[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been copy-typed on to the computer. It is for reference purposes only.]
Right religion does not mean a religion at all But a certain quality of religiousness. There is no god but there is godliness And there is no religion But there is religiousness. It is a quality, it is a feel, not a thing. Hence no religious person Can be Christian or Hindu or Mohammedan. These names are just political strategies Political games in the name of religion.
True religion has no adjectives True religion is simply like love. Can love be Christian or Hindu or Mohammedan? Can joy be Christian or Hindu or Mohammedan? Can beauty be Hindu, Christian or Mohammedan? It would be nonsense to talk of Hindu beauty Or Hindu love or Hindu joy.
The same is true about religion. True religion is not religion at all But a feeling of religiousness A feeling of gratitude towards the whole.
My effort here is to help you to be religious. I teach a religionless religion, a godless god.
That you are becoming a sannyasin Is enough to prove your courage. To be with me is dangerous. It has always been so: To be with any master is dangerous. While the master is alive it is dangerous When the master is dead it is very convenient. When Jesus was alive There were only a few people with him Very courageous ones. But after his death thousands gathered. Now almost half of the earth is Christian. But it is pointless. When the master is dead you can worship And you can enjoy the feeling That you are religious But you are not religious.
Religion transpires only when the master is alive. It is something that happens Between an alive master and the disciple.
It can't happen when the master has disappeared
And to be with me is even more courageous Than to be with Jesus or to be with Buddha Because they were still talking In terms of tradition They were still using the past heritage.
The time has come for humanity To be discontinuous with the past. It is absolutely disgusting! We have to disconnect ourselves from the past Only then is there a future Otherwise humanity on this earth is finished. Within these twenty years it will be decided: Either We disconnect ourselves from the ugly past, Then there is a future and there is hope, Or We cling to the dead past and we die with it.
Just as there is a sun on the outside There is a sun inside too. The outside sun rises and sets But the inside sun is always there. It never rises, it never sets -- it is eternal. Unless we know the inner light And the source of it We live in darkness.
Make every possible effort to move inwards. In the beginning it is arduous But only in the beginning. It is just like learning any art. Learning to swim is difficult in the beginning But once you know the knack of it It is so easy that one wonders later on Why it was so difficult. One can simply float in the river. No need to do anything.
And that's how it starts happening inside: Just in the beginning there is A little effort involved, a little struggle. Soon one can simply float In the river that moves inwards. And it takes you To deeper and deeper realms af bliss To more and more light, to eternity, to god.
Diligence is what is needed to be a sannyasin. Only two things are needed: Intelligence and diligence. Intelligence without diligence is impotent. Diligence without intelligence is blind. One is not enough, both have to be together Only then is your life enriched.
So be intelligently diligent. Act, but act through awareness. Do a thousand and one things in life But don't be controlled by unconscious instincts. Then slowly slowly life becomes Such a divine experience. It is delicious! But one has to learn the art of tasting it. And all other arts are small Compared to the art of living. These two things have to be remembered: Be intelligent and be diligent.
They very rarely happen together. Intelligent people are not diligent Then their intelligence is Just an exercise in futility. They go on thinking and thinking and thinking And by thinking nothing is ever achieved. And then there are people who are very diligent But without any intelligence. They go on doing harm to others and to themselves. They do much, but not knowing what they are doing They are bound to create more misery in the world For themselves and for others too.
Remember this That these two things have to be two aspects Simultaneous aspects of your growth. And then life starts growing so fast That in moments one can make quantum leaps.
Egolessness is the goal of all meditation. That is the goal of sannyas itself. the ego is the only problem And then it creates a thousand and one problems. It creates greed, it creates anger It creates lust, it creates jealousy And so on, so forth. And people go on fighting With greed, with anger, with lust But it is futile. Unless the root is cut New branches will always be coming up. You can go on pruning the branches and leaves. That is not going to help. In fact by your pruning The tree will become more and more thick The foliage will become more and more thick. The tree will become stronger.
My insistence is: don't fight with the symptoms Go to the very root of the matter And that is simply one -- it is the ego. Cut it from there and all other problems Disappear as if they had never existed before.
