Darshan 20 September 1978
Deva means divine, nirmalo means innocence - divine innocence, the original state of consciousness, the empty state of consciousness, before knowledge enters in. That's what Zen people call "the original face - the face that you had before you were born and the face that you will have again when you are dead. Between the two we have many false faces - all those false faces constitute our personality. The word "personality" comes from persona; persona means "the mask." We are not it; we are behind it and beyond it. We are not even touched by it. It is just around us but not in us.
Your mind is just something that is happening around you. Nothing is happening at the very core of your being; nothing ever happens there. It is always the same - uncontaminated, pure, innocent, virgin. And one can reach it in a single instant. It is only a question of turning inwards.
We have taken the personality as our being, hence we don't look in. We have become identified with the false, with the taught, with the conditioned, with that which society has cultivated. But once we remember we can't be this. Before a name was given to you, you were still there in the mother's womb; even before a face started in the mother's womb you were there. At the first moment of conception there was no face - nothing of the personality - but you were there in your essence.
And that's where you are still. It is only a question of looking back again into one's own depth. It is not a question of achieving something new; it is already the case. We are it, hence the possibility of sudden enlightenment. If something has to be achieved it can be achieved only gradually.
For example, if you go to the university for a degree, you can achieve it only gradually. That's why it is called "graduation." You move step by step, class by class, grade by grade. You cannot suddenly become a Ph.D.; knowledge has to be gradual. Hence enlightenment is not knowledge; it is just the contrary: it is innocence. Drop your Ph.D. and you are enlightened, drop knowledge and you are
enlightened, drop mind and you are it. To attain something a gradual process is needed, but to drop it needs no gradual process; one can simply drop it just like that.
This is the meaning of your name. You have to look inwards. You have to remember the essential; you have to forget the false. You have to start being less and less identified with the mind and the, thoughts. You have to become more and more alert and aware of the witness of all. That is your original face. That is your primal being. And that's what God is all about.
Sannyas is a sudden jump into it... not a gradual achievement. It always happens in a single instant, because it is only a question of dropping something.
Deva means divine, parjata is an Indian flower, very beautiful, very fragrant. The name will mean "a divine flower." And flowering represents spiritual unfoldment. Just like a flower one opens up.
One does not become somebody else; one remains the same. The only difference between an unenlightened person and an enlightened person is that of flowering. The unenlightened person is a closed bud. The enlightened person is an open flower. That's the only difference, a very slight difference. Every bud can become a flower and every flower has been a bud; hence it is said that every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.
Everybody carries the Buddha within their soul; all that is needed is the unfoldment of it. The people who are afraid and live in fear cannot unfold because fear makes them remain closed. Fear is the root cause of remaining closed. Love helps to open up. Love is the secret of the secrets. It is through love that one opens up, hence the beauty of love and the longing for love; hence the constant thirst for love. Love is the right climate in which the flower opens up. Whenever you are in love you start opening up.
Sannyas has to be your ultimate love so that you can open ultimately too. It has to be your love affair with God. Less than that won't do. Between man and God there can be no bargaining; there can only be love. There can be no conditions; it has to be unconditional surrender. That's what I teach, and that's what my people are practicing here.
Today you are entering into a new way of life.... Ordinarily the religions have taught fear - the priest has depended much on fear; that is his trade secret. And people can remain fearful only if they are not allowed expression of love. You cannot be both loving and afraid - that is impossible. If you are in love, fear disappears, just as when there is light, darkness disappears; if there is darkness that simply means there is no light.
Fear exists only in the absence of love; hence all the priests of the world have been trying to destroy the possibility of love. They have invented very cunning devices to poison the love energy of man and woman, to condemn it, to make people feel guilty about love. War is okay, love is not okay.
Everything else is accepted. Love is not accepted, because if people are allowed to love fear will disappear - that is the problem - and if fear disappears, the priest cannot exist.
He exploits the fear. He makes you afraid and then you have to go to him. Then he gives you security.
