Chapter #11 Even Bein Gawd Ain T A Bed Of Roses #11

OSHO (to Barbara) : Man is afraid of love as he is of death. Both are strangers: death takes you physically into some unknown dimension, love takes you spiritually into some unknown dimension. In fact both take you into the same dimension -- death, against your will; love, with your total receptivity, with your welcoming heart. Hence love is beautiful and death is ugly because one resists, fights, one does not want it to happen. It still happens: you are helpless, but it happens against you. Love happens with your co-operation; it cannot happen against you.

If it is going to happen at all you have to co-operate with the unknown. Once you have known how to co-operate with the love energy that takes you into the invisible, into the mysterious you will be able to relax into death too. Love teaches you how to live and how to die. It not only makes your life a blessing, it makes your death also a blessing.

JOE, SHORT FOR JOSEPH...

OSHO : You also can give birth to a Christ in you -- not literally, metaphorically. You can create a Christ-consciousness in you. In the East we call it Buddha-consciousness; it is the same, it is the same state of being where ego disappears.

The word "joe" or "joeseph" means increasing faith. Love and faith are the same energy -- different expressions of the same phenomenon. Love is the beginning of trust, faith, and faith is the ultimate culmination of love. But remember, by faith I don't mean belief: I mean trust. Belief is very ordinary, it does not transform people; it is a very poor substitute for faith. Belief comes from the outside, others impose it upon you; then you become a Christian, a Hindu, a Mohammedan. These are all beliefs just painted on the outside but deep down you are the same person.

Faith happens in the heart. The heart starts vibrating in such a way that there is a deep synchronicity with the whole. The whole existence has a certain rhythm. When your heart also pulsates in the same rhythm there is a meeting. That meeting is faith, that experience is faith, and it is not possible without love. It is in the school of love that you will learn the art of faith.

Both have disappeared from the world. Love exists no more; in the name of love exists lust. Faith exists no more; in the name of faith exists belief. Lust is ugly because it is an effort to exploit the other, to use the other as a means. And belief is ugly because it is pseudo, phony. But love and faith are immensely beautiful. It is only through love and faith that you will be able to give birth to Christ in your innermost being.

OSHO (to Dorothy) : It need the right soil and a nourishing atmosphere. It needs the sun and the clouds, the rain and the wind. It simply needs the right opportunity to grow. It is there, if it was not there then we would have been incapable of creating it. It is not something that can be manufactured by man. It is far bigger than man, it is far higher than man.

Man can only make things smaller than himself. He can make machines but he cannot create love. He can create philosophies but he cannot create truth. He can create religions but he cannot create God. And whatsoever he creates proves to be very small.

Unless man starts seeking and searching for something that is beyond him, bigger than him, his real life has not started. And the moment you start seeking and searching for the bigger, the higher, the moment your eyes start moving upwards towards the heavens, towards the starry sky, a transformation is made. The very movement of your vision towards the higher is the beginning of something so immensely radical that you cannot conceive it, understand it, unless it has happened.

Let love be the beginning of that radical transformation. Help your love to grow. Feel more, think less. Move towards the heart from the head. Start functioning from the heart more than the head. Be less logical, more musical. Be less calculative, because calculations will not allow you to grow in love. Calculation is good in the marketplace but not in the temple. In the temple one needs to risk one cannot be calculative; one needs to jump into the unknown, one can't be calculative.

That's why the head has condemned love as blind. Not that love is blind; in fact love is the only possibility of ever seeing the truth. Love is our real capacity to see, the real eye, the third eye; but the head condemns it as blind because it goes into things where the head says "Wait! First calculate. Wait, weigh which alternative is better, which is going to be more profitable. Wait, watch, don't be in such a hurry and don't leap into the dark." And love always happens when you jump before you can think. The head says "Think before you jump." The heart says "Jump before you think."

And then love starts growing. It is the most dangerous way to live, but the only way to live. There is no other way. The calculated way, the safer way, is the way to die -- not to live.

So two things to be remembered. One: love is already there in the heart, you just have to move towards the heart to help it bloom. Nourish the heart. Move from mathematics to music and slowly slowly you will see a lotus opening up in the heart. It is exactly like an opening of the lotus. Great fragrance is released -- that fragrance becomes prayer.

