Darshan 30 October 1976

Anand means bliss and shantam means silence. So you have to be blissful and very silent.

Happiness has a fever in it; it is never silent That's the difference between happiness and bliss.

Happiness is tense. One really gets tired of everything - even happiness. One cannot remain happy for a long time; you will get fed up with it. You would like to relax - you would like to move to the opposite. Hence misery follows happiness. It is a must; it is a necessity - just as night follows the day. The day you work hard; in the night you relax into oblivion.

So whatsoever we call happiness, pleasure - they are all very tense states. One is constantly excited. Excitement tires, and excitement dissipates energy. And to be excited means that you are not centred. To be excited means that you have gone out; you are wavering. To be excited means that the lake of your being is disturbed too much. Maybe you like that disturbance so you call it happiness, but all the same it is disturbance. The lake is not silent. There are too many waves and much excitement and much turmoil and much chaos.

Pain also is excitement and pleasure too. Hence both are convertible. Pleasure can become pain; pain can become pleasure. And many times, if you observe minutely, you will see this happening:

pleasure turning into pain; pain turning into pleasure. That's why sadists and masochists exist in the world. They have come to know how to make pain a pleasure. The masochist tortures himself.

There comes a moment when the very torture gives pleasure. The sadist tortures the other. And once you have learned how to create pleasure out of your pain, of course you would like to remain in your pain. That's why so many people are miserable - they have learned a wrong trick. Whenever they are miserable, they are happy. This is their dilemma. Whenever they are happy, they are miserable because they don't know what to do with this happiness. With pain they know what to do.

With pain they become important, significant. They are moving on familiar ground and they know how to change it into pleasure. And the same is true about pleasure: every pleasure automatically changes into pain if you go on watching.

You have met your woman or your friend after many days, and you hug and you kiss, and the friend goes on holding you, and he doesn't allow you to get away from him. There will come a moment when you will see that now the hugging is no more pleasurable; it is becoming painful. Now it has no beauty in it; it is becoming ugly, nauseating, horrible. And if the friend goes on, goes on, you will be on the verge of exploding. You will say, 'Stop! Enough is enough!' But the first experience of being hugged by an old friend was pleasurable. Just after a few moments it starts turning into pain.

All love affairs eventually turn into pain because each excitement is bound to tire you, dissipate your energy.

Bliss is a totally different quality of happiness. It is non-excitement, it is not feverish; it has no passion in it. It has compassion but no passion. That is the condition of shantam. So you have to seek from this moment a state of bliss which is also a state of silence and peace. You have to become a lake with no ripples, with no waves. And when Silence is absolute, there is tremendous bliss. It has nothing to do with all the pleasures that you've known before. You cannot even call it pleasurable; you cannot even call it pleasant. It is a totally new experience. It is neither pain nor pleasure. It cannot be either because it is not excitement. It is a totally different state of being. . . non-excited being. No ripples, no movement, a tremendous presence, a great centring. Time disappears when excitement disappears. And once there is no time, there is peace. Peace is timelessness.

And when time disappears, automatically space disappears, because they both are together. They are aspects of the same phenomenon. In a state of silence, there is no time and no space. Suddenly you are somewhere in a transcendental world of no time and no space.

This is the meaning of your name - anand shantam. Start by being more and more silent. Start by being shantam and bliss will follow like a shadow.

[A visitor says he leaves sannyas to Osho.] That's very good! That's better. Rather than choosing, to be chosen is better. And it is certainly difficult in the state of confusion in which a human being exists, to decide what to do, what not to do. In fact any decision creates more confusion and a person becomes divided. A part of the mind says, 'Go ahead,' and a part resists. And any conflict, any split inside is bad. Any conflict creates a violence inside. So that's better.

In the East that has been one of the traditional ways. A disciple goes to the master and says, 'If you feel that I am ready, then accept me. If you feel I am not ready, then just say to me. I will come again whenever I am ready and you accept me. ' A disciple simply goes to the master and he leaves it to the master - whatsoever he wants to. That's more of a surrendering attitude.

It's good. Close your eyes. And if something happens in the body energy, simply allow it . . .

This will be your name.... Forget the old completely - as if it never belonged to you. Let there be a discontinuity. This moment is historical. One phase of life ends - another begins. So don't carry the old load with you. Simply get out of it as a snake gets out of its own skin, not even looking back.