If you can learn only one thing here Just to be without an ego To be as if one is not To be a nobody, a nothingness Then the ultimate is achieved. There is no higher goal than that. And it can easily be done Because ego is a false phenomenon Hence it can be dropped. It is not a real thing. It is imaginary, it is a shadow. If you go on believing in it, it is. If you look deeply into it It is not found at all.
Meditation simply means Looking deeply inside for the ego Searching every nook and corner of your being For where it is. It is not found anywhere. The moment it is not found anywhere It is finished and you are born anew.
My effort here is To teach you not righteousness, but awareness. As awareness deepens, righteousness comes But it does not become an ego trip. It can't become an ego trip Because the first condition for awareness Is the dropping of the ego. If one is not aware and tries to be righteous Then naturally That righteousness will be exploited by the ego. It will make you a puritan A moralist, a pious egoist. And that is far more dangerous Than the ordinary ego.
The ordinary ego is easy to drop But the spiritual ego is very difficult to drop Because it is very subtle, it goes deep in you. It has to be uprooted from your very depth. The ordinary ego is only on the surface It is very easily removeable.
Hence I don't teach righteousness I teach awareness And righteousness comes of its own accord.
Only the wise can be settled. The unwise man is always restless. The unwise is always running hither and thither Knowing not where he wants to go Why he wants to go Knowing nothing, he feels he has to do something. He can't sit silently. It is impossible for him to sit silently. The greatest difficulty for him Is to do nothing. Only the wise man Is capable of living a settled life.
Wisdom arises out of meditation. It is a fragrance of the flower of meditation. Then one is always at home wherever one is And always at rest And life starts having roots in existence Hence a feeling of settlement... All the chaos And the smoke of the chaos disappear. Instead there arises a clarity. You can see things as they are and you can act accordingly. And any act coming out of wisdom is liberating.
Purity has nothing to do with morality. A moral person is never pure. The pure person is always moral. Morality is pseudo, it is imposed It is cultivated, it is a facade, it is a mask. It does not really purify you It only paints purity on your face. It makes you a good actor. And you have to be very alert about it Because the Japanese culture Makes people very good actors.
For centuries Japan Has lived with a beautiful facade. People are taught to smile. Even when they could hit you, they smile. It is a very polished culture, but very false. One has to be more authentic. A little uncivilisedness is not bad If it brings your natural flavour back to you.
And there is a different kind of purity, The true purity. It always comes from meditation. It is nothing to do with morality. It comes from inner silence. As you become More and more silent and centred inside Your life starts having an aura of purity. But that is a by-product. You are not cultivating it It is happening of its own accord. When these things happen of their own accord They have a beautiful colour, shape, form. When they are cultivated they are ugly.
Thomas was one of the disciples of Jesus -- One of the twelve apostles. He has become well-known As 'Doubting Thomas'. This time, please don't do that!
The name Thomas is beautiful. It has to be relieved of the burden of doubt. Literally it means a seeker of truth. But one cannot seek truth If one is full of doubt; It is impossible. Doubt is not a bridge, it is a barrier. It is not a bridge, it is a wall; It closes you. It does not make you available to the truth That is present everywhere. And because you are constantly doubting You cannot act; doubt is impotent. Action needs trust; only a man of trust can act. And the journey towards truth Is the greatest act of life. Tremendous trust is needed.
So try! Last time you missed -- This time don't miss it!
Rest, relaxation has to be your path. Relax and rest more and more int yourself. Don't be in a hurry. There is no need to be in a hurry. the whole eternity is available It is all ours. Don't be impatient. Enjoy each moment. Enjoy it totally Without any worry about the future.
The best moments are those When you are utterly relaxed. Doing nothing, sitting silently Spring comes and the grass grows by itself.
Man ordinarily gathers dust around his being And loses the brightness which is his birthright. Everybody is born bright And everybody becomes mediocre. By the time one dies, one is almost stupid. This is a strange phenomenon. And people call it evolution -- it is involution.
