Darshan 15 September 1978
Anand Phulo. Anand means bliss, phulo means flowering - flowering of bliss. Bliss is a seed - we bring it with us, but very few people are good gardeners. They live their whole lives and the seed remains there; it never comes to bloom. The potential remains potential, never becomes actual.
That's what misery is: not to be that which one is destined to be.
The rose bush will be miserable if no roses bloom on it. It will be very sad. When the roses bloom, it dances. It has come to this fulfillment. It has shared its fragrance with the world. It has offered its soul to God. It has sung its song. Now it can die... with joy, with celebration in the heart. Life has been a benediction. The target was not missed.
But millions of people live and die never knowing who they were meant to be. They are rose bushes without roses, hence they look so sad. They somehow drag; their lives are a kind of burden. They go on doing things because they have to do. They fulfill their duties but there is no festivity. They live mechanically, robotlike.
To be a sannyasin means renouncing this mechanical way of living... a great search for the inner seed, preparing ground for it, letting it die in the soil, watering, caring, waiting for the sprout to come with a prayerful heart. One day it happens and one is suddenly fulfilled. When the first flower comes into your being, God has been known. Then no proof is needed. Then one knows immediately "God is!" To be blissful is to know that God is. I teach the religion of bliss, of joy, of celebration. My sannyasins have to be great artists in feasting. They have to transform their live into festivals... not a festivity once in a while but a continual festivity - day in, day out an undercurrent of joy.
Anand means bliss, nishanto means the end of the night - a blissful end of the night, the beginning of a new day, the rising of the sun... and that's what sannyas is! Man lives in the ego: it is a deep, dark night and one is constantly afraid because the ego is always on the verge of dying. It knows it has to die. At the most it can only prolong a little bit more, but it is sitting on the volcano, because it is a falsity and a falsity cannot abide forever. Hence the fear of the ego... hence all the efforts of the ego to make itself secure, safe - through money, through power, through relationship.
All the trips that the ego goes on are nothing but security measures. It is trying to protect itself against death. It is constantly apprehensive of death. Death is always by the corner, because the ego is a shadow. The reality is never afraid of death because the real cannot die. To come out of the ego is to end the dark night.
Sannyas is surrender... surrendering the ego is what sannyas is all about, dropping the idea of the "I," and dropping all its securities, all its games, and just being ordinary, simple, just being a nobody, with no claim. In that ordinariness great, extraordinary experiences start happening, because to be ordinary is really to be extraordinary. To desire extraordinariness is very ordinary; everybody is on the same trip. To become a drop-out, no more to be part of the herd and the crowd, forgetting all goals, forgetting all ideas of achieving something and being something, forgetting the desire to succeed.... That's what Jesus means when he says, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God." The egoless person is poor in spirit, but the miracle is that he is the richest person in the world: he has the whole kingdom of God.
Sannyas means dropping the "I" and starting a new life from the center of being ordinary, of being nobody... functioning from a very natural state, with no pretensions, with no pseudo faces, functioning as trees function, animals function, children function And once that functioning has been learned there is great joy and great relaxation. All burden is gone.
That's what I mean when I say "the end of the night." [The new sannyasin says he has been doing a mantra on the third eye which sometimes feels very good, and should he continue?]
You can continue your meditation and start these meditations too. Do both - nothing to be worried about, mm? - then there will be a clarity. But continue the old and start the new meditations also.
Then later on, after one month, you will be able to choose what goes deeper and what is making you more centered, more joyous. Then you can choose. So don't drop the old, but experiment with the new also. Good.
[Osho explains the meaning of anudasi - a servant of love.]
Love does not mean what is ordinarily understood by it. The ordinary love is just a masquerade; something else is hiding behind it. The real love is a totally different phenomenon. The ordinary love is a demand. The real love is a sharing. It knows nothing of demand; it knows the joy of giving.
The ordinary love pretends too much. The real love is non-pretentious; it simply is. The ordinary love becomes almost sickening, syrupy, drippy, what you call "lovey-dovey." It is sickening, it is nauseating.
The real love is a nourishment. It strengthens your soul. The ordinary love only feeds your ego - not the real you but the unreal you. The unreal always feeds the unreal, remember; and the real feeds the real.
Become a servant of real love, and that means becoming a servant of God. God is love in its ultimate purity. Give, share whatsoever you have, share and enjoy sharing. Don't do it as if it is a duty - then the whole joy is gone. And don't feel that you are obliging the other, never, not even for a single moment. Love never obliges. In fact, on the contrary, when somebody receives your love, you feel obliged.
Love is thankful that it has been received. Love never waits to be rewarded, even to be thanked.
If the thankfulness comes from the other side, love is always surprised - it is a pleasant surprise - because there was no expectation. You cannot frustrate real love because there is no expectation in the first place. And you cannot fulfill unreal love because it is so rooted in expectation that whatsoever is done always falls short of it. Its expectation is too much: nobody can fulfill it. So the unreal love always brings frustration, and the real love always brings fulfillment. And when I say, "Become a servant of love," I am not saying to become a servant of somebody whom you love - no, not at all. I am not saying to become a servant of a lover. I am saying become a servant of love.
