When the abyss is your home
Deva means divine and himani means coolness - mm? divine coolness. And that is the whole secret of bliss: if one wants to be blissful in existence, one has to be cool. The moment we become hot we lose our centre; the moment we become hot we start moving towards the periphery. The hotter you are, the further away from yourself; the cooler you are, the closer. When it is perfectly cool, utterly cool, you are centred.
So keep it as a key, and whenever you start feeling that you are getting hot about anything - anger, passion, lust, greed, anything - just remember; that very remembrance will suddenly click something in you. Relax and start feeling cool. It is only a question of learning the knack of it.
All the mind moods depend on us - we are the masters. Even when we are working like slaves we are the masters: even being the slave is our choice. So just watch: it is very unconscious - this getting hot, getting feverish. Mm? somebody says something, you start boiling and you are not even aware of it. By the time it comes to the very surface you are hot all over. You become alert - but then it has done the harm already; something inside has burnt. There is no need to be so destructive; each heated state of mind is suicidal, so learn to be cool more and more, mm?
The word 'himani' comes from the same root as himalaya, that's why we call the mountains the Himalayas. They are the coolest and the purest and the most silent existence on the earth.
Inside also there exists a Himalaya, the Himalayas within. There is no need to go to the outside Himalayas if one can move within-wards. Mm? the coolness that is there in the Himalayas is just an outside coolness. Yes, there is a silence and there is peace, but it is only in the circumstance, the moment you come back to the plains it will be lost. But if one goes into the inner himalayas the change is not in the circumstances: the change is in the psychology itself. The change is not outer, it is interior; then you can go anywhere.
There is a zen saying which says 'Even in the fire the man who has attained satori remains cool.'
Even in the fire.... The whole house can catch fire - everything is burning, your body is burning - but still the man who knows his inner world remains cool. Nothing is disturbed at all... not even stirred.
To attain to that is the goal and to be cool is the way.
[A sannyasin says she feels terrific inside and is experiencing a sensation of movement going up and down. Osho checks her energy.]
Everything is perfectly good. Energy is coming up: it will spread by and by all over the body, and when it spreads all over the body in a balanced way you will feel immensely blissful.
In the beginning when it starts coming out of the hara - it comes from just below the navel, two inches below the navel; there is the source of life and death - when it starts coming out of the hara, it is too much, mm? it is unbearably there. One can feel very heavy. One does not know what to do, one feels as if one is going crazy, but by and by it spreads all over the body.
And when it has spread all over the body in equal proportions it gives a new kind of feel, a very orgasmic feel to the body: one feels as if one is making love to the universe. The orgasm continues; then it knows no end.
That's what mystics have called the ecstasy. It is just like sexual orgasm, but sexual orgasm lasts only for a single moment or a few moments at the most. It is like a peak and the moment you have attained it, it is already gone, so in its wake it leaves much frustration, much sadness. Each love act ends in deep sadness: one never really feels so sad as after making love, mm? because the vision, the peak and then suddenly the valley - the contrast.
Ordinarily we go on living in the valley, we are accustomed to it; there is no comparison, it is the only thing that we know. Then the peak suddenly arises. Then you fall back into the valley so it is darker than before. The spiritual ecstasy has the same quality of orgasm but non-temporal, it is not momentary. It is just like breathing continuously for twenty-four hours: one is simply in it.
Very beautiful energy is being released by the hara. Allow it, don't stop it. The mind tends to stop it because it becomes afraid and scared. The mind starts feeling stoned by it, mm? - it is almost as if one is drugged. So don't listen to the mind; help the energy to spread.
And do one thing before you go to sleep every night. When you lie down on the bed, just put your box below the navel, two inches below the navel. Feel me, and just allow the energy to move all over the body - just as your hands are moving.
These are called 'mudras' in yoga. They come out of energy moving into the hands and they have a particular language. Just by the movement of the hand the kind of energy that is inside can be deciphered, because the hand moves only in a particular way when a particular kind of energy is inside.
In India they have developed a perfect science, the language of mudras. That mudra, that particular gesture, happens only in a particular state, otherwise not. So just as they are happening in the hands, they will start happening in the legs, they will start happening in the face, in the eyes.
Every night make it a practice for ten minutes at least to sit or lie down in the bed and allow the whole body to move into orgasm. Let the body have great ecstasy and let it do whatsoever it feels like doing. Don't hinder it even if sometimes it feels very crazy, mm? - because you will start doing contortions of the body, postures of the body. Allow them; nothing is crazy.
And once you have allowed these gestures, these postures, then the energy will start making roots into the body; that's how it makes the roots. Once it has made the roots all gestures will disappear.
Then there is no movement in the body; the energy has moved to every nook and corner.