Children are more bright, more alive More clear about everything Without any confusion. As they start growing They start gathering confusion from everywhere. We wait until they become twenty-one years of age Then we give them the right to vote Because be that time everybody loses brightness Everybody becomes dull, stupid. Then you are called adult. You are really adulterated Completely adulterated But people say 'now you have become adult You have come of age.' Certainly politicians are afraid To give voting rights to children Because they will see through and through. Voting rights can be given to you Only when you have lost all capacity to see, When you are utterly blind.
My effort here Is to help you to drop your rust, your dust To cleanse your mirror So you can again be your original face.
Just as a river dissolves into the ocean Dissolve into the divine. Don't think yourself separate from existence. Meet, merge more and more. We go on insisting that we are separate. That is the only irreligious act: To emphasise Separation. To emphasise unity is religion. It has to become a conscious effort.
Seeing a sunset, dissolve into it. Don't just remain an observer Let the observer and observed become one. Slowly slowly you will learn the knack of it. Then sitting by the side of a tree you can have A deep feeling of unity with the tree. And these small experiments can lead you Ultimately to feel oneness with the whole. And that experience is god.
My sannyasins have to become songs. They have to learn playfulness Light-heartedness, a sense of humour. And they have to learn how to rejoice In the small things of life.
There are no great things in life Life consists of small things. But if you know how to rejoice in them You transform them into great things.
In the hands of a Buddha Even ordinary water becomes wine. That's exactly the meaning of the miracle That is said to have been done by Jesus: That he turned water into wine. Only fools think that it is literally true. It is symbolically true.
In the hands of Jesus water is wine. You can get drunk on simple, pure water. It depends on how you drink. It does not depend on the drink It depends on the drinker. And I am telling you from my experience. I don't mix soda and whisky I mix soda and soda -- and it works!
Osho's Commentary
Right religion does not mean a religion at all
But a certain quality of religiousness.
There is no god but there is godliness
And there is no religion
But there is religiousness.
It is a quality, it is a feel, not a thing.
Hence no religious person
Can be Christian or Hindu or Mohammedan.
These names are just political strategies
Political games in the name of religion.
True religion has no adjectives
True religion is simply like love.
Can love be Christian or Hindu or Mohammedan?
Can joy be Christian or Hindu or Mohammedan?
Can beauty be Hindu, Christian or Mohammedan?
It would be nonsense to talk of Hindu beauty
Or Hindu love or Hindu joy.
The same is true about religion.
True religion is not religion at all
But a feeling of religiousness
A feeling of gratitude towards the whole.
My effort here is to help you to be religious.
I teach a religionless religion, a godless god.
That you are becoming a sannyasin
Is enough to prove your courage.
To be with me is dangerous.
It has always been so:
To be with any master is dangerous.
While the master is alive it is dangerous
When the master is dead it is very convenient.
When Jesus was alive
There were only a few people with him
Very courageous ones.
But after his death thousands gathered.
Now almost half of the earth is Christian.
But it is pointless.
When the master is dead you can worship
And you can enjoy the feeling
That you are religious
But you are not religious.
Religion transpires only when the master is alive.
It is something that happens
Between an alive master and the disciple.
It can't happen when the master has disappeared
And to be with me is even more courageous
Than to be with Jesus or to be with Buddha
Because they were still talking
In terms of tradition
They were still using the past heritage.
The time has come for humanity
To be discontinuous with the past.
It is absolutely disgusting!
We have to disconnect ourselves from the past
Only then is there a future
Otherwise humanity on this earth is finished.
Within these twenty years it will be decided:
Either
We disconnect ourselves from the ugly past,
Then there is a future and there is hope,
Or
We cling to the dead past and we die with it.
Just as there is a sun on the outside
There is a sun inside too.
The outside sun rises and sets
But the inside sun is always there.
It never rises, it never sets -- it is eternal.
Unless we know the inner light
And the source of it
We live in darkness.
Make every possible effort to move inwards.
In the beginning it is arduous
But only in the beginning.
It is just like learning any art.
Learning to swim is difficult in the beginning
But once you know the knack of it
It is so easy that one wonders later on
Why it was so difficult.
One can simply float in the river.
No need to do anything.
