We can all become gods....

[Osho explains to a new sannyasin, You are ready for me, and for many more things! Having a new name is significant, because it is my reading of you and it has a message. It is like a seed that I have put in your hearat. Soon you will find many things arising out of this small seed. A name given knowingly, with an insight into your being, can become your whole future.

In the East, names, and particularly sannyas names, are not just labels. How can you label a person? The name can become a map, a guide, a finger pointing to the moon.

Deva Neelamber: divine blue sky....

'Neel' means blue - that is the symbol of depth. And vastness is always deep - the vastness cannot be shallow; only the limited is shallow. How can the unlimited be shallow? When the river is deep it becomes blue. That's why the sky looks blue. In fact it is not: there is no colour in it; it is colourless.

But anything deep gives an appearance of blueness.

Because of this idea in indian mythology we have painted Krishna as blue, which is very rare because blue human beings don't exist! Black human beings are there and white human beings are there and yellow and pink and many shades of colour, but blue human beings don't exist, have never existed.

And Krishna we paint as blue. If you have seen some pictures of krishna that looks very absurd.

Why blue? - just to indicate depth, just to indicate the skyness of his being... that he was as deep as the sky. The blue is just symbolic, it doesn't show reality; it is just a metaphor.

And once there is depth and there is infinity there is divinity. Divinity comes into existence only when there is depth and infinity - then everything is holy, everything is godly.

In the East we don't bother about god as a person - our interest is really very different from the western interest in god. In the West god has just become almost a replica of man. Mm? the bible says god created man in his own image. the truth seems to be just the reverse: man has created god in his own image.

In the East we don't bother about god as a being, as a person, not at all as a human being. Our idea of god is more of godliness rather than of god. the idea is more of quality rather than of an ego.

So the eastern god is not the western idea of god; it is godliness. We can all become gods because we can all become godly.

In the West it is very difficult, mm? - even to say that one is god is very heretical. Christians will never forgive you; they cannot tolerate that. Even Jesus is not god, just the son of god, mm? Only that much they have relaxed their rules for Jesus... not much. But in the East it is not in any way sacrilegious because everything is divine, you are divine, but with the christian idea of god as the creator of the world you are certainly not the creator of the world.

But that is not our idea of god at all. Nobody has created the world; god is not a creator standing aloof. God is not like a painter; god is like a dancer. The world is divine - he is herenow.

In the East we don't use the pronoun 'he' for him, we use 'it', 'that'; we take all personality out of him. Then what is left? - infinity and depth.

So become as infinite as the sky and become as deep as the sky. This is the message.... And meditate on the sky as much as you can, mm? It will come closer - just befriend it.

[The new sannyasin says he has been a 'serious student' of Ken Keyes who wrote 'Handbook to Higher Consciousness' and developed the Living Love method.]

Write to him! He sends his books to me and he seems to be very interested....

Just write to him some time. He should come and be here for a few months, mm? he will enjoy it.

He is a really good man....

That's very good, to be related to him is good. All his 'serious students' are going to come to me sooner or later.

[A sannyasin says he is interested in mime. Osho says mime can be of tremendous benefit and a great way to meditate. If you become absorbed in what you are doing a great silence descends in your being.

Acting helps you to be aware of the great drama that life is; that's what meditation does too. If you know that all is just a drama, nothing disturbs you.... ]

In Japan, when wrestlers fight, this is a ritual - that first they will bow down to each other; it is very symbolic.

The zen explanation is that whether you are defeated or you become victorious does not matter, and you both need each other, you both depend on each other. If you are defeated and the other has become victorious, the other has to bow down to you because without you he could not have been victorious. His victory depends on your defeat so he is dependent on you - he has to be thankful. He cannot take it that this is his victory, he cannot be victorious alone; without you he will be nowhere, so he has to thank you and feel grateful. So even victory does not create an ego-trip. And if you are defeated and you know this is just a game, nothing serious to be worried about - no problem arises.

In Mexico they have been studying some school children. The ancient tradition in Mexico is that the father has to give rewards, toys, things, to every child irrespective of their success or failure in life.

One child has come first in the class, he gets a reward, and the one who has failed also gets one.

And there is no difference - it is irrelevant. That's tremendous insight: it doesn't matter whether you fail or you succeed - all is a game; you are rewarded all the same.

And the psychologists who have been studying this have come to feel that the mexican children are more at ease with life - unworried, non-tense, more relaxed. The civilised child becomes very very tense from the very beginning five years old, six years old - and he carries the whole burden of the earth. He is so tense and so worried and afraid about whether he is going to make it or not.

