Chapter #18 Even Bein Gawd Ain T A Bed Of Roses #18

HARVEY WAS A BLIND POET-SAINT....

OSHO (to Harvey) : Bliss needs a kind of blindness. One has to be blind to the mundane, only then one has eyes for the sacred. One has to be blind to the superficial, only then one has eyes for that which is profound and deep. Unless one becomes blind to the circumference one cannot know the center. Just like Harvey, in India there has been a poet-saint, Surdas; he was blind, and a great saint and poet.

It seems almost mysterious that a blind man can be a poet, because poetry needs eyes to see nature: the sunrise, the sunset, the flowers, the stars, people.... How can a blind man be a poet?

But it happened many times. The blind man can be a poet of the inner, not of the outer. Because his eyes are closed to the outside world the whole of his energy moves inwards. There is no outlet for it so it turns upon itself.

And just to be a poet is not of much value unless one is also a saint. Without being a saint poetry is only a skill -- beautiful, utilitarian, gives people entertainment, helps them not to be bored with life, helps them to carry on even though life is a burden -- but really poetry arises when you are a saint. And by saint I don't mean recognized by the church -- that is the English meaning of the word "saint" : sanctified by the church. In that sense Jesus is not a saint because there was no church to sanctify. By saint I simply mean one who has realized the truth of his being. He does not depend on any church, his authority comes from his own experience: he has seen his innermost core. It almost always happened that a saint becomes a poet. The poet may become a saint, may not become a saint, but it happens more often that the saint becomes a poet. Not that he starts writing poetry, but that he starts living poetry. Whatsoever he says is poetry, his prose is poetry, his very being is poetry.

Be blissful, be poetic, be a saint in my sense of the word: realize yourself -- because except for that nothing is worth realizing. Becoming yourself. Be what you are meant to be in your total authenticity and great joy comes of its own accord. When one is oneself joy comes as a shadow, bliss follows one. When one is not oneself misery is the outcome. Misery is a distance between you and your real self and bliss is no distance between you and your real self.

OSHO (to Anne) : To be blissful is to be prayerful.

Things that are thought to be prayer are not prayer, they are mere rituals, formalities. Prayer is not an imaginary dialogue between you and God. You are not asking for anything from God; on the contrary you are simply grateful. He has already given you too much -- more than you deserve, more than you are worthy of. Real prayer is nothing but a thankfulness, a deep, deep, thank you. It is non-verbal because God does not understand any language. To use language is not of any help, it is a hindrance. God understands only one language, the language of silence. Hence even your thank you has to be just a silent one, not a thought but a feeling in the heart.

Your whole being pulsates with gratitude -- that is prayer but that is bliss too. They are two names for the same thing. If a man is prayerful and not blissful, he is not prayerful, he is deceiving himself. If a man is blissful and not prayerful, then his bliss is phony, because if you are really blissful you are bound to be grateful.

Prayer and bliss are two sides of the same coin. Attain to both because one attained and the other left behind is not meaningful. One has to live both simultaneously, than there is great beauty, great grace.

MA PREM DENISE: DIONYSIAN LOVER

OSHO : Denise is the name of the god of wine. It is one of the most ancient mythological names. It comes from Dionysius. Dionysius was worshipped with dance, song, music.

My own approach is exactly the same. Now you have come here to fulfill your name. My commune is dedicated to Dionysius, to dance, to music, to poetry, to love. In fact that is real wine: to be lost in music, to be lost in dance. The wine is only a symbol, the symbol of being drunk with the divine. It has nothing to do with ordinary wine.

And there is no better symbol to represent God than wine because it symbolizes getting lost into the unknown. It is drowning yourself in something very mysterious: you know nothing of it. Your reason is incapable of understanding it. It is a jump with no support from your rationality -- it is very irrational.

And that's what sannyas is all about: an irrational jump into something which you cannot be certain of -- you cannot know what it is exactly. There is no way to be aware of it unless you are in it and to be in it is the only way to know it. Hence one has to take the jump without the mind's support.

The mind is very calculative; it takes each step calculatingly. Sannyas is not of the mind, it is of the heart. A calculative man cannot become a sannyasin, a calculative man cannot become religious at all. He cannot dance, he cannot sing, he cannot rejoice, because all these things need a kind of divine madness.

I teach divine madness. This is really a madhouse. It is only for people who are ready to go on this pilgrimage towards God and who are ready to risk all, particularly the ego... who are ready to become drunkards. I am a drunkard and I help people to be drunkards.

So the time has come for you to fulfill your name. It is a beautiful name, one of the most beautiful one can have. But the Christians have condemned Dionysius very much, so much so that he is no more talked about -- he has disappeared. They condemned him as if the very idea was of indulgence; they have condemned him because his whole approach is life-affirmative and Christianity is life-negative. Hence the worship of the cross.

