Darshan 21 October 1976

Anand means bliss and shunyam means emptiness, nothingness, nobodyness. And that's what bliss is. When you are empty, only then are you full - never before it. When you are not, only then you are - never before it. Your very absence is the door to the presence of God One has to annihilate oneself utterly; nothing less can help. One has to disappear. And once you start moving inwards, you start disappearing, because whatsoever you are is only the surface, the circumference.

Once you start moving towards the centre, the circumference goes on disappearing. Then the whole universe is your circumference. Either the whole is your circumference or there is no circumference.

This is the meaning of the word shunyam. Literally it means the zero. The concept of zero was discovered in India. Even the mathematical zero is an indian concept, and the whole of mathematics has evolved out of the concept of zero. Without the concept of zero, mathematics cannot exist And all the basic digits - one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine - are also indian. Even the terms are sanskrit terms. But everything, the whole of mathematics, can spread if there is zero. If there is no zero you are stuck at nine; then you cannot move ahead.

With ten you start repeating again - one with zero. Zero itself is the basic source. Mathematics starts in zero and ends in zero. Zero is the beginning and zero is the end, and just in between is the whole play.

Shunyam means zero, so start living as if you are not - and immediately you will feel a tremendous relief because the burden, the tension, the anxiety of being, simply becomes irrelevant. We are tense because we are trying to be: to be somebody, to be somewhere, to do something. We are carrying a whole load of anxieties but the basic anxiety is how to be. To be or not to be - that is the question. And if you decide to be you will always remain empty. If you decide not to be, suddenly you are empty, but that emptiness has a fullness of its own. It is profound presence... you can call it God's presence.

But emptiness is not empty and nothing is not just nothing. We call it empty because there is nothing that you can conceive of right now. All that you can conceive of will be annihilated, eliminated. All that you have been and that you know will not be there - hence we call it emptiness. Something so totally new is going to be there that it is incomprehensible right now. In fact it can never be reduced to any understanding whatsoever. It is always the transcendental. It is always the beyond So start living in such a way... very relaxed. Carry no tension. The world is already going on without you. When you were not here it was going perfectly well. You will not be here one day and everything will continue so why be worried? These few moments that you have got to be here, enjoy.

And nothing depends on you. Once you understand that nothing depends on you there is no point in being anxious. Suddenly there are no roots for anxiety. You have cut it from the very root So one thing - start living as a nobody. That's what sannyas is an about And the second thing start living moment to moment - because the ego can only project into the future or into the past. The present moment is always egoless. It has never known the ego. The ego has never been able to corrupt it - it is incorruptible. So just remain true to the moment, whatsoever it is. Just be in it, neither carrying the memories of the past, nor plans for the future... as if this moment is all - and it is. This moment is all. This moment is eternity. Once you start living moment to moment you will feel the zero arising in you. With great energy the zero will start possessing you.

And the third thing that I would like to say to you - because this is your day of rebirth.... The third thing: enjoy, celebrate, because that is the only way to know the truth.

There have been many mystics who have said that when you attain to truth you will be blissful. I say to you that if you are blissful, only then can you attain to truth. So don't wait for when you attain to truth to be blissful. There is no need to wait, because that is again moving into the future and moving into desire and motivation. I say to you: start being blissful and truth will take care of itself.

Whenever it wants to come, it can. Or when it wants to delay, it can. Who bothers?

Joyousness should be the only prayer and celebration is the only sanctity. If a man is happy, I call him a saint, and I don't believe in any other virtue. A miserable person is a sinner. Again all the old religions say that if you sin you will be miserable. I say to you that if you are miserable, you are a sinner. Drop the misery and the sin disappears.

To be miserable in this beautiful world is to be in sin. To be miserable in such a great celebration that goes on and on from beginningless time to beginningless end, from no beginning to no end, is just to be separate. To be separate is to be in sin. Participate! Participate in the celebration that is going on in the stars, in the rivers, mountains, flowers, animals, man, woman. Become part of this orchestra, and you will become virtuous.

I count happiness as the only virtue. I am a hedonist, and I call misery the only sin.

So these three things.... And soon the shunyam will take possession of you!

[A sannyasin says she wants love.]