He says, "Don't be afraid. Pray. Take this mantra, chant it and Jesus will save you," or, "Krishna will save you...." Or, "Just have this Bible. This is your way, and remain a Christian, otherwise you will fall in hell," or, "Be a Catholic," or, "Be a Hindu or a Mohammedan." First he creates fear - the disease - and then he is there selling the medicine. If fear disappears priests will have to go. And the priest has been supported by the politician down the ages because he also wants people to live in fear, because when people live in fear they can be dominated, when people live in fear they need leaders. Only fearful people need leaders because they cannot trust themselves; they are shaking and trembling within. They don't know how to stand on their own.
They need somebody to lean on.
The politician knows that if people become fearless they will not need leaders; they will not need stupid politicians to guide their lives. They will not need even so-called governments; they will not need nations. And if people are unafraid they will love to live their lives in totality. They will paint and sing and create music and they will make their lives a celebration. Why should they be interested in war? Why should they waste their lives in quarreling, fighting, murdering each other? But when love is denied these things are easy.
Once love is denied a person becomes a victim of the priest and also of the politician, and once he cannot love his whole energy turns into hatred. Then he wants to kill. He has nothing to celebrate.
He wants to destroy because he cannot create.
Wars will disappear only when love is given total freedom, not before it. Wars exist and will continue to exist. In spite of all pacifist propaganda and talks about peace and all that nonsense, war will continue because war is fulfilling something: it is a release of the pent-up energy. The energy that should have gone into love and creativity has turned upside-down, has become destructive. So after each ten years a great war is needed, because people go on accumulating poison.
And always remember: it is the same energy that was creativity that becomes destructivity; it is the same energy. If it is allowed natural movement then it has grace and it creates. If it is prevented from its natural growth then it becomes a wound; the pus oozes out of the wound. That's what war is.
The politician is very happy that the people are afraid, because when people are afraid they can be enslaved easily. The priest is happy because if people are afraid they have to come to the church, to the temple, to the mosque to find consolation, security.
My whole work here is just the opposite. I want to release your love energy so that you can be free of both the priest and the politician. So if priests and politicians are against me, that is just natural, obvious. I don't hope otherwise. That is just natural. I am destroying the very root on which they have depended for centuries and through which they have exploited man and destroyed man and crippled humanity.
When love flows in your being you start opening up, you become a flower. The flow of love creates the flowering in you. And once one has known one's own flowering, one has known God, one has known paradise. One has regained the lost paradise. One is again back in the Garden of Eden.
[The new sannyasin says: I feel lost and I don't know what I can do about this feeling.]
Allow it - this is a good beginning. Unless you feel lost you cannot come home. The real problem is with the people who think they are not lost. The real problem is with people who think they know.
When you come to me the first thing that is going to happen to you is confusion, because I will start taking away things that you had always depended upon... which were giving you the feeling that you were not lost, that you were secure and certain. I will start pulling away the very earth underneath your feet. Hence you will feel lost and you will feel confused. But this is a good beginning. That means that my work has started on you.
First I will have to take away the false clarity that you have always been thinking you have. It is a false clarity; it is not real clarity. It is just the clarity that is created by belief, by believing in a certain system - Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, communism, capitalism. Any ideology, if you believe in it, gives you a false kind of clarity and security and certainty. It is false because it is not based on your own experience. It has to be taken away. I will destroy all your belief systems, and you will have to pass through a state of being lost and confused. Every sannyasin moves through it.
Don't try to repress it, otherwise it will take longer. Allow it. It is a good catharsis. It is a good unburdening, it is a cleansing of the heart. And soon you will see: first clarity goes, the false clarity, and because the false clarity goes confusion arises. But if the clarity is completely gone confusion goes of its own accord. You can be confused only if you believe in something.
For example, a person believes in God and I take his belief; he starts feeling confused. Now he does not know what to believe in, whom to look up to, to whom to pray, what to pray. He feels confused. Since childhood he has been taught a certain prayer, a certain formal religion - going to the church, reading the Bible, saying his prayers before going to bed... all formal. Nothing has happened through it, but it was good. One felt secure, one was doing the right thing. Now suddenly that right thing is gone. Now what to do? You need an immediate substitute, and I am not going to give you a substitute. If I give you a substitute, that will become another belief system.
