can, contain the whole world in you, and then become as small as you can so that you cannot contain even an atom.

It is a great meditation that is happening naturally to you. Very rarely it happens that a meditation comes naturally to someone. That simply means that in your past life somewhere you had practised it and it has become so engrained that your consciousness has carried it even to this life, although you don't remember anything about it. But it is beautiful.

I have talked about it somewhere - you have not read? I have talked a lot about it. It is very powerful.

One can simply disappear, because when you become very huge the ego disappears; when you become very small again the ego disappears. The ego can exist only with your size. It cannot exist that big - it becomes so dilute, so spread over, so thin, that it disappears. And then when you are so small that nothing can be contained in it, how can the ego be contained in it? Both are points of infinity, between these two infinities is man... and both infinities are good to touch again and again.

Slowly slowly you will lose all idea of your size, and that is truth.

The body has size, shape, form; we are formless. We are the smallest of the small and the biggest of the big. That is our true identity. So from tonight start this deliberately and joyously, and after two months report to me.