But things are going perfectly well.
[A sannyasin has difficulty expressing herself so a therapist explains she wants to go back to being a child... to play and be a child. Osho suggests groups.]
And the idea is very good, the feeling to go back and become a child is of great importance. It simply shows that you are trying to relive your past and you are moving backwards to a point from where your growth stopped.
It always happens to everybody. A child grows up to a point, for example, seven years, and then from that time he starts becoming more and more a civilised being, so he loses his natural track. He starts pretending, playing games, showing off. From that time he is never real again.
And whenever through rolfing or primal or encounter or through some understanding attained by yourself you feel that you are false, the desire will arise to go back and become a child of seven so that you can be true again. And from there you can grow again.
So it is a good desire, perfectly good. Allow it....
Something is being released in your being. Allow it; become a child of a few months.
For a few days it will be there and then it will go and you will come back. Then you will come back whole-heartedly to the present. It is a hang-up: something is hooked with the past, it has to be broken. Only you can go and you can break it, nobody else can go for you, because nobody else can go inside you; it is available only to you. Only you can go backwards, reach the point, unhook yourself from that space and flow again. Then you will become really young for the first time.
That may be the reason why, when somebody loves you, you shrink back and cannot totally love somebody, totally trust somebody and go into it whole-heartedly; that may be the reason. Your child inside is very much afraid of love. Maybe people who were around you made it very heavy; many times parents do that. They make their love so conditional: they say, 'Do this, then I will love. Do that, then I will love. If you follow, then we will love, otherwise no love.' So love becomes too much like a bargain to the child and he becomes afraid of love.
So whenever again somebody will love you the idea will arise that now there is going to be some bargain, there is going to be some conditioning, there is going to be some bondage. You will become afraid and you will shrink back - that's possible.
If that happens, how can you flow into love? And without flowing into love, one never lives, one simply drags. So go into it!
[A sannyasin says: I keep telling myself that I've got to just allow things to happen.
Osho checks her energy.]
It is going to happen, mm? and you will be able to allow it. You are getting ready, that's why you are feeling unsure.
In fact you have always been a doer, you have never allowed; this is something new. You have always been a very very strong doer, almost masculine. This is the great change that is making you very unsure: for the first time you are becoming feminine, and with the feminine one becomes fragile.
With the feminine one becomes vulnerable, with the feminine one becomes soft. Your securities, your safeties, will not be working around you any more. They are not needed at all but you will feel unsure. Mm? you have become acquainted with a certain ground and I am trying to take it from beneath your feet.
You have to be left in a vacuum.
[Osho says that tao needs to experience this period of the great doubt - where one has broken bridges with the past but can't see what lies ahead.... ]
But this moment has to be passed... this is part of growth. Once this is passed you will stop hankering for surety and security. And when one stops hankering for security and surety, there is security: the security of insecurity. It is a very very paradoxical state, the security of insecurity.
The security of the secure is nothing, it is just bogus. They believe in the bank account, they believe in the balance, they believe in the house, in the wife, in the children. This security is not very secure.
The security of the secure is not much, it is just a make-believe.
The real security is of the one who has accepted insecurity; now nothing can make him insecure.
Even insecurity itself is totally accepted; now who can take it away?
And that is the whole point of sannyas - to bring you to a point where no security remains but suddenly the hankering for security also disappears. Then there is no fear.
The fear does not arise out of insecurity, it arises out of the longing for security. See the difference clearly: the danger does not arise out of insecurity, the danger arises out of our clinging with the past, the secure. Once that clinging has gone, once you have accepted a fact which is obviously there, that nothing is secure, once this has got deep into your heart, you have swallowed it, digested it, then there is nothing to worry about; suddenly you are secure.
So this miracle happens: the secure people are never secure and those who have accepted insecurity become secure. That is the meaning of all the zen paradoxes when they say 'The river stays and the bridge flows.' Life is really absurd! Those who succeed fail and those who accept failure have succeeded.
Jesus says 'Those who are first here will be the last in my kingdom of god, and those who are the last will be the first.'
This is going to happen.... So you are on the verge... and I am not going to console you, I am not going to support you. I am going to throw you into this abyss because once you accept this abyss there is no more any abyss. Suddenly the abyss is your home.
Things are going perfectly well. It will take a little time but you are getting ready to allow things. Your doer will disappear.
[A sannyasin says she's done three groups here and has been feeling much pain and a sense of dying. She can't go through this feeling, and senses that the breakthrough won't happen in groups....]
I think you should do a few groups more. You will not be able to do it in the groups but groups will make you ready to do it somewhere else, otherwise you will not be able to do it anywhere else.
This has to be understood: sometimes, in fact in the majority of times, the real thing doesn't happen in the group but the group prepares you for it.
