Chapter #15 Even Bein Gawd Ain T A Bed Of Roses #15

JUDITH, AND SAEEDA, HER EIGHT-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER. JUDITH BECOMES MA VEET ABHILASHA: SURPASSING DESIRE.

OSHO : There are things you can get only if you desire them and there are things you can never get if you desire them. And the second category of things is really valuable. If you desire love you will miss because desiring is part of the mind and love is part of the heart. If you desire meditation you will miss because desire is a thought and meditation is a thoughtless state of consciousness. If you desire God you will miss because God is not an object, God is not a thing. God is your very interiority, he cannot be reduced to an object of desire. When all desires have left you what is left behind is God.

Going beyond desire is becoming a sannyasin and going beyond desire is the only way to find God. (A PAUSE)
And what is the meaning of her name, "Saeeda"?

ABHILASHA : I'm not really sure, I think it means love.

Who has given it to her?

ABHILASHA : Her father and I.

And from what language does it come?

ABHILASHA : From Sanskrit.

"Saeeda"? You think it means love? so let us make it mean love!

ABHILASHA : Sure! Such a beautiful meaning!

Yes. The meaning is good. Whether it means it or not, it doesn't matter. (CHUCKLES) My feeling is it comes from Sayeed Arabic. "Sayeed" means the family of Mohammed; the direct descendents of Mohammed are called sayeed, and saeeda is the feminine of sayeed. That too is beautiful. To belong to Mohammed is one of the greatest ???s in the world. You have come to another Mohammed.

Good. This is your name: Ma Anand Saeeda. Anand means bliss, and if saeeda means love, good; if it means one who belongs to the family of Mohammed, then too it is good. At any cost, be blissful!

OSHO (to Aleksis) : It is only through meditation that one can become a help to others because meditation gives you centering, rootedness, individuality, authenticity. It gives you consciousness, love, compassion. These are all the flowers of meditation. And you can give to others only that which you already have. If you don't have love flowing within your being you cannot share it with others and if you are not full of light, if you yourself live in darkness, you can't help others. It will be like a blind man leading other blind people.

Nanak says: In the world, the blind are leading other blind people and all are falling into wells! Mankind really needs help: it is always in a crisis. And today the crisis has reached its peak, its climax; more will be unbearable. Humanity is on the verge of going insane or committing suicide. We are preparing for that: all the world governments are preparing to commit the third world war, and that will be the last war.

Once Albert Einstein was asked "Can you say something about the third world war?" He said "I can't say anything about the third, but I can say something about the fourth."

The questioner was surprised. He said "If you can't say anything about the third what can you say about the fourth?" Einstein said "One thing is absolutely certain, that the fourth is not going to happen -- that much can be said about it -- because the third will be the end; there will be no fourth world war."

We are heading towards that. Mankind has always needed help; today it needs it more that ever. But only those few people can be of help who enter deep into meditation, who become aware of themselves, who come to know who they are, and through it become aware of the presence of God. Then whatsoever they do is going to be a blessing to humanity.

Otherwise whatsoever you do is going to be a curse. You may intend to do it right but because you are not right your intentions are of no use. First you have to help yourself. First you have to wake up and then whatsoever you do -- and when I say whatsoever I mean whatsoever -- that will be a help, a blessing. Hence my insistence is not on making people public servants. I don't preach service to humanity because I know if you can meditate you are bound to become a helper. That is a natural consequence of meditation. Buddha says: Meditation naturally brings compassion; if it does not bring compassion then it is not meditation at all.

OSHO (to David) : Only one requirement, only one basic need has to be fulfilled before one can become a beloved of God, and that is: one has to learn how to be blissful. People know how to be miserable; they are really experts, very skillful, in finding ways and means of being miserable. If they cannot find ways they invent them. If they cannot even invent they become very miserable because they cannot find any excuse, they cannot invent any -- that is enough for them to be miserable!

The whole world consists of miserable people -- and it is their own choice. Misery gives them a few things and bliss takes those few things away; and we are brought up and conditioned in such a way that we desire those things. Misery gives you ego. The more miserable you are, the more you are. The more blissful you are, the less you are. When the bliss is absolute you have evaporated. Then God is!

When misery is absolute, you are absolute. The ego needs a hell around itself, the ego can only be an island in the ocean of hell. And we have been taught the ways of the ego, we have been told to be strong egos. Even modern psychology goes on saying to people that they need strong egos. One needs the strength of consciousness, not of the ego. Real strength comes out of consciousness, not out of ego; ego is always weak because it is always false. The false can never be strong. How can the false be strong? The shadow can never be strong. You can go on pouring your energies into the shadow -- they will all be wasted. This is the single most important phenomenon to understand: if one wants to be blissful one has to be ready to drop the ego. And the moment you drop the ego bliss happens and bliss prepares the way for God. It is misery that keeps you away from God and keeps God away from you.