Mm, mm.... This is a very complicated question. Everybody wants love and only a few people get love - and those people are the ones who are not worried about getting it; they give it. The only person who gets love is the one who gives it, and the people who are always wanting love are the people who are very miserly, who never give love. And if you don't give love, it will not be coming to you. It comes only when you give.

So the desire that people should love you is a wrong desire. It is a very frustrating desire: it will make your whole life miserable. The more mature a person is, the more he thinks about how should he love people. That is his problem: how he should become more loving. Naturally to a loving person, love comes - it is a response, it is a natural response. It is an echo... it has to come. And without your making an effort to love people, it is not going to come. When it doesn't come you become more and more obsessed with it - that nobody loves you. You are just sitting there waiting for somebody to love you. But why should somebody love you? Just because you desire it?

They are also the same type of people. They are also sitting there and waiting for somebody. They are waiting for [you] to come and love, and [you] is waiting for them to come and love. People are just sitting in their own places and nobody is moving. And for women especially it becomes even more of a problem because for centuries they have waited; they have never taken any initiative.

They have missed much, because much of the beauty of love is in the initiating - when you make an endeavour, when you approach a person, when you make yourself available, when you shower somebody with your love with no idea of return, because who knows whether the other will return it or not? It is a gamble. It is a groping in the dark. One can never be certain. But one trusts life and one gives love.

And when you love, love comes - there is no other way. Once you are obsessed too much with the idea that you should be loved, that you need love, you are holding a wrong concept. You can go on sitting with that concept - nobody is going to come to you, because once people become suspicious that you are waiting for love, they become afraid. They will avoid you; they won't come on your path. They will say goodbye from far away. At the most they will say hello and escape because they become intuitively aware that somebody is there ready to exploit them. Your desire to be loved appears to the other person as an exploitation. The other becomes afraid because he sees that you are going to use him as a means. He starts feeling that he is going to become a victim.

So people who are asking that they should be loved are never loved. At the most people can show sympathy to you, and sympathy is very ugly. Who wants sympathy? Sympathy is for those who have failed completely in love. Those who have no hope now - only they settle with sympathy; at least something is good. But I don't see that there is any need for you to settle for sympathy.

My suggestion is that you change your desire. Rather than your needing love, start thinking in terms of wanting to love - and see the difference. Immediately there will be a radical change. Just change these words, focus on this new idea - 'I want to love people' - then who is preventing you? You can go on loving as many people as you want. In fact so many people are hungry for love; everybody is hungry for love. Have you seen people who are not? Rarely. Otherwise everybody is hungry, everybody has an appetite for love, and nobody feels that enough has happened to him.

So change your desire, otherwise you will be in misery. And right now it is just the beginning of your life. If you were old enough and far gone, I would not have suggested.... I would have sympathised

with you. I would have said, 'I love you, [you]. I am deeply in love with you.' I would have said that if you were old and far gone. But I will not sympathise, because the fire is still there. You can light it...

it can become a great flame! But you are asking a wrong question.

[She answers: Maybe I put it the wrong way. I didn't mean that.] No! Even if you had put it another way you would have meant this - because I have been watching you. It is not a question of how you put it I never bother about how you put it. In fact I never bother about what your question is. I go on saying what I know is the question.

I have been watching you from the very beginning, and I was going to tell you some day or other.

Today is the right time - you have got the question. Everybody thinks that way, [you], and that's the misery of life. If you think in terms of needing love, that means that you are saying that you are needed; you are in deep need of being needed. You already accept that you are worthy and people have to love you - and if they are not loving, they are responsible. Why are they not loving such a beautiful girl, such a worthy person?

It is not a question of your worth - everybody is worthy - but the approach is wrong. For a few days try to look from the other side at what I am saying. Start loving people - take the risk. Start sharing with people. Find people, and don't be bothered much about whether they are worthy or not, because that will be your deep-rooted idea: 'How can I love unless there is some absolutely perfect person?' But perfect persons never happen; they don't exist. So you will have to love imperfect people. And if you love an imperfect person, even in your imperfect love relationship, perfection starts arising. You make a person perfect by loving him. Nobody is perfect - perfection comes out of love. So love! Start loving!

Even if sometimes you make a mistake and err, if you fall into a relationship with somebody and you repent later on, there is nothing wrong. Get out of it - it is never too late. But just don't go on sitting there waiting for Godot. Start taking the initiative. Much is the possibility... much love will happen to you, much love will come to you, but I cannot guarantee it.

