Chapter #29 Even Bein Gawd Ain T A Bed Of Roses #29

ms pages missing 258 -261
OCTOBER 1979

(To Dick): That will always keep you a beggar, desiring this and desiring that. Desire is beggarly; to be desireless is to be a king.

And the person who knows himself becomes desireless. Knowing oneself is such a great ecstasy that there is nothing more to life. One cannot imagine anything more, one cannot think that it can be improved upon. It is the last world, it is the ultimate.

Becoming a sannyasin means that now you will be looking in, now you will start learning the ways and the methods of the inner world. You will have to start from abc because for many lives we have gone on living with the outer. The outer is the only reality in our minds. The inner, the very word "inner" seems to be empty, as if it means nothing, as if it contains nothing. It contains all -- it contains God itself. It contains bliss, it contains love, it contains eternity, life abundant.

Start looking in. Find a few moments everyday when you can sit silently and look in... doing nothing else, just watching inside. In the beginning it is dark; in the beginning there are only thoughts and desires. Don't be worried; don't feel a failure. Don't feel frustated that there is no ecstasy arising. It needs only a little patience; soon the thoughts will be gone. They are just old visitors and you have always welcomed them. Now you are becoming a sannyasin and they don't know about ! (LAUGHTER) Mm?- just out of old habit they will go on knocking on your door, hoping that you will receive them in the old way. Sometimes they will knock very hard thinking "What has happened to you? Why are you not paying attention? Why are you not listening?" Slowly slowly they will understand that the man has changed, that he is no more the same person, that it is futile. And then they start dispersing, dissolving.

If one can only sit silently for a few minutes every day -- morning, evening, whenever one can find time -- and just look inside, at whatsoever is there, watch it with no judgement... Don't condemn, don't appreciate. Don't say "This is good," don't say "This is bad." Just remain non-judgmental because only in being non-judgmental can one be a watcher. Then within three to nine months a few glimpses will start happening. Even a small glimpse of your own self is such a tremendous phenomenon that you cannot believe what miracles become possible through it. It is sheer magic!

How long will you be here?

DICK: It's a good question, Osho. The twenty-eight of November I'm officially going back....

OSHO: Don't be worried about "officially," because all my work is unofficial! (CHUCKLES)

(To Bruno): God is not only light, God is also darkness. Light and darkness are not opposites, not enemies, but complementaries. Light cannot exist without darkness; darkness cannot exist without light. They are interdependent, so much so that they are inseparable. The deeper you look into the reality of light and darkness, the more you will be surprised, the more you will become aware that they are two aspects of one mystery, two sides of the same coin. But down the ages in all the scriptures of the world God has been made synonymous with light. That simply shows our fear of darkness, nothing else. It is out of fear that we have been talking about God as light.

Once the fear disappears darkness is as light as light itself; then darkness is luminous, it has its own beauty. Light has something beautiful about it: you can see more clearly. That's why one feels less afraid. Darkness you cannot see at all; hence the fear. But darkness has a depth, an infinity. Light comes and goes; darkness remains, it is eternal. Life needs a cause, some fuel; it may be the sun, the moon, the starts, or a candle, but some fuel is needed for it. Darkness needs no cause, it is always there.

Light has the quality of momentariness and darkness, the quality of eternity. Both are together: the moment represents eternity; eternity consists of nothing but continous moments, it is the flow of moments. The East has loved darkness too, as much as light. Krishna is called the dark one; the word "krishna" means bruno. It means exacty the same as bruno: of dark complexion. And Krishna is painted as dark. It really gives him depth.

He is full of light but he contains darkness too. In the West God and the devil are completely separate; they are enemies. In the East it is not so: the devil is part of God, an intrinsic part of God, they are not separate at all.

My effort here is to give you the totality of truth, not just a part of it, because if you remain clinging to a part of truth you will remain fragmentary, you will never become total and whole -- and unless you are whole you are not holy. My sannyasin has to learn to be whole because that is the only way to be holy, and to be whole is the only way to be healthy.

Rembember it in all contexts -- that the opposites are not opposites but complementaries. It will enhance your understanding greatly; it will make you capable of loving the opposite too. That's what Jesus means when he says: Love your enemies as yourself. He is saying something of tremendous importance but in the language of the common people. He is saying that opposites are not opposites but complementaries. Your enemy is not your enemy, he is part of you -- love him as yourself. He is trying to convey a very philosophical message in common language, in the language of the masses. But Christians have taken it literally, they have forgotten its essential core.

Live life in its totality, accept each and every thing even if sometimes it feels very difficult to accept the opposite. That is your problem -- you have to solve it. That is your prejudice -- you have to dissolve it. The day one becomes capable of seeing God and the devil as the same, friend and enemy as the same, life and death as the same, one has transcended, one gas gone into the beyond, one has become part of God.

(To Boudewyn): This is your new name: Swami Prem Ashen. Prem means love. Ashen means hope. Love is the only hope for transformation. Love is the very alchemy of transformation; but it is not easy to love, it is the most difficult thing in the world.

Everybody thinks it is the easiest thing because everybody thinks that he loves. Parents think they love, children think they love, wives think they love, friends think they love -- everybody thinks that he loves. That is one of the barriers -- the idea that we know what love is, that we are already loving. That prevents people from knowing what love is.