I am not going to give you a substitute. I will wait. First the clarity will go, and it goes only because it is false, otherwise it cannot go; real clarity cannot be taken away. Once it has gone completely and you have left all desire to hold onto it, you will be surprised; in the wake of it the confusion also starts disappearing, because the confusion cannot live without a belief. Confusion is the shadow of a belief. You don't see it because the belief is there; when the belief goes you see the shadow, but the shadow cannot remain alone. If the belief has gone the shadow will follow it, and then you are left with a clean slate - which is real clarity, which is perceptiveness, which is not a belief system and not confusion. You are simply more alert, more aware, more conscious, and you start living life out of your consciousness, not out of any belief system. And that is the transformation that has to happen.
Just be here, allow me to confuse you totally! Only total confusion cures. Confusion is an immenSe blessing. It is just because the belief has been taken and you feel empty; the belief was giving you a feeling of fullness. The belief has been taken away; you feel empty. It is just like a person who has suffered from a certain disease his whole life. Now he is cured he will feel empty and confused, because his whole life he managed with a certain disease; he created his whole life around a certain disease. Now that center is gone. His whole life up to now has become irrelevant; he has to begin from abc again. That s the situation you are in: you are lost - you have to begin from abc as if you are born again this very day. And that's what sannyas is: a new birth, a new beginning, utterly new, utterly discontinuous with the past. This is a blessing.
Just wait. Be here, meditate, feel the energy that is being created here. It is an energy field. Absorb the energy and wait and in the right moment, just as clarity is gone, confusion will be gone. Then you are free of the so-called clarity and of the so-called confusion. Then suddenly you are yourself, standing on your own, not leaning upon anything, and that has beauty, tremendous beauty. That is freedom.
Sannyas is the process, freedom is its outcome. Just wait!
[Osho gives sannyas to a ten-year-old girl.]
Prem means love, samir means a breeze - a love breeze. And love is as free as a breeze; it comes when it comes. You cannot invite a breeze, you cannot force it to come. It comes and then it goes. It comes from the unknown and it goes back to the unknown. It is from God, a gift. We cannot cause it. It is not man-made, man cannot manufacture love. Love is God's gift. One can only be receptive to it - with an open heart one can take it in. So when it comes, enjoy, dance, celebrate. When it is gone, rest, relax - don't try to hold it.
And what is true about love is true about many things: laughter, joy, silence, bliss. All the great things of life are like a breeze. The problem arises because we start clinging to them. We say, "I would like to have it forever." We start becoming possessive, and to become possessive is to destroy all the beauty. You cannot hold the breeze in your hands, you cannot have it in your fist. There is no way to hold it. When it comes, dance like a tree; when it is gone, be silent like a tree. And enjoy both... both are beautiful.
... And this is the time when one should start learning how to love and how to receive love. If the foundation is right - and this is the time when the foundation is laid - then life becomes a temple.
Otherwise millions of people create their lives on the model of a prison, not like a temple. Love makes life a temple; fear makes it a prison. So live lovingly and learn how to love without possessing.
And much is going to happen!
Deva means divine, paritosho means contentment. Be contented with whatsoever is; never ask for more. The moment you ask for more you have asked for hell. The moment you ask for more you have asked for misery. The desire for more creates misery.
That's why millions of people live in misery: they live with this idea of more and more and more, and they are never contented with anything whatsoever. They are not contented with their relationships, they are not contented with themselves, they are not contented with anything at all; whatsoever is, is wrong. How can they be happy?
And if this is practiced for long - that everything that is, is wrong - then it becomes a chronic habit.
Then even if you are thrown into heaven you will miss. There too you will ask for more; that chronic habit will persist and will make it a hell. Hell is the mind that always asks for more and heaven is the mind that is contented with whatsoever is the case. And to be a sannyasin means to be contented.