The church is more concerned with the cross than with Jesus. They have to worship Jesus too because he is hanging on the cross -- what can they do? (LAUGHTER) But basically they are worshipping the cross. If Jesus was not crucified there would have been no Christianity; hence I call it "crossianity." It is not Christianity really. It is worship of death, it is not worship of life. Dionysius is the god of life and love.

Try to understand the way of love and the way of bliss and the way of getting drunk. God is always available, it is just that we have to know how to drink out of him.

And all these meditations here and all these therapy groups here are preparations. Therapy groups prepare you negatively, they simply help you to drop all that hinders. Their work is to dismantle you, to destroy, because the old has to be destroyed before the new can be built. Their work is to uproot all the weeds so that roses can be planted. Therapy groups do half the work, that of destruction, uprooting the weeds, removing the stones, preparing the ground. And the other half is done by meditation: the planting of roses.

BRUCE, NOW SWAMI DEVA ANUBODH.

OSHO : The animal is absolutely unconscious; and the Buddhas, the Christs, the Zarathustras -- they are absolutely conscious. Between these two is the human being: a little bit conscious, just a little bit. The majority, the major part of his being is unconscious. Man is in the middle, hence human agony, tension, anguish: he is neither animal nor god. He has been an animal in the past, he can be a god in the future, but right now he is just pulled in both direction simultaneously.

The pull of animality is powerful because that is our whole past, we are deeply rooted in it. The pull of the divine is not so powerful, cannot be, because we have not tasted anything of it. Every day the pull of the divine becomes greater and greater when you live with a Master. When you start imbibing his spirit, when slowly slowly his awareness merges with you, provokes you, challenges you, hammers you, when his presence becomes a constant call to wake up, then slowly slowly the divine pull becomes greater than the animal. And the moment it is greater than the animal the transformation happens immediately: you simply start moving in a direction you have never known existed.

And as you start moving into the divine dimension the animal fades far behind. It remains just a memory, footprints on the sand of time, and slowly slowly with the winds they are gone.

Anubodh means awareness; that is the goal of a sannyasin. Awareness is divine, unawareness is animal, and to be in between is human. Humanity is only a bridge, it is not a place to make your house forever, it is a caravanserai, a motel. You can stay overnight, in the morning you have to go.

One of the greatest moghuls that ruled India was Akbar. He was one of the greatest kings in the whole history of humanity, his empire was immense. But he was also a seeker -- which is very rare. It has happened only once or twice in the whole history; in India it has happened twice. Once it happened with Ashoka and he became the torch-bearer of Buddhism. It is because of Ashoka that Buddha became a household name all over Asia.

And the second was Akbar. His search for truth was great, and he was not a fanatical Mohammedan -- which is rare, to be a Mohammedan and not to be fanatical is very rare. He listened to all kinds of spiritual masters. He was planning a new capital for himself: he wanted to move away from Delhi. The whole history of Delhi was so full of blood and bloodshed that he wanted to move away from it. He planned a new city, Fatehpur Sikri. He was going to make a really beautiful, aesthetically beautiful place.

As you enter Fatehpur Sikri you have to cross a river, and on the bridge he wanted something to be written as a welcome. He enquired of Hindhu saints, Moslem mystics, Christians, Buddhists, and finally he decided on one of the sayings of Jesus. It is not recorded in the Bible, but Sufis have carried it for centuries and it is certainly authentic. Out of all the scriptures of the world, he loved this saying very much: Life is a bridge. And it was to be put on the gate where you enter the bridge to cross the river to go into the city: life is a bridge -- pass through it but don't make your house on it. It is a saying of Jesus.

Unfortunately he died before the capital could be moved to Fatehpur Sikri, so it was never populated. It was built but it remained empty. That is the only town in the whole world where nobody has ever lived. The whole town was ready, everything was ready, but Akbar died.

Although he had chosen the sentence, my feeling is he could not understand it himself. He liked the quote but he could not understand it. If he had understood it he would have dropped the whole idea of planning this city -- because that is how one makes houses on the bridge. He himself was thinking that he was going to live forever. Fatehpur Sikri was made in such a way, it was as if Akbar was going to live there forever. By the time the city was ready -- it took thirty years to be built -- Akbar died. But the saying of Jesus stills hangs on the bridge.

Man is really a bridge, a bridge between the animal and God.

Once Buddha was asked "Can you say your whole philosophy in a single word?" He said "Kshanikvad." Kshanikvad means: Move on. He said "This is my whole philosophy: go on moving, don't become stagnant. Kshanikvad -- move on, become a river of movement. Then one is certain to reach the ocean one day."