The group is an artificial situation, a created situation, but it intensifies everything. It may not happen there because you are so consciously doing it there, but it creates the seed in you. Then one day suddenly out of nowhere it may happen... but without the group it will not happen there either.
So your feeling may be right - it may not happen in the group. To a very few people it happens in the group but groups help it, and then it can happen anywhere. Sometimes, for years people have to work, and then one day not doing anything, just lazying around or lying down in a swimming pool, it happens. But never think that if they were lying there in the swimming pool from the very beginning it would have happened. No! All those things that they did before functioned, brought it to a particular.
point.
It is as when you heat water: up to ninety-nine degrees it is not evaporating, at one hundred degrees it evaporates. Up to ninety-nine degrees it was not evaporating, it will evaporate only at a particular degree, but these groups will bring you to a ninety-nine-degree point; they will bring you closer and closer to the happening. Sometimes it happens in a group too... but very rarely. But every kind of group prepares you; it gives you a little heat: you go one degree, two degrees more into it, but everything helps finally.
If you don't want to do groups there is no need to, but my suggestion is that if you can do a few more groups it will be helpful. Even this insight has come through the group - that it will not happen through the group. This is a good insight... it may be true!....
It is getting closer, mm? Before death happens one has to get ready for it.
[A journalist, who came to do an article on Osho, has decided to take sannyas.]
Good! I was waiting and waiting for you!...
I recognise my people when they come to me. And it is very natural to hesitate, very natural to think and waver; it is very natural to be a little scared, afraid. These are all natural things and they are good. Because once you have wavered, thought about it again and again, and in spite of the wavering and in spite of the fear you decide, it is going to stay because you have seen all that wavering already; nothing more can be there.
People who take the jump sometimes without thinking what they are going to do start repenting later on, start thinking how to escape, how to get out of it. They are not very reliable people; a responsible person always thinks. Thinking is not necessarily negative; it brings you to a positive conclusion too.
Rightly applied it simply makes you aware of the whole situation, and when you decide, seeing the whole situation, the decision is going to be more valid.... You have looked all around, you have thought in every possible way. Yes, there are pros and there are cons but you have looked into them. Now nothing is left, nothing new can disturb you.
And something very essential is going to happen to you through sannyas. Because it is going to happen, the idea has been haunting you from the very moment you came. Your unconscious has felt something. The conscious takes time. The unconscious is intuitive - it jumps without a process, so it concludes immediately; but the conscious mind follows a little bit slowly. It has to be more cautious... and it is good.
Raise your hands and close your eyes and just feel as if you are a tree in the wind. Let the wind blow, let the wind sway you. Don't hold yourself: just become like a small, small, innocent tree, with no mind at all.
Satya means truth or true and ananda means bliss - true bliss. And there are many untrue blisses in the world which only appear to be blissful from the distance: illusions, mirages. The closer you come, the more frustrated you feel. Once you have become really close, the mirage disappears and again the old mind starts looking for another mirage somewhere else.
The bliss that is in the future is illusory; the bliss that becomes available right now this very moment is true. All that is true is in the present; all that is untrue is either in the past or in the future. The future and the past are both lies: one is no more, one is not yet. Only this moment is all there is, so never be deceived by the future.
And there are only two types of people in the world: a few people are deceived by the past - their golden age is always in the past; and a few people are deceived by the future - their utopia is in the future... and both are deceived. There are only very rare, fortunate people who are not deceived by the past or by the future... who live in the moment like the lilies in the field, who don't think of the morrow, who are utterly satisfied with this moment whatsoever it brings. Yes, sometimes it brings sadness but to be satisfied with sadness is blissful. That may look paradoxical but it is true.
If you can be contented with your sadness, suddenly you will see a bliss arising out of it. Bliss has nothing to do with happiness or unhappiness, bliss has something to do with contentment. If you are contented even with unhappiness, there will be bliss; if you are discontented even with happiness, there will be un-bliss, there will be misery.
So bliss is not equivalent to happiness, bliss is the attitude of contentment. Whatsoever is...
sadness, it's okay. If there is unhappiness it's okay, one accepts it. What else can one do? - one is helpless. Out of that acceptance, suddenly a great bliss arises. That bliss comes only by being true.
We have been taught to be untrue in a thousand and one ways: we have been taught how to wear masks, how to have false faces, how to act, how to play - all games. And because of those games and those lies, we become unavailable to bliss. Bliss is whenever we are true, whenever we are authentic, whenever we are not pretending, whenever we are absolutely the way we are and there is no hide-and-seek game going on.
If one can be just the way one is, suddenly there is benediction, there is bliss, there is great blessing.
That is the meaning of 'satyananda': bliss is through being true, through being authentic.