Chapter #12 Even Bein Gawd Ain T A Bed Of Roses #12

OSHO (to Denis) : Love is the inner wine. It is getting intoxicated without any help of chemicals, drugs: it is getting intoxicated by sheer being. Just to be is so intoxicating once you become aware of it, of what a great gift has been given to you. We don't deserve it, we don't deserve life; we have not earned it, it has been simply given to us but we take it for granted and hence we go on missing its intoxicating joy.

My sannyasins have to become gods of wine. I teach intoxication, celebration, joy. Love brings all these things into your life. Love is the alchemy that transforms your energies into wine. Wine is symbolic: it is a symbol of getting lost in the ecstasy of existence, it is the symbol of getting so lost that only God remains and you are no more. It is the art of dying, drowning, being absorbed by existence.

It is a beautiful name -- let it become a reality. Don't leave it as a name, let it become your inner experience. Be intoxicated with the earth and all its joys, and the sky and all its stars. Be intoxicated by the wind and the rain and the sun. Be intoxicated by people and animals and birds. Be intoxicated with flowers and rivers and mountains. Any excuse is right, but be intoxicated!

OSHO (to David) : Only by being truthful can one become beloved of God. Only by being authentic does on become available to God. God is always available to us but we are closed -- and every lie goes on closing us more and more. Truth gives you an opening. The moment you lie, you shrink, you hide; you don't want to be exposed.

One lie needs a thousand and one other lies to protect it; it is a non-ending process. Truth needs no defense; it is not a continuity. The moment you assert something true you need not carry its memory with you; there is no need to remember what you have said, what you have been. But if you are lying, by saying or by being, you will have to remember it; otherwise you can do something against it and you will be exposed. The man of lies goes farther and farther from God. God's love goes on showering but we become unavailable.

Be truthful, authentic, sincere at any cost; whatsoever the sacrifice it is worth it because there is nothing more precious than love of God.

OSHO (to Jamie) : People who love according to tradition -- church and state -- have no need of God, they have already created their own protections. But the person who rebels against church, state, the past, has no protection other than God. To feel protected by man and man's institutions is a great illusion: the real protection comes only from God. Man is momentary, he himself is going to die, and such is the fate of all the institutions that he creates. Man and his institutions are nothing but dreams.

One can befool oneself but one cannot befool existence. One lives in a fool's paradise thinking that one is protected and secure because one has a bank balance and one has a beautiful wife or husband and one has intelligent children and parents and one belongs to a world religion -- Christianity, Hinduism, Islam. One can remain in this deception and lose one's whole life; when death comes it is too late. You are disillusioned but now nothing can be done: you are already gone.

Rebelling against tradition simply means that we no more trust human institutions, we only trust in God, we only trust in existence. Existence is our security, existence is our protection. Then even death cannot destroy anything because with this trust you start moving beyond time into eternity.

OSHO (to Nico) : We create it with great effort; great effort is needed because it is unnatural. To remain miserable one has to put all one's energies into it. That's why a miserable person cannot do anything else. He is so engaged, his whole energies are absorbed by his misery, he has a full-time job. A blissful person can do many things, he can be creative: he can create music, poetry, dance. He can do a thousand and one things because all his energies are free.

Bliss demands only one thing and that is the decisive factor. Misery allows you the ego and takes everything else. Bliss does not allow you the ego and gives you everything else, the whole existence. You have to decide. Either you choose the ego... then the kingdom of God is not yours; then you live in an egoistic, illusory world, surrounded by an ocean of misery.

The ego can exist only in hell. That context is a must for the ego to exist. Any moment bliss can be victorious over you if you surrender the ego, if you drop the idea of "I," the idea of being separate from existence. You will be overflooded with bliss and you will have inexhaustible energy for creating.

My sannyasins have to be creative, because my experience, my observation, is that only by being creative do you come closer to the creator. It is simple mathematics: by being creative you come closer to the creator. By being non-creative you go slowly slowly farther and farther away from the creator. Hence the moments of creation are the moments of prayer. When one is absolutely absorbed in some creative work one is no more; God is! Then God is flowing through you; then God is creating, not you. You become simply an instrument, a medium, a vehicle.