I can guarantee one thing, that if you love you will never be miserable. Happiness comes to people who love, unhappiness to people who don't love. And I have come across cases when a person was in deep search for somebody to love, and waiting and waiting, and then somebody happened but by that time the person who was simply waiting and never took any initiative, had become cold, closed.

So even when the lover is there you remain closed. He can go on knocking on the door, and you have forgotten how to open the door. There are many people who are locked inside their own beings and cannot get out and cannot allow anybody to come in... imprisoned.

Love - that will help you to come out. Allow people to go in, and the other remains open. Start loving.

And your illness may be nothing. It may be just that you go on gathering love energy and then it is too much and you cannot contain it; then it becomes nauseous. It can happen in meditation. If a person has not been sharing his love energy, nausea can happen in meditation. The stomach can get disturbed very deeply, because meditation immediately hits on love energy. The whole work is on love energy. So dance, sing, join the music group, and start moving - don't go on sitting.

Have you read this Samuel Beckett's play, 'Waiting For Godot'? No? Two vagabonds, two hobos, are just sitting and waiting for Godot. They don't know exactly who this Godot is, but what to do? If you have nothing to do, you have to wait for somebody, for something, for the future, so they go on waiting.

One asks the other, 'When is he coming?' And the other says, 'I hope he is coming today' - and he never comes. Again and again they become very frustrated and one says, 'Let us leave now.'

The other says, 'Yes, let us leave now' - but they never leave. They simply sit there; they don't go anywhere. They say, 'Let us wait one more day. Maybe tomorrow he is coming.'

Somebody asked Samuel Beckett, 'Who is this Godot?' He said, 'If I had known him, I would have written it in the play itself I don't know! '

Don't wait for Godots. People are very shy - search for them, seek them. And it is good to seek and search and explore. It is very good to find and discover a person rather than just sitting there. And if sometimes somebody comes to you, you will always find that he is a wrong person, because only a wrong person can come to somebody who has never gone to search for anybody and is just sitting.

You follow me? Try to become more active, and plunge in headlong. There is nothing to save.

In my home town where I lived for many days there is a church, and there is a big sign, 'Jesus saves'.

One day I was passing and I looked at it and saw that somebody had written something below it So I went closer and just underneath, 'Jesus saves', somebody had written 'but not like my wife' !

There is nothing to save. Be a spendthrift. God is very extravagant. Mm? - you can see how extravagant. One star would have done - but millions of stars. One type of tree would have been enough to make the earth green - but millions of types, millions of trees. One animal would have been enough, but millions of species. God is extravagant. He is not a miser.

Be extravagant in your love, and you will never be unhappy. Start exploring right from this moment, and when you have explored a few people, tell me, mm? (she grins) Right?! After darshan immediately start looking... maybe somebody is here. One never knows - people are hiding behind masks!

[A sannyasin said that he had become conscious of the activity of his mind which seemed to have increased. Previously he had been with the Hare Krishna movement Sri Aurobindo's teachings. Now he said he felt thoroughly confused.

He then tells Osho he likes the dancing meditation best. Osho checks his energy.] Good.... Dancing is going to be your way; singing is going to be your way, and devotion - not knowledge. You are a heart person. Knowledge will only confuse you. The mind is not the trouble.

Your problem is not how to know more; your problem is how to love more, how to feel more. So anything that helps your heart to flower is good. Join the music group and dance with complete abandon. And while dancing, be prayerful... Let dance be your prayer. It is an offering to the feet of the divine. Sing - whatsoever you want to; that is not the point. The words are not the point, but while singing, be lost.

I can understand from where your problem is arising. There are two types of meditations here.

One type is meant for the devotional, for one whose path is going to be surrender. Another type is meant for the person whose path is going to be of effort, will. And you have to do both meditations here; then only is it possible to feel exactly the direction in which your destiny will be. So drop all meditations that need effort now. Do anything that you can do effortlessly, in a very graceful way, soft - not violent, not aggressive, but very passive, feminine, and suddenly your problems will start disappearing or your energy will start falling in tune and you will be together.