In the modern world God has certainly disappeared. He seems to be no longer relevant, seems to be an almost useless hypothesis, for the simple reason that misery has never been so strong and the ego has never been so insane. And we are in the grip of the insane ego.

My whole work here is to pull you out from the mud and the mire of the ego. Sannyas means dropping the ego, existing egolessly, then bliss arises from your innermost core. It is our nature. Misery is artificial just as the ego is; bliss is natural. And only when we are natural is God possible: we become capable of understanding, of seeing, of receiving God into our being. Bliss makes us the host, and God is always ready to become the guest!

OSHO (to Karmen) : Veet means beyond; sansaro means the world. My sannyasin has to be in the world and yet beyond it. To escape from the world and be beyond it is simple and easy, that's why it was chosen by all kinds of religious people in the past: escape was their pattern. The Catholic monk, the Buddhist bhikkhu, the Jaina muni, the Hindu sadhu -- they all escaped from the world thinking that if you are not in the world you are beyond it. It seems logical, but it does not happen that way because life is not logical.

To be impotent is not to be celibate. To be poor does not mean that you are beyond desire for riches. You may console yourself: you don't care for riches... and one needs such consolations otherwise life will become unbearable. And those people who escaped from the world were consoling themselves thinking that they had gone beyond. But this is not true transcendence. The true transcendence has to be in the world, amidst the fire of the world.

The real sannyasin has to be a lotus in the lake: in the lake and yet the water touches it not. Then there is beauty, then there is grace, and then there is tremendous freedom. When you escape from something you are afraid of it, and in fear there is no freedom. And whatsoever you have escaped from will remain a repressed desire in your being. And if some opportunity arises it will assert itself again -- forcibly! But if one lives a very ordinary life in the world, does not go to the monastery or to the Himalayas, goes on doing the same mundane things that one was doing before, and yet becomes distant, aloof, cool, silent, unperturbed, then something of immense value has happened. Then nothing can disturb you any more. Nothing can tempt you anymore.

In all the ancient traditional saints' lives you will come across the phenomenon of temptation; it was natural, it was psychological. They had escaped from women, from money, from power, from prestige; now these things were all there in their unconscious, accumulating. And accumulated they become tremendously powerful, so powerful the one day they explode. That is temptation.

But my sannyasins will never come across temptation because I never tell them to leave anything. The devil will not be able to tempt my sannyasin. For my sannyasin there is no devil, only God is!

OSHO (to Clair) : Mind is always confused -- mind is confusion. The heart is always clear. The heart knows nothing of confusion. The mind never comes to any conclusion; it cannot by its very nature. It goes on hesitating, pondering; indecisiveness is intrinsic to the mind and doubts go on arising.

The man who lives in the mind -- and the majority of humanity lives in the mind -- lives a very indecisive life. To live through the heart is to live a life of decisiveness, of commitment, of involvement. The heart has an insight of its own, a way of seeing, of understanding of its own. It has its own reasons which our reason is not aware of at all. Love is the fragrance of the heart and the logic, the stink of the mind. Move from the mind to the heart -- that's what sannyas is all about, falling from the head into the heart, dropping the logic and living through love. Then God is so close, so available, and life is a tremendous ecstasy, unbounded bliss, infinite joy.

OSHO (to Yoganando) : The real bliss happens only when you are ready to dissolve into the whole, just like ice melting and dissolving into the sea, losing its identity, definition, personality, ego. From this very moment this is going to be your work: dissolve yourself and you will find infinite bliss, you will find eternal life.

Don't cling to the ego. The ego is the only barrier, don't nourish it any more. Enough is enough. Let it starve and die because its death will be a resurrection of your real being.

OSHO (to Premanando) : It is possible to be loving and not blissful, but then love is false. It is also possible to be blissful and not loving but then bliss is false. If bliss is really true it is bound to be loving, and the same is the case with love: true love is bound to be blissful; they are always together. Whenever you find them separate, that's a clear-cut indication, a foolproof indication, that something pseudo is there.

A miserable person cannot be loving and a loving person cannot be miserable. Remember this as one of the basic principles of the higher mathematics of life. Create both in you: be loving and be blissful. And both are possible, we are made for them. We have an inbuilt capacity to grow these flowers together. And when they bloom together there is great celebration, not only in you, but the whole existence participates in the celebration.

JANINE BECOMES VEETGYAN.