A sannyasin has to be a vehicle for God. A sannyasin has to be a bamboo flute: hollow, so that God can sing a song through you. And God is always ready to sing a song; he is a singer, a dancer -- but you have to be utterly empty of the ego, a hollow bamboo. Then the miracle is possible: you can become a flute on the lips of God.

The thirst for real happiness can't be quenched by the ocean of otherness, you have to tap the inner spring within yourself. Those who wait on the seashore for joy are standing on shifting sands.

OSHO (to Gay) : Their happiness depends on others, hence it creates dependence. The husband is happy because of the wife and the wife is happy because of the husband. This is what I call false happiness because you cannot depend on the other, there is no guarantee. The other may turn his back on you at any moment -- the other is not reliable.

One has to find happiness which arises within oneself. Then it is true because then it gives you independence. You can go on sharing it with your friends, with your husband, with your children, but then you are not getting it from them; you are sharing whatsoever you have already got.

Usually, just the opposite is the case: neither are you happy, nor is the other person happy. You depend on him -- who has no happiness of his own -- for your happiness; he depends on you for his happiness -- and you don't have any happiness of your own. Two beggars hoping that the other is an emperor, both will be disillusioned sooner or later. And the sooner it is, the better, because then you can start searching in the right direction. The right direction is inwards.

There is a bliss that arises in you. Like a fountain it wells up within you, like a flower growing on a tree it grows in you; it is your fragrance. And when one is happy not depending on anybody else -- one is simply happy by oneself -- it is true happiness. Then it has a quality of spirituality because by being truly happy you become rooted in God, you become centered in God.

OSHO : Just to visualize the beyond is enough because in visualizing it you become it. So whenever you have time, sit silently, go beyond words, beyond mind, beyond body, beyond the world of objects. Leave everything behind. Go on moving till you can find a place, a space where only your consciousness exists and there is nothing to be conscious about; where there is no content but only consciousness, a mirror mirroring nothing. That is our real home.
How long will you be here?

DHYANO : Six months.

Good. The beyond is going to happen!

DHYANO : Thank you!

OSHO (to Dhyanprem) : Meditation means a state of no-mind. We live in the mind and because we live in the mind we never become aware of our true reality, of our true identity. The mind goes on giving us new ideas about who we are. Rather than allowing us to explore who we are the mind fabricates, manufactures ideas. It is a machine for manufacturing ideas. It can talk about love without knowing anything about love; without ever experiencing it, it can talk about love. It can talk about meditation, it can talk about God, it can talk about anything under the sky. It needs no experience; it can simply go on playing with words. It is clever with words clever with logic-chopping; it can go on splitting hairs. It can go on so deeply into analysis that you will completely forget that the very premise was only guesswork, that the beginning step was wrong.

Be a lover of meditation. Meditation means believing in experience, not in speculation. Trust only experience, your own experience and nobody else's, then you are on the right track. And once you are on the right track, moving in the right direction, however slow the movement is, even if you go at a snail's pace, you are bound to arrive, because God is not far away: it is at the very center of your being!

MAHAMAYA, THE NAME OF BUDDHA'S MOTHER, MEANS THE GREAT MAGIC.

OSHO : It is symbolically meaningful too, a great metaphor: to give birth to a Buddha is the greatest possible magic in the world.

It is a traditional Buddhist idea that once a Buddha is born the mother dies. To give birth to a Buddha means getting ready to die. That too is a metaphor, a beautiful metaphor: you have to die, only then can your consciousness become the consciousness of a Buddha; you are the mother, the womb. Once Buddha-consciousness is ready the egg has to be broken and thrown away. The egg was needed only to protect the growing bird within; once the bird is ready to be on his own wings the eggshell is of no use. Up to now the eggshell has been a protection, a nourishment; now it will be a prison cell.

To give birth to a Buddha each of us has to become a mother and each of us has to be ready to die -- because only then is the Buddha born. Right now we are eggs called egos. The egg has to be broken, the ego has to be shattered, so that the Buddha-consciousness within you can be freed.

That's the function of a Master: to destroy all the barriers between you and your potential, between you and your growth. And certainly to be with a Master is the greatest magic in the world because to be with a Master means to be ready to die. To be with the Master means to be ready to give birth to a Buddha.