Simply slip out of the past. Nobody ever becomes victorious fighting with the past, because if you have to fight with it, you have to remain with it; you cannot get out of it. Just slip out of it with no fight Just say goodbye and silently get out of it - with no effort; because wherever there is effort, there is clinging. So make no effort

That's why I have made sannyas such a simple process. Traditionally it was very complicated and you had to train yourself for years and discipline yourself for years, and then sannyas would be given to you. I have made it absolutely simple for a particular reason. It should be simple. It should not be a discipline; it should not be practised. It should be spontaneous.

This will be your new name: Swami Deva Prasuna. Deva means divine and prasuna means flower - a divine flower or a divine flowering. And that's how I see every being: every being is almost like a bud. A human being is like a bud. When it flowers totally it becomes divine.

So be more open and don't hold yourself. Just relax and it will open on its own; you will become a flower. And there is no need to force the petals - they open on their own. You have to do only one thing: you are not to force them. You are not to hold out, resist them - that's all. If you don't hinder they will open on their own accord, in the right time, in the right season. And everything has its season and its time. So there is no hurry either. I am not in a hurry. Move patiently, but remain more and more open.

[A visitor says: Many things to learn... Many fears to overcome.] Mm, mm. They can be overcome, because the innermost core is always beyond them. They may surround us but they can never encroach on our being. They always remain far away. Even when death is just there in front of you, then too your innermost core remains a watcher on the hills, and everything is happening in the valley. Because we are too much attached to the body and to the mind they appear too close; otherwise no fear, no problem, is close. They are as far away as galaxies.

The eastern psychology has been working on these lines for centuries: how to create a distance between the consciousness and the body, between the Consciousness and the mind. That's the only problem. In the East we have never tackled problems separately. That's something new to the West - they are trying to tackle problems separately.

Somebody is obsessed with fear, somebody is obsessed with sex, somebody is obsessed with greed, somebody with anger, somebody with something else - a thousand and one problems are there, and each problem is being tackled separately as if it has its own existence. Then even if you solve it, nothing is solved, because by the time it is solved you become aware of other problems.

And in fact it is never solved - it simply disappears into some other problem; it starts hiding behind some other problem. You solve sex; it moves into anger. Anybody who is fighting with sex will become more angry, more irritated, more aggressive, violent Now sex is hiding behind violence. You try to solve it from violence; it will move somewhere else - because all problems are one problem deep down, and unless you tackle the one, nothing can be solved. You can go on playing around and wasting time. And the deepest problem - the only one problem - is that we are identified with the mind, and through the mind, with the body. This is the only problem - the identification with the mind... that we cannot be just an observer.

When anger arises I forget that it is just an object in front of me. I become one with it; I lose distance.

Suddenly I am anger. The reality is that I am the watcher; the anger is just a content passing by.

I am the watcher, the witness. If only the witness can be helped to come and to take roots in you, then it is not a question of what problem. Anger comes, greed comes, irritation comes; whatsoever comes one simply remains aware and knows this too will pass and that this is just a passing thing.

It has nothing to do with you. You are the one who always remains. Problems come and go. You are the one who never comes and never goes.

In your long life there have been so many problems. Now you cannot even remember them. They came and they went away. They have not even left a trace behind. When they were there they were so important. When they were there, it appeared as if they were not solved, how would you be able to live? The whole life was at stake. Now they are gone - not even a memory is left The problem that is facing you right now will be the same. It will go, and after one year you will not be able to remember it This distance has to be created. This is what meditation is all about - creating a distance between the content and the container.

There is a very famous sufi story. A great master died. All his disciples were always very curious about one thing, and he had never revealed it to anybody. He had a book and he used to hide it and keep it under lock. Sometimes he would go and open the lock and look in the book, and again lock it Everybody had tried to find out what was in the book.

The moment the old man died they all rushed towards the lock. Everybody was waiting: 'What is there? There must be something very precious...' They opened the book - they were thrilled - but the book was empty. And just on the last page there was one small sentence written by the old man that said, 'If you know the difference between the content and the container, you are wise.' And the whole book was empty!... Very indicative.

Once you have known the difference between the content and the container, your life is empty of all problems. So whenever you can come, come. Mm? Good!