OSHO (to Corrie) : You have to become more and more alert in your life, you have to de-automatize yourself. The way we are conditioned is such that we all become machines: we go on doing things but with no awareness. We become so efficient in doing things that awareness is not needed at all.

The body itself starts doing things, it does not need our consciousness. It is like driving a car: in the beginning you have to be very conscious, alert; slowly slowly, as you learn you become less and less conscious. When you have learned perfectly well how to drive then consciousness is not needed at all. Then you can think a thousand and one thoughts; you can dream, you can listen to the radio, watch tv, talk to a friend, sing a song, and still go on driving. Now the body knows the whole trick, you are not needed at all.

This is how our whole life becomes almost an automation. This has to be de-automatized. We have to start becoming alert about small things: walking, eating, taking a bath, chewing food, smelling a flower, touching a rock -- just small things for which no awareness is needed at all.

Make it a point that whatsoever you are doing, remember to do it consciously, as if it is a question of life and death. If you are smelling a rose, smell it as if this is for the last time; tomorrow you may not be here at all. It will bring intensity and awareness both together. It will release great passion to live and great vigilance too. And if one can become absolutely aware one has arrived. To be absolutely aware of all one's acts, thoughts, feelings, is to attain to god-realization.

OSHO (to David) : We are brought up in such a way that we think of existence as an enemy. It has become so deep-rooted in us that we are not even conscious of it. We have been taught to conquer nature. Now, that is stupid. We are part of nature -- how can the part conquer the whole? It is sheer nonsense. And it is not going to affect the whole but it is going to destroy the part itself. It is hitting your head against a stone wall.

We have been taught that life is a struggle -- it is not. We have made it a struggle, that is true, but it was not meant to be so. Life is a celebration, a love affair, a great dance. It is not a struggle, but down the ages that has been our attitude -- for a certain reason: the more you struggle, the more you feel your ego becoming stronger. The more you fight, the more you feel yourself separate, unique. The more you say no to life and existence, the more the ego becomes crystallized. Say yes and it starts melting.

To be a friend to existence means saying yes to existence, yes in all its moods. Sometimes it is cloudy -- still the yes is there. Sometimes it is very sunny and sometimes a dark moment arrives -- misery surrounds you, or anger or rage -- still you say yes deep down because whatsoever life is, is divine. In it's totality it is divine.

Befriend even your anger and you will be surprised because just by befriending it you have changed its whole context. By befriending it you have transformed it, you have released its potential. It is no more a thorn, it becomes a flower.

And the day that one can say yes to each and everything unconditionally -- that's what I mean by befriending existence -- you will melt, dissolve, and disappear. But that is the greatest blessing that can happen to a man: dissolving, disappearing, because when you are not, God is. The non-existence of your ego immediately becomes the existence of God. God is always there, but hidden behind a curtain; and the curtain is our ego, our eyes are clouded by the ego. The ego wants to fight, it hankers to fight, because it can live only through fight, hate, struggle.

Since Charles Darwin, the word "struggle" has become even more important. For these three centuries the whole of humanity has lived in a certain climate of thought created by Darwin, Nietzsche, Marx, Freud; and they are all in favor of struggle, because only the fittest survive. Marx turns it into "class struggle" and Freud turns it into a "struggle with the unconscious," but for these three hundred years we have lived in such a poisoned, polluted atmosphere that we have completely forgotten how to be a friend to existence. And without being a friend you will never know what religion is, what God is.

Start from this very moment and then there are great surprises waiting for you, great surprises. Great miracles are always happening around you but those miracles can be seen only by the friends. Existence is ready to reveal all its mysteries, but those mysteries can be revealed only to a friend. Only a friend can be invited to participate in the secrets of life.

(To UWE):Mm mm. Have you any idea what your name means?

Uwe: Glorious bear.
Dangerous!(chuckling)... Mm mm Close your eyes (chuckling)... still close your eyes!Adding anand to Uwe, a different meaning for Uwe.

Your idea is also beautiful, but a little too German(laughter)... so a little change will be good!

Uwe means possessor -- a possessor of bliss. Bliss is not something that has to happen somewhere in the future; it is already the case. We have simply become dis connected from it. It is still there as an undercurrent but you have forgotten how to connect yourself with it. You have become unplugged and my whole work here is to plug you in again to an undercurrent of joy, bliss, peace, love, harmony.