And that's how it starts happening inside:
Just in the beginning there is
A little effort involved, a little struggle.
Soon one can simply float
In the river that moves inwards.
And it takes you
To deeper and deeper realms af bliss
To more and more light, to eternity, to god.
Diligence is what is needed to be a sannyasin.
Only two things are needed:
Intelligence and diligence.
Intelligence without diligence is impotent.
Diligence without intelligence is blind.
One is not enough, both have to be together
Only then is your life enriched.
So be intelligently diligent.
Act, but act through awareness.
Do a thousand and one things in life
But don't be controlled by unconscious instincts.
Then slowly slowly life becomes
Such a divine experience.
It is delicious!
But one has to learn the art of tasting it.
And all other arts are small
Compared to the art of living.
These two things have to be remembered:
Be intelligent and be diligent.
They very rarely happen together.
Intelligent people are not diligent
Then their intelligence is
Just an exercise in futility.
They go on thinking and thinking and thinking
And by thinking nothing is ever achieved.
And then there are people who are very diligent
But without any intelligence.
They go on doing harm to others and to themselves.
They do much, but not knowing what they are doing
They are bound to create more misery in the world
For themselves and for others too.
Remember this
That these two things have to be two aspects
Simultaneous aspects of your growth.
And then life starts growing so fast
That in moments one can make quantum leaps.
Egolessness is the goal of all meditation.
That is the goal of sannyas itself.
the ego is the only problem
And then it creates a thousand and one problems.
It creates greed, it creates anger
It creates lust, it creates jealousy
And so on, so forth.
And people go on fighting
With greed, with anger, with lust
But it is futile.
Unless the root is cut
New branches will always be coming up.
You can go on pruning the branches and leaves.
That is not going to help.
In fact by your pruning
The tree will become more and more thick
The foliage will become more and more thick.
The tree will become stronger.
My insistence is: don't fight with the symptoms
Go to the very root of the matter
And that is simply one -- it is the ego.
Cut it from there and all other problems
Disappear as if they had never existed before.
If you can learn only one thing here
Just to be without an ego
To be as if one is not
To be a nobody, a nothingness
Then the ultimate is achieved.
There is no higher goal than that.
And it can easily be done
Because ego is a false phenomenon
Hence it can be dropped.
It is not a real thing.
It is imaginary, it is a shadow.
If you go on believing in it, it is.
If you look deeply into it
It is not found at all.
Meditation simply means
Looking deeply inside for the ego
Searching every nook and corner of your being
For where it is.
It is not found anywhere.
The moment it is not found anywhere
It is finished and you are born anew.
My effort here is
To teach you not righteousness, but awareness.
As awareness deepens, righteousness comes
But it does not become an ego trip.
It can't become an ego trip
Because the first condition for awareness
Is the dropping of the ego.
If one is not aware and tries to be righteous
Then naturally
That righteousness will be exploited by the ego.
It will make you a puritan
A moralist, a pious egoist.
And that is far more dangerous
Than the ordinary ego.
The ordinary ego is easy to drop
But the spiritual ego is very difficult to drop
Because it is very subtle, it goes deep in you.
It has to be uprooted from your very depth.
The ordinary ego is only on the surface
It is very easily removeable.
Hence I don't teach righteousness
I teach awareness
And righteousness comes of its own accord.
Only the wise can be settled.
The unwise man is always restless.
The unwise is always running hither and thither
Knowing not where he wants to go
Why he wants to go
Knowing nothing, he feels he has to do something.
He can't sit silently.
It is impossible for him to sit silently.
The greatest difficulty for him
Is to do nothing.
Only the wise man
Is capable of living a settled life.
Wisdom arises out of meditation.
It is a fragrance of the flower of meditation.
Then one is always at home wherever one is
And always at rest
And life starts having roots in existence
Hence a feeling of settlement...
All the chaos
And the smoke of the chaos disappear.
Instead there arises a clarity.
You can see things as they are
and you can act accordingly.
And any act coming out of wisdom is liberating.
Purity has nothing to do with morality.
A moral person is never pure.
The pure person is always moral.
Morality is pseudo, it is imposed
It is cultivated, it is a facade, it is a mask.