So from this moment start being contented... with small things: the food that you are eating, be contented with it. It may not be the most delicious dish in the world, but whatsoever it is, if you are contented, it is the most delicious dish in the world. Love the woman you are with - she may not be a Cleopatra, but if you love and you are contented, she is Cleopatra. The fault-finding mind will find faults with Cleopatra too. It is only a question of a different vision of life. Then a homely woman is as beautiful as one can desire.
We are all ordinary, but when love comes we all become extraordinary. Extraordinariness is nobody's quality; it is the happening of love, the miracle of love, the magic of love that makes people extraordinary. When you love a woman you transform her into an extraordinary being; when a woman loves you she transforms you into an extraordinary being. Then you are the most beautiful man in the world who has ever been and who will ever be; you are incomparable. Love has that alchemy, it transforms. It makes ordinary pebbles precious diamonds. But the whole secret is in contentment.
When you love you are contented, when you are happy you are contented, when you are silent you are contented. Then a small hut is as beautiful as a palace and poverty is richness.
Deva means divine, kastura means a musk deer. The musk deer is a very significant symbol. The musk is created in the deer's own body - it is created out of his own sexual glands; it accumulates near the sexual glands inside his body. But when it ripens, the fragrance of it starts coming out of his body. And the musk deer goes crazy. The smell is such that he wants to find from where it is coming. He runs this way and that, hither and thither; he goes mad, all over the forest. He thinks it is coming from here, it is coming from there. It is coming from his own navel, but the poor musk deer, how can he conclude that is is coming from his own innermost core? He smells it and logically he concludes that it must be coming from somewhere, so he tries to find it, goes crazy, goes mad.
In India this has become a symbol of the seeker. God is within you like the musk in the deer; and we go all over the world seeking and searching for him. We go to Kaaba, we go to the Himalayas or to Jerusalem - we go everywhere except inside. We go to the church and to the temple, and to the mosque, and we go to the Vedas and to the Bible and to the Koran. We go on seeking and seeking and searching, but always outside, never for a moment thinking that the sought may be in the seeker himself. And it is so: the one you are searching is within you. That's what Jesus means when he says again and again, "The kingdom of God is within you." We are all musk deer, and certainly as the musk deer goes mad, seekers after God go mad, because they cannot find him, and the more they find that they cannot find, the more frantic becomes their search. Slowly slowly they see that their life is slipping by, time is becoming shorter and shorter every day; time is running out and any moment death will knock at the door and they have not found yet! The search becomes more and more maddening.
But one cannot find God without. Not that God is not without, but before you can find him without you will have to find him within. Once you have seen him within yourself you will see him within everything, within every being; not only in man and animals and birds but even in trees and in rocks.
But the first vision, the first insight, has to happen inside.
So the real seeker has to drop searching and seeking, because all seeking and searching is taking you outside. The real seeker has to become a non-seeker; he has to close his eyes and drop all search. That's what meditation is: dropping all search, forgetting all goals, abandoning all future, turning in... sitting silently, looking in, looking in the seeker himself.
So the only significant question is "Who am I?" That has to become your meditation and your name will remind you again and again.
Deva means god, anuragi means a lover - a lover of God. Love is the only possible relationship that can exist between God and man. All other relationships are formal. If you call him "father," it is a formal relationship; it is not so intimate. It is institutional, because father himself is an institutional phenomenon and does not relate really, does not go to the very core of the matter.
Or call him "mother".... There are religions who call God "mother"; they are better, on a better grounding, than the people who call God "father. But there is again a problem: the child has to go away from the mother. The growth of the child is necessarily going to take him away from the mother. The child will never come back closer to the mother again. He has been close, but he will never be again; each day he will be farther and farther away. For nine months he was one with the mother - then one day he has to leave her womb; he becomes separate. He will depend on her breast for a few months, for a few years; then he will leave her breast too. Then one day he has to go to the hostel, then to the university. Then he will fall in love with a woman and will turn his back upon the mother. So to call God the mother is not right either, because we want to go closer to him, not away from him.