The pure idea of love should be worshipped. Your lover is only one of the forms of that pure idea, and the whole existence contains nothing but millions of forms of that pure idea. The flower is one idea, one form, the moon another, your lover still another... your child, your mother, your father, they are all forms, all waves in the ocean of love. But never become a servant of a lover.
Remember always that your lover is only one tiny expression. Serve love through the lover so that you never become attached to the lover. And when one is not attached to the lover love reaches its highest peaks. The moment one is attached, one starts falling low. Attachment is a kind of gravitation - unattachment is grace. Unreal love is another name for attachment; real love is very detached. Unreal love shows so much concern, it is always concerned. Real love is considerate but has no concern.
If you really love a man you will be considerate of his true need but you will not show unnecessary concern for his foolish, stupid fantasies. You will take every care of his needs but you are not there to fulfill his fictitious desires. You will not fulfill anything that is really going to harm him. For example, you will not fulfill his ego, although his ego will be demanding. The person who is too concerned, attached, will fulfill the ego demands. That means you are poisoning your beloved. Consideration means you will see that this is not a real need but an ego need; you will not fulfill it.
Love knows compassion, but no concern. Sometimes it is hard because sometimes it is needed to be hard; sometimes it is very aloof. If it helps to be aloof, it is aloof. Sometimes it is very cold. If it is needed to be cold then it is cold. Whatsoever the need, love is considerate but not concerned. It will not fulfill any unreal need. It will not fulfill any poisonous idea in the other.
Search into, meditate on love, experiment. Love is the greatest experiment in life, and those who live without experimenting with love energy will never know what life is, what life was. They will only remain on the surface without going into the depth of it.
My teaching is love-oriented. I can drop the word "God" very easily - there is no problem - but I cannot drop the word "love." If I have to choose between the words "love" and "God," I will choose love; I will forget all about God, because those who know love are bound to know God. But it is not vice versa: those who think about God and philosophize about God may never know about love and will never know about God either.
[A sannyasin, leaving, feels she's going to die.]
But it is not about your bodily death.
It is just the ego coming closer and closer to the point where your understanding is going to dissolve it. It is a kind of death, because up to now you have remained identified with the ego so it feels as if you are going to die. You are not going to die - just the false you, the pseudo you, the personality.
And it is good that the personality dies; then the essence surfaces. It is the personality that is keeping the essence repressed. The personality functions like a heavy rock and the essence is a small stream. Once the rock is gone you will know a totally different kind of life. It is going to be a new life, it is going to be a new birth, so in a sense it is death, but it is not going to be a physical death; it is going to be a psychological death and a resurrection.
But it happens to everybody: whenever it comes very close, the ego starts becoming shaky and the house starts crumbling, then one naturally feels, "I am going to die. Now what?" because one does not know anything else but the ego. The ego is our idea of ourselves, but we are not it - we are far more, far deeper, far greater. The ego is really just a cancerous growth in our being. If it dies, you will be more healthy and more whole.
Feel blessed and help this death, because if you become too afraid you will hinder it, you will not allow it to happen. You may start clinging, and that clinging will keep it alive. You can keep it alive.
Many people are keeping their egos alive just by clinging. They go on feeding it, nourishing it; it is just on the deathbed but they go on injecting food into it.
Rather than becoming afraid, feel joyous that something great and beautiful is going to happen to you. And help it happen, cooperate with the process. The ego needs a good burial, a good farewell party. There is no need to be afraid, not at all, but fear comes naturally, for the simple reason that we don't know anything about ourselves except the ego.
It is as if a person thinks that he is his clothes and one day you take his clothes off. He starts crying and weeping: "Don't kill me - I will die!" It is ridiculous. We know that he is not going to die - these are only clothes and he will be getting new clothes, that's why we are taking the old clothes. They are dirty and rotten and they don't fit and they make him look ridiculous. But he has lived with those clothes so long. He has completely forgotten that he is separate from them. Personality is just a psychological clothing, a garment. We have become too attached to it, we have lived with it so long.
We have never known any separation from it.
So one has to prepare for the separation, and if you can joyously accept and welcome what is going to happen, the process will be simple and bloodless. This surgery can be bloodless if you rejoice in it; otherwise there is unnecessary pain, unnecessary suffering. And one can always escape. When it becomes too much of a suffering one can always escape back into some other direction; one can distract oneself, one can become occupied with something else.
That's the point at which many religious people run, rush back into the world. Seeing the abyss, and seeing that the road ends and that they will have to fall into this precipice and disappear, they start running back; they start creating a thousand and one occupations in the mind.
There are religious ways also - no need to go into the world. One can go into a monastery and become occupied with religious ritual; that too is an escape. Or one can learn a mantra and constantly repeat it: "Hare Krishna, Hare Rama" or "Hail, Mary" or "Ibiti, ibiti, isibiti zap" - anything, just to remain occupied. Any nonsense will do so there is something to hang on to. But the ego continues....
The real beginning is only when the ego ends; the end of the ego is the beginning of your real life.
[A sannyasin asks the meaning of his name and Osho says, These names that I give to you are reminders, pointers, fingers pointing to the moon, He says. The journey is long, the moon is far away, but if you keep remembering, sooner or later, one day, you will arrive... ]