Meditation is only a method to reconnect you, to give you some idea from where to reach your own nature. We have become alienated from ourselves, we have gone too far out and now we don't know where our home is. Even if sometimes we come across the home by accident, we can't recognize it as our home and we go on searching for it.

The function of a master is to give you a certain method, a device, so that you can become capable of recognizing who you are.

It is just a forgotten language, it can be revived. It is as if you meet a man on the road and you know that you know him, you know that you know his name you say "It is just on the tip of my tongue, but it is not coming" Everybody has known those moments. One feels very strange: one knows and yet there seems to be a block between oneself and the memory. The function of the master is to dissolve those blocks. And the greatest block is the ego, the China Wall, but brick by brick it can be removed.

Once we have removed the ego, the whole sky is open. You can see to the farthest shore, you can see to the ultimate goal; you can see who you are. And seeing that, bliss starts showering; the starts pouring flowers. The whole existence rejoices whenever a man becomes attuned to his own being.
The two step dance of bliss:

(To Allan): The second is very easy: once you know how to be harmonious with yourself, you have learned the basic art; now you can easily be in harmony with the whole of existence. To find god is easy -- the difficult thing is to find your own self. And why is it so difficult? The reason is that down the ages everybody has been taught to live a split life. You have been taught to fight with yourself. You have been told that there is something wrong with you. You have been told that man is suffering from an original sin and that you have to fight hard, otherwise you will be drowned.
So everybody is fighting with himself and to fight with oneself is the most stupid thing a man can do. It is like fighting with himself and to fight with oneself is the most stupid thing a man can do. It is like fighting with your own shadow, it is like making your left hand fight with your right hand. The only result will be that your energies will be dissipated and you will create a split personality, you will become two... if you are fortunate; otherwise you will become many. But one thing is certain: you will not be one.
The politicians want it this way because a split person is easy to dominate. The priests want it this way because a split person is always ready to bow down to them. The state and the church are both for split people because when people are fighting within themselves they can't be rebellious. They don't have enough energy to rebel, they are engaged in an inner conflict. It has been a very cunning device to protect the establishment, to protect the established interests, the vested interests. Everybody has been conditioned to fight himself. This is a great strategy and it is time we got out of it.

Don't fight with yourself -- that is one of my most fundamental teachings. Love yourself because it is only through love that you will become harmonious, that you will become one. Don't condemn yourself. You have been given a beautiful body... That is another meaning of Allan: handsome one. You have been given a beautiful mechanism called mind, if you use it rightly it is of tremendous importance; if it becomes the master then it is dangerous. If you remain the master then there is no problem, it is a beautiful servant. And you have been given a soul -- a piece of god. One cannot ask for more.

Love yourself and love the whole the whole of yourself, don't divide -- "I will choose the good ones, the good things, and I will deny the bad things." That's how split is created. Be harmonious with yourself. To be harmonious with oneself is the first step and the second step is to be harmonious with the whole. With the first step you become a sannyasin, with the second step you become a Buddha. There are only two steps; the whole journey is complete in two steps.

But remember the word" harmony " -- that has to be your mantra. Remember it constantly, don't forget it for a single moment, so that you can pull yourself out of the pattern that has been imposed upon you. And once you have started enjoying harmony there is great joy. Bliss is nothing but harmony: harmony with oneself and the whole.

(To Ratnaka): If we only know the body then we feel small. Hence a great inferiority complex arises in people. And psychoanalysts can't help much because they can't help you to know your oceanic existence, they have no idea of it. They can help you to become adjusted to your complex, they can help you to live with it, but they can't dissolve it. And there are afew people who may harm you by helping you: they may create a superiority complex in you just to get rid of your inferiority complex. These people are called positive thinkers but it is the same old disease now standing on it's head, nothing is changed. Now you will suffer from this, but the suffering will continue.

Only meditation can help because it gives you an experience of the bodiless consciousness, of the mindless consciousness. Once you have tasted the infinite sky within you there is no question of inferiority and no question of superiority either because you are not smaller than anybody else and you are not bigger than anybody else. Then the whole is one: there is nobody left to feel inferior or superior.

That's exactly the work we are trying to do here: helping you to become aware of the infinity of your being. That brings bliss, that brings eternal bliss.