God can only be either a lover or a beloved; these are the only two possibilities, and there have been people.... For example, Sufis think of God as the beloved; then God is thought of as a woman and the seeker as the lover. That is beautiful - that is the most intimate relationship. Or in India the Bhaktas, the devotees, think of themselves as women and God as the lover. That too is perfectly right. Either of these two possibilities, in fact, one possibility with two alternatives... but think of God as a lover or a beloved and you will find more doors opening and you will find yourself coming closer and closer to the mysteries. So whatsoever is natural to you: you can feel God as a woman, a beloved, or you can feel yourself as a woman and God as the lover - whichever comes naturally to you. That you have to decide.
You need not say anything to anybody. Deep in your heart it has to be a secret. That's why I am not deciding it - I am just leaving the alternatives open to you. You have to decide it in your total aloneness. And keep it a secret - let it be a seed inside - and you will be surprised: the more it is a secret, the faster it grows, because when you say something about it you release energy, and that energy is lost, dissipated.
There are a few things which should be kept utterly secret; this is one of those things. The relationship between man and God should be utterly secret... just in the heart, nobody knows.
So all the energy that is available goes on pouring back upon itself, it becomes a reservoir, and the whole energy feeds the seed. Soon you will be surprised: your life is changing slowly slowly, and not from the outside but from the inside.
[A sannyasin, leaving, says he thinks and feels so negative so much of the time.]
Allow it. You have carried it a along from your childhood, and it is good that it is coming up. I know that you don't want it, so there is no problem. The problem arises only when a person is attached to his negativity. You are not - you don't want anything negative in you; you want to get rid of it - but it has become a program in your mind. It always happens because our society is run through authoritative strategies.
The father never explains to the child why something should be done. He says, "Simply do it because I say so." The teachers don't explain. Nobody is in any way concerned to explain to the child; everybody orders, commands. And the child again and again feels hurt; he is not respected, his intelligence is not respected. Sometimes he feels to do just the opposite, but the parents, the teacher, the people who are powerful, don't want it that way. He cannot live his own way - he feels hurt, crippled. He starts gathering negativity against all authority figures. And when the time comes that he is capable of living his own life, the program has become very rooted.
That's what is happening: now you want to live your own life, you don't want to react negatively; you want to say yes to many things, but the program of the past is there. It says no to many things which you would like to do, which you want. But the program is there, and because of the program you start feeling antagonistic to all the past authorities.
For example, I am not an authority figure at all, but whosoever comes to me will project his authority figures on me; he will think of me as his father or his teacher or this and that and then a subtle negativity will arise against me. This is very natural - you are not at fault; this society is run in a wrong way. You are just a victim. And I can see that you want to get rid of it. Then another problem arises: because you want to get rid of it you can repress it; if you repress it, it will come again and again. It will become a life pattern: you will repress and it will come back, you will repress and it will come back. You will become a continuous civil war, fighting with yourself. That is very destructive.
My suggestion is: you don't want it, that is very good, but don't repress it - allow it. If you really want to get rid of it, allow it; when negativity comes, feel negative. Just remember one thing: don't act in those moments, that's all. When negativity comes go and lie down on the bed and let the negativity be there and give it full freedom. Let the negative possess you, but remember only one thing, that while the negative lasts you are not to conclude anything and you are not to do anything, that's all. If it stays for a few days, allow it, but don't commit yourself to anything in your negative mood, because that becomes a problem later on.
Just remain as you are and allow the negativity to take possession of you. Soon it will surface completely and it will be gone. And once it is gone a natural yes will come to you. I call it a natural yes. Right now if you try it will be an unnatural yes; you can say yes but that won't help. No need to say it. When you are with me we are really going to change things. Just a false yes won't be of much value. I am interested in the real yes, and it wants to come but it is hidden behind the no. The no has to go, then only can the yes find a way to come up.
[Osho then gives him a 'come close energy darshan'.]