You have destroyed his childhood and you are creating the poison of ambition. You are making things very serious: if he comes first it is something great, if he comes second he has not been up to the mark, and he will carry that wound always. If a child has not been able to always come first he will carry the inferiority complex, and when the child comes home as a failure nobody even looks at him, everybody's eyes are condemning. We make things unnecessarily serious.

Life should be taken as an acting, so acting is good because in acting you learn how life should be taken. Join the mime group and I will suggest a few other groups....

[A visitor says that he wants to overcome a disease he has - of being cowardly. That we can destroy easily, says Osho; that is not a problem! He asks him if he has done any groups. The visitor replies:

I had hoped that in studying psychology, philosophy, I could find my groups.]

No, that won't help much, mm? The psychology and philosophy that is taught in the universities and colleges is all just humbug, mm? just rotten old crap... nothing worth much. You will know what psychology really is through a few processes - because it is a question of going into your own being, only then do you know how the psyche functions, how the mind really functions. You have to go into your own mind. You cannot read it through a book, and whatsoever the book is going to say will be just superficial. It can say something about your behaviour but it cannot say anything about you because from the outside only behaviour can be watched.

These so-called psychologists go on watching the behaviour of rats and rabbits and this and that, and they go on applying that to human beings. It is very insulting and humiliating: man is not a rat.

In fact, even rats will feel insulted if you study man and apply it to them: they will say that rats are not man... so different.

And what can you study from the outside? A man may be smiling and in the heart he may be carrying deep wounds. Those wounds you will not be able to see, nobody can see them. You can see the smile may be just pseudo, a mask.

The innermost core remains unavailable to the outside spectator. That is the difference between psychology and meditation: meditation takes you deep into your being and makes it possible to see how your mind functions. And to know how your mind functions is to be liberated from it because the very knowing, the very understanding of how it functions - how you get angry, how you are sexually aroused, what really happens inside - starts changing you. When you start seeing it exactly and understanding it, you have a transcendence.

You start looking at it and it becomes far away. It cannot manipulate you any more: the anger will come, it will surround you like smoke, and you will watch it. Sooner or later it will dissipate and will go and you will remain as you were - untouched, uncorrupted by it. Once you have seen that you can simply watch and things come and go and nothing disturbs you, you have come home; you have become centred.

And what about your sannyas?

[The visitor says: I just want to wait, please.]

Wait. It is going to happen within a week - count seven days, mm? That too is part of your cowardice, nothing else!... Otherwise you want it right now, but just the cowardly mind.... Wait, mm? Good!

[A sannyasin says she's been having a lot of headaches lately and difficulty in sleeping. She wakes up in the early hours, is wide-awake and can't get back to sleep for hours. Osho checks her energy.]

Just two or three things....

One is, that on the whole you are going very well, so that may be the cause, mm? You are a miserable type - you enjoy misery. Even when you are not miserable at least you go on keeping the mask of being miserable.

In the day time you are a little more happier so that misery takes revenge in the night, nothing else!

Drop that! That misery does not pay. But you have learned the trick somewhere so you just keep yourself miserable even when you are not. For these few days since you have started doing the tantra group you have been looking very good. That may be the cause: the whole day's relaxation and you have carried the habit of being miserable for long, so that may erupt in the night, that can disturb the sleep. But it will go, nothing to be worried about... nothing to be worried about at all.

It is just a change that is happening in your gestalt, mm? For these two months you have been really good; I have been happy about you for these two months. The tantra group has been of great help to you; it has relaxed many things in your being and you are enjoying it tremendously. Whenever you enjoy something tremendously it makes you happy and one feels worthy and meaningful, significant, one feels as if one is needed, and that has been of great help to you. So that is the reason.

And something is changing inside that can create a little headache or something. So don't take it amiss - these are good indications; they will go.

In the night if you suddenly feel awake, just do a few exhalations from the mouth. Just exhale from the mouth and don't inhale; let the body inhale. So inhalation will be very small, because if you take deep inhalations it will keep you awake longer.

Exhalation is very very helpful for falling into deep sleep. Let the body make small inhalations and you take deep exhalations, and soon you will feel tired... but do it by the mouth. It is almost like yawning when you feel sleepy, you yawn; if you yawn, you will feel sleepy - they go together. The best way to fall in sleep is to start yawning and suddenly you will feel the mechanism starts working.

So if it happens next time, simply lie down on the bed and yawn; enjoy it and just exhale. Within five to seven minutes you will fall asleep.

Just in the interval the change is happening, mm? you are going to become a little happier soon.

And drop this mask - it is not needed. You must have learned it from [your former husband] .

Nothing to be worried about. After one month, tell me, just report to me how things are. And there is no need to be reporting misery - you can report happiness also; nothing is wrong in it!