It does not really purify you
It only paints purity on your face.
It makes you a good actor.
And you have to be very alert about it
Because the Japanese culture
Makes people very good actors.
For centuries Japan
Has lived with a beautiful facade.
People are taught to smile.
Even when they could hit you, they smile.
It is a very polished culture, but very false.
One has to be more authentic.
A little uncivilisedness is not bad
If it brings your natural flavour back to you.
And there is a different kind of purity,
The true purity.
It always comes from meditation.
It is nothing to do with morality.
It comes from inner silence.
As you become
More and more silent and centred inside
Your life starts having an aura of purity.
But that is a by-product.
You are not cultivating it
It is happening of its own accord.
When these things happen of their own accord
They have a beautiful colour, shape, form.
When they are cultivated they are ugly.
Thomas was one of the disciples of Jesus --
One of the twelve apostles.
He has become well-known
As 'Doubting Thomas'.
This time, please don't do that!
The name Thomas is beautiful.
It has to be relieved of the burden of doubt.
Literally it means a seeker of truth.
But one cannot seek truth
If one is full of doubt;
It is impossible.
Doubt is not a bridge, it is a barrier.
It is not a bridge, it is a wall;
It closes you.
It does not make you available to the truth
That is present everywhere.
And because you are constantly doubting
You cannot act; doubt is impotent.
Action needs trust; only a man of trust can act.
And the journey towards truth
Is the greatest act of life.
Tremendous trust is needed.
So try!
Last time you missed -- This time don't miss it!
Rest, relaxation has to be your path.
Relax and rest more and more int yourself.
Don't be in a hurry.
There is no need to be in a hurry.
the whole eternity is available
It is all ours.
Don't be impatient. Enjoy each moment.
Enjoy it totally
Without any worry about the future.
The best moments are those
When you are utterly relaxed.
Doing nothing, sitting silently
Spring comes and the grass grows by itself.
Man ordinarily gathers dust around his being
And loses the brightness which is his birthright.
Everybody is born bright
And everybody becomes mediocre.
By the time one dies, one is almost stupid.
This is a strange phenomenon.
And people call it evolution -- it is involution.
Children are more bright, more alive
More clear about everything
Without any confusion.
As they start growing
They start gathering confusion from everywhere.
We wait until they become twenty-one years of age
Then we give them the right to vote
Because be that time everybody loses brightness
Everybody becomes dull, stupid.
Then you are called adult.
You are really adulterated
Completely adulterated
But people say 'now you have become adult
You have come of age.'
Certainly politicians are afraid
To give voting rights to children
Because they will see through and through.
Voting rights can be given to you
Only when you have lost all capacity to see,
When you are utterly blind.
My effort here
Is to help you to drop your rust, your dust
To cleanse your mirror
So you can again be your original face.
Just as a river dissolves into the ocean
Dissolve into the divine.
Don't think yourself separate from existence.
Meet, merge more and more. We go on insisting that we are separate.
That is the only irreligious act:
To emphasise
Separation.
To emphasise unity is religion.
It has to become a conscious effort.
Seeing a sunset, dissolve into it.
Don't just remain an observer
Let the observer and observed become one.
Slowly slowly you will learn the knack of it.
Then sitting by the side of a tree you can have
A deep feeling of unity with the tree.
And these small experiments can lead you
Ultimately to feel oneness with the whole.
And that experience is god.
My sannyasins have to become songs.
They have to learn playfulness
Light-heartedness, a sense of humour.
And they have to learn how to rejoice
In the small things of life.
There are no great things in life
Life consists of small things.
But if you know how to rejoice in them
You transform them into great things.
In the hands of a Buddha
Even ordinary water becomes wine.
That's exactly the meaning of the miracle
That is said to have been done by Jesus:
That he turned water into wine.
Only fools think that it is literally true.
It is symbolically true.
In the hands of Jesus water is wine.
You can get drunk on simple, pure water.
It depends on how you drink.
It does not depend on the drink
It depends on the drinker.
And I am telling you from my experience.
I don't mix soda and whisky
I mix soda and soda -- and it works!