Good. Come back. It will go. Nothing to be worried about, because at the deepest core the yes is waiting; it wants to come. The no is only on the circumference, so allow it. Just remember not to act out of it, that's all. And whenever you need me just put it (a box) on your heart, and come back whenever you feel.
[A sannyasin, known to like fighting, is leaving. Osho encourages him to start a center there, for he has much energy, which unless it is put to some creative use can become destructive.It is better to punch people's minds rather than their noses!]
This will be the name for the center: Sahid. It is a Sufi name for God. Literally it means "the martyr, one who is ready to die to help people. For example, Christ is a sahid: he died so that people could live on a higher plane of life. Socrates is a sahid: he died in the service of truth. So those who are ready to sacrifice their lives for something higher - truth, God, love - are sahid. That is the literal meaning, but it is also a name of God, because God is ready to sacrifice himself for his world. He is always ready to die so that we can live.
Anand means bliss, satranga means the rainbow, the seven colors of the rainbow. Bliss has to be multi-dimensional. It has to be a rainbow, it has to be all the colors and all the notes of life. It should not be only spiritual, it should not be only psychological, it should not be only physiological; it should be all together. From the lowest to the highest, it should bridge life. Nothing should be denied; that much acceptance is needed.
In the past people have always chosen a certain dimension. For example there have been materialists who chose only the bodily bliss, pleasure, and they thought, "That's all - there is nothing more to life." That is a wrong attitude, that is just taking the first rung of the ladder and thinking that this is the whole ladder. It is not... it is just taking one window and thinking, "This is all - the whole sky." It is not.
Against them there have been spiritualists who think that the body has to be denied, pleasure is sin, and one has to only have spiritual bliss, pure, uncontaminated by the body. Their bliss is only an abstraction - it is not very substantial; it cannot be. It is like a flower in the sky without any roots in the earth. From where is it going to get nourishment? And then there have been people between the two who think that the real joy is of the mind - literature, music, poetry, painting, sculpture; this is the real joy, they think.
All are right and all are still wrong, because all are partial. The part is not the whole, although the whole has the part too; but the part is not the whole. And the whole is not only the sum total of the parts either: it is more than the sum total of the parts. A rainbow is not only seven colors; a rainbow is something more than just the seven colors. Out of the meeting of the seven colors something new is created which is the rainbow.
That is the meaning of your name and that is my approach towards life: all has to be accepted, from the lowest to the highest. From the earth to heaven, all is ours. And I don't deny anything. My yes to life is absolute. I am not in favor of renouncing anything. The people who renounce are cowardly.
I would like everything to be transformed in such a way that life becomes a harmonious whole, not fragmentary. And this totality I call religiousness. That is the meaning of your name, and that's my whole teaching too.
[A sannyasin says that he's happy.]
That's good. That's how one should be: just happy, for no reason at all. When there is a reaSOn for happiness, the happiness cannot last long; Sooner or later it has to go. When happiness has no reason it can be forever.
So one has to learn how to be happy for no reason at all - just to be happy. Then happiness is just like your being, nothing added to you, nothing extra, just your very being.
It is good, and I am happy with you. Things are going well.
[A sannyasin group leader reports on her first group in the ashram: An energy that happens inside me is really new when I'm leading a group. I'm slowly relaxing into it, but it's scary.]
You have to relax - it is my energy! You have to utterly relax. You have to relax and you have to just go into it. It is scary in the beginning because you are no more in control. But there is no need - when you are here working with me you need not be in control. I am in control; just allow me to function through you. And greater results will be coming out of it, because then I will be touching people through you.
I am preparing many people so I can touch others through them. Because it is difficult for me....
Thousands and thousands of people will be coming Soon and I will need many hands to function as my hands, and only those who have utterly renounced themselves, abandoned themselves, only they will be able to function as my hands.
So it is getting ready, the place is getting ready slowly slowly to work on a bigger and bigger scale, and each year it has to become bigger and bigger. I need thousands of hands who will be my hands, utterly in my control... and you have to become one. So just relax and allow it. Good.