In fact your first approach was intuitively right. The movement in which you became involved was not right but your intuitive understanding was absolutely right. You became part of the Hare Krishna movement; that was very intuitively right. You were moving in a right direction. It was a hunch. Of course the movement is not right. It has lost all spontaneity; it is just a dead routine, a dull routine.

It has lost all intelligence and it is very orthodox. In fact a devotee can never be orthodox.

The heart has never been known to be orthodox. It is only the mind that can be orthodox, traditional.

The heart is always rebellious. Rebellion is in the very beat of the heart. Rebellion is its climate.

A devotee can never be part of a tradition, can never be part of such a foolish movement as Hare Krishna. It is absolutely stupid. But there are many stupid people in the world - they also need something. But your intuitive understanding was right in your moving towards it. We never move towards something without any reason.

Because you got frustrated there, because you could not feel at home, because you could not attain that for which you were seeking, you moved to the opposite direction. That too is logical. When you go to the south and you don't find your home there, you start moving north. If you go to the East and you don't find peace, silence, bliss, you start moving to the West, because the mind thinks in polar opposites. If devotion is not for you, then you start moving in a totally diametrically opposite dimension.

Sri Aurobindo is a great scholar, a great man of knowledge, but not a seer. A really great scholar, a great philosopher, very erudite, very subtle, but not a man of real understanding, not a man of an enlightened understanding. So he can pour much knowledge into you - concepts, theories, dogmas - and he can convince you. He is very argumentative and his argument is very subtle. Particularly for the western mind he has a very great appeal, because he himself was brought up in the West; his whole training was western. From the very childhood he was brought up and educated in the West. His understanding of the East is not so deep as his understanding of the West. So he comes with a western mind and pours his western training into the eastern concepts. When his western mind starts working on the eastern concepts, he spins and weaves beautiful theories - verbose, hegelian-type, very long, one can be lost in them. It is very difficult even to read one page. You will lose contact with what he was saying in the beginning because one sentence can go on and on for one page, with clauses and sub-clauses; very dialectical, very rational - but just intellectual.

You moved from the Hare Krishna movement to Sri Aurobindo - it was a very logical movement But now you have come to a man who will confuse you - and that too is natural. Both those standpoints are very clear. Prabhupad is very clear because there is nothing to be clear about. He has very childish concepts - primary, just ABC; nothing much to it It is meant to be for juveniles, retarded persons. You got fed up there. You were not meant to be in that movement; you are more intelligent than that. Then you moved to the opposite direction, to one of the greatest giants of intellect -

Sri Aurobindo. He is just the polar opposite of Prabhupad. If Prabhupad is just a primary teacher or kindergarten teacher, Aurobindo is a professor of a university. But that too could not help you, because you are not in search of intellectual systems. Your search is really profound and of the heart.

Now you are facing a man who belongs to no tradition. You are facing a man who belongs to no particular path. In fact I have no philosophy, no ideology. I am absolutely open. I see into you, and whatsoever is good for you, I say. I don't bother whether it goes against my own assertions or not I am absolutely concerned with you and your welfare. I may not say the same thing to somebody else because his needs may be different.

So when people come to me for the first time they are bound to become confused because I'm vast. I move with ease on all the paths and all the possibilities of human consciousness; with all the facilities I work. And I go on devising things - whatsoever is needed. But my whole standpoint is that the man, the seeker, is important - no other thing is important. I have no fixed ideologies to give to you; I have no structure. I will not force you into any structure, to fit with any structure. I simply listen to you, to your heart, and I create a structure for you. And in fact each individual needs something uniquely for himself. No system can be of any help.

So in the beginning a person is bound to be very much confused with me, but that's a good sign. If you are confused, that means that I have started working on you. That means that I will have to sort things out now. And you will have to cooperate with me so that things can be sorted out.

This is my suggestion: start moving into dance, music, more and more, and forget about the mind.

Start feeling more and more. Sit by the trees and feel for them. Sometimes cry, sometimes laugh...

sometimes shake hands with a tree, hug the tree, embrace the tree. Go to the river, be with the river, with people, but one thing - feel. Thinking has not to be used too much. Put the mind aside.