OSHO : Veetgyan means beyond knowledge. Beauty is beyond knowledge, love is beyond knowledge, God is beyond knowledge. All that is really significant is beyond knowledge. That which is within knowledge is ordinary, mundane -- utilitarian but of no real significance. It can't make you grateful to God. And sooner or later one starts feeling bored with that which knowledge makes available. It makes only toys to play with and how long can you go playing with toys? Sooner or later one becomes mature.

Sannyas is a step towards maturity. And the first thing to understand is that there are things which are beyond knowledge, which can only be lived. You can live love but you cannot know what it is. Hence millions of people have loved but nobody has ever been able to define it. You can meditate, you can become meditation, but you cannot express the real experience of it; nobody has ever been able to, not even Buddha or Lao Tzu or Jesus.

Once a disciple asked Jesus, "What is prayer?" Rather than answering him he fell on his knees and started praying. The disciple said, "But I want to understand first." Jesus said, "There is no possibility to understand first. First you have to go into it." Prayer is existential, not intellectual. All knowledge is intellectual and the whole of life is existential, hence knowledgeable people go on missing life.

Take a plunge into life. And even if one has to drop the whole mind for the plunge, it is worth it, because mind anyway is worthless.

OSHO : Asmito means a very subtle ego... not the ordinary ego, not the gross ego. There is no single word in English for it because the West has not yet penetrated to that depth where one becomes aware of asmito.

In English there is only one word: "ego". In the East we have many words for it because it has different layers. Ego is the most gross phenomenon. If you drop the ego, if you renounce the ego with effort, if you practice egolessness, humbleness, humility, then you will attain to asmito; that will be a subtle ego. Saints have that ego. Then one becomes egoistic about being egoless. One starts feeling "How humble I am!"

I have heard a story. Three Christian monks meet on a crossroad. They are coming from one town, going to their separate monasteries and for a while they sit under a tree to rest and chitchat.

One monk says, "One thing I must say: as far as our monastery is concerned, nobody can compete with us in the world of knowledge, scholarship. We have produced the greatest scholars."

The second said, "That may be so but we don't give any value to scholarship -- mere scholarship is rubbish. The real thing is austerities, the real thing is to be an ascetic. Nobody can beat us as far as asceticism is concerned. Our renunciation is total."

The third one smiles and says, "You both may be right, but as far as humbleness is concerned we are the tops!"

This is asmito. Now even humbleness.... "We are the tops...." Now the ego has taken such a subtle turn that it is standing on its head, it is doing a headstand. It is the same phenomenon but now it has taken a more subtle route to capture your being.

So first one has to be aware of the ego and then one has to be aware of its subtle ways, its cunning ways to come through the backdoor. Asmito is ego coming through the backdoor and catching hold of you again. And now it is so subtle that nobody will be able to see it except you, and you can only see it if you are very alert, very watchful, because now it is only a shadow. But it is enough, enough to create a barrier between you and God, enough to keep you in bondage, enough to create hell for you.

STEPHEN BECOMES ANAND SAGARO, OCEAN OF BLISS

OSHO : Come closer! Don't be afraid. You will have to come much closer!

Man appears to be just a dewdrop, and millions are deceived by the appearance. In reality the dewdrop contains the ocean. The dewdrop is not a mere dewdrop, because it contains consciousness and consciousness in oceanic, it is infinite. The dewdrop is only a miniature of our total reality, of our wholeness. Man appears very small, helpless, but at the innermost core he is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient. Once we reach to the center of our consciousness the greatest surprise of life happens: suddenly you see yourself as vast as the sky -- or even vaster than the sky! That experience, that mystic experience has been called God. God is not a person. God is not somebody, but is the oceanic experience of bliss, that unbounded experience of bliss.

God is only one of the names given to it; and in fact not a very good name because the very word gives you an idea of a person, while there is no person but only a presence, there is godliness in existence but no God. Once we understand that, our efforts to reach to truth change radically, then worship becomes irrelevant, then prayer is not of much use, then the only way we can attain to the ultimate experience is through meditation and love -- meditation when you are alone, love when you are together. Meditation is the inner side of love, and love is the outer side of meditation.

That is my whole religion: meditation and love, and I see that that is going to be the religion of the future. I can predict it because all other religions are outmoded. They have lived their life, in fact they have lived longer than their life. They are living a post-mortem life, a posthumous existence. They should be dead now; they are a burden. The pope of the Vatican and shankaracharya of Puri -- these people don't belong to the twentieth century at all. They go on talking nonsense, they go on talking a language that was relevant and meaningful twenty centuries , thirty centuries, forty or fifty centuries ago.

The world has changed enormously; man has come of age. Man needs a totally new kind of religiousness, and that's what sannyas is: it is heralding a new religiousness, a new humanity.