[The sannyasin said he would like to go to Goa for a few days as funds were too low for more groups.] Good. In Goa we have a small centre, so go there and meet sannyasins. And Goa is perfectly good for you. Dance on the beach; sing on the beach. Be madly in love with nature and enjoy. Don' t take this seeking too seriously. Be more playful! Swim... and swimming is prayer. Lie down on the beach and take a good sunbath, and that is prayer. Gossip with friends and enjoy, and that is prayer.

Prayer is not a particular thing to be done. It is a quality to be brought to every ordinary activity that one is doing. A man of prayer can touch anything and that thing becomes sacred, holy. Good, Murti.

[A sannyasin says: I just think I feel so blocked - not particularly towards anyone. I haven't been able to relate to anyone.] For a few days, forget about awareness. Drop the whole idea of awareness. For a few days simply get more and more involved, lost. If you are dancing just be the dance; no need to watch it. You have done a wrong sort of watching, so if you start watching there is every possibility that you will continue the wrong sort of watching. What you have been thinking is watching is not watching. It is self- consciousness - it is not consciousness. The emphasis is more on the self, not on consciousness.

Self-consciousness is a disease. Consciousness is a totally different thing. In consciousness there is no self.

So you have got into a wrong pattern. Before I can start a new way of awareness, for a few days completely forget about it, have nothing to do with it. For a few days be completely lost; that will help.

Dance and abandon yourself in it. Be a drunkard and whirl and whirl and go into it. Lose all self- consciousness in it. One day you will suddenly see the difference. . . that all self-consciousness has gone - even the dancer is not there, there is only dancing - but still there is a subtle transcendental awareness which has no tension in it. It is simply there with no effort. Not that you are managing it, manipulating it - it is simply there in spite of you. That glimpse will help you to know what right awareness is, and then things will be simple for you. So right now stop being aware. That is making you serious.

And the second thing: people expect too much. People who expect heaven always fall into hell - that is the law. Expect heaven and hell is certain. Don't expect heaven and there will never be any hell. You must be expecting too much out of sannyas, out of meditation, out of this and that. That expectation creates frustration, so drop that expectation.

There is nothing to be gained. One has to learn only one thing - that there is nothing to be gained, that life is not goal-oriented, that life is just sheer delight Enjoy sannyas. Don't make it a means towards some end - that you have to attain something and it is not happening. Then you have corrupted sannyas. You have misunderstood it.

When I make you sannyasins, I am declaring that you are perfect from this moment. Now there is no need for you to become perfect - you are perfect! Start enjoying your perfection. Do you see the difference?

When you get initiated somewhere else they say, 'Now you start the work. Now much work has to be done. You have to grow and develop, and this and that and become virtuous and moral. You have to become a holy saint, and there are millions of steps and many lives will be taken.' Then you start on the long journey. Your mind will feel very happy because step by step, slowly, slowly, you will see that something is happening - at least if not today, then tomorrow it will be happening.

With me it is totally different. When I initiate you it is a declaration that you are perfect Now the work is finished - enjoy! It is very difficult to accept it. I am saying that you are perfect at this moment Sannyas is a declaration that you are ready to enjoy from this moment. Relax and enjoy!

I teach you enjoyment. I don't teach you the achieving mind. That achieving mind is the disease.

Ambition is the root cause of all disease. I don't make you ambitious - I simply say that there is no need to be ambitious because all that you need is already given; God has already provided it.

By your very birth you are a god or goddess. You have just to claim it and it is yours - just for the asking.

Have you not heard Jesus' saying, 'Ask, and it shall be given to you'? Between the asking and the giving there is no work. He simply says, 'Ask and it shall be given to you. Knock, and the doors shall be opened unto you.' Between the knocking and the opening of the door there is no work; you knock and the doors are open.

I give you everything that you always needed - and without any work! That is my whole effort here - to make you aware that nothing is needed; all is already provided. God is the infinite provider. For

every possibility, for every probable situation, He has already managed. Whatsoever you will ever need, is always with you - just ask. Sannyas is an asking, a knocking on the door.

But I can understand your problem - it is a problem of the majority. When people take sannyas they think they will attain something by taking it. By taking sannyas you are dropping the achieving mind, and you are saying, 'Enough is enough! We have tried enough. Now we drop all that nonsense. Now we will dance and sing and rejoice and praise God's beauty, and God's grandeur and His blessings.

From this moment, try this. I don't see that there is any problem.