Love is not something biological. We are very confused about love: we think it is a biological urge. It is something spiritual. Yes, it can express itself biologically too, but it is not rooted there. It arises at the center of your being and spreads towards the circumference, but it does not arise from the circumference. On the circumference there is only lust and lust is mistaken for love. But nobody wants to see the truth because lust is very easy; it is a downhill thing. Love is an uphill task: you have to rise towards the heights. Love requires great determination; love requires great consciousness. Love requires the ultimate sacrifice of the ego. When one is ready to sacrifice the ego and one is ready to be totally aware, out of that stage of egoless awareness a fragrance is released within your being. That is love.

Only a buddha knows what love is. Love is the only hope because it its through that experience that god becomes a reality to you. Then God is no more a concept, an idea, no more something metaphysical; it becomes concrete, tangible. You meet him wherever you go, you see him whatsoever you see -- he surrounds you in all possible ways. He comes in the wind, in the rain, in the sun. He smiles through a flower; he dances with the tree, in the tree. Then he is all over the place.

Once you have love released in your being you become capable of seeing God. God cannot be proved by argument -- God can only be known through love. And to know God is to be liberated. Hence love is even more important than God because without love there is no God; with love God is bound to happen. It is inevitable.

(To Pragyano): Knowledge is heavy; wisdom is cheerful. Knowledge is heavy because knowledge is heady; wisdom is cheerful because wisdom comes from the heart -- and the heart is always cheerful. It is its intrinsic quality. Just as the head is always serious, the heart is always playful. The head cannot be playful and the heart cannot be serious. The head even becomes serious when it is playing; even play takes on a serious quality.

For example, chess is a head game; people become very serious. There is no cheerfulness in it, it is all calculation and mathematics. It is impossible for the head to be cheerful -- that is not its nature. And just like that, the heart cannot be serious. It is sincere, certainly, but serious, never. It is always dancing, singing; exstasy is its very nature. Wisdom arises out of the heart; hence wisdom is a song, a dance, a celebratrion.

I teach my sannyasins to be cheerful, playful, singing, dancing celebrants in every possible way. Use every opportunity to be cheerful, don't miss a single opportunity because that is how slowly slowly one becomes rooted in the heart -- and to be rooted in the heart is the whole secret of being religious.

The society trains you to be in the head and the function of the Master is to undo that training. The Master is always against the society, the church, the state. If he is not against the church and the state and the society he is not a Master at all; he is only a priest. He is simply serving the vested interests. The real Master is always in rebellion. He teaches rebellion -- and this is the greatest rebellion: to come from the head to the heart and to live from there, to function from there. Then life has a totally different flavor. A great sweetness surrounds you. Even in death that sweetness is not lost: a great perfume arises out of your being. Life for the first time is felt to be worth living and death worth dying. Then whatsoever happens has significance. With the head, life is meaningless and so is death.

To be a sannyasin is an effort to create significance and meaning in your life. It is one of the greatest things in life because this can change the whole course of your being. For thousands of lives you have followed a certain course; this can become a turning point -- it all depends on you. I will do whatsoever I can, just don't resist. Cooperate! To be a sannyasin means just a gesture of cooperation from your side that you will not be fighting with me but going with me, flowing with me. That is surrender, that is trust. That is love, that is prayer.

SATYAM PRASADO.

Meditation only helps you to become spacious. Meditation only clears your doors, your windows. It throws out all furniture and makes you ready for the guest. And God is infinite -- he will need infinite space in you. We are capable of creating infinite space in ourselves because infinity has nothing to do with the outer. The outside is infinite, the inside too is infinite. If we just drop the idea of being a body and mind we start becoming bigger. The boundaries start becoming bigger and bigger and bigger, and one day all boundaries disappear and you are as huge as the sky. That is the moment when the gift suddenly pours into you.

Truth is a gift, not an achievement; hence one has to be humble, non-aggressive. One has to forget the achieving mind completely. One has to be feminine, like a womb -- waiting. One has to become a great awaiting. And it happens when the time is ripe so one cannot be in a hurry; impatience never helps. One should be humble and ready to wait. When the time is right it is bound to happen. The spring will come and the flowers will bloom. It is inevitable. Sow the seeds and wait!

(TO FRIZANTINO): Love without peace is feverish, restless. And a feverish, restless love cannot soar very high, it remains crawling on the earth; it is ill. It is more lust than love. It is more instinct than intuition. It is more body than soul. It is more earth than sky. It continously creates a storm within your being, upheavals upon upheavals. Hence love without peace is not going to fulfill anybody.

And peace without love is dead, cold... ice cold. Nothing can grow out of it: it is barren, it is impotent. Peace without love can help you to go upwards but you will not have any roots in the earth. And a man to be fully contented needs both: wings and roots.

To be really total one needs to touch both depths and heights. Peace can take you to the heights, love takes you to the roots; and where love and peace meet, that is the point to be attained because that is the meeting of God and world, earth and sky.

My whole effort here is to help you to come to that point. I am not in favor of one against the other. I want you to be both together, simultaneously full of love and full of peace. Then love is healthy, whole, and peace is alive and warm -- and that is the greatest magic in life. One cannot ask for more.

(TO HARRY): Without love we are homeless. Without love we live only on the superficial level, and our life without love can consist only of anxiety and anguish, insecurity and death. It is love that introduces you to the world of the deathless. It is love that takes you into a different dimension: the dimension where all is secure, safe, where one is protected, protected by God himself. And when one feels that one is protected by God himself, when one feels that "God is my home," all anxiety naturally disappears, all fear disappears.

To be fearless, to be free from fear is to be religious. Ordinarily people are religious because of fear. That is false religion. The real religion is not rooted in fear but in fearlessness. Only love can give you that insight which makes you fearless. If there is no death there is no fear. If we are not the body there is no fear; if we are not the mind where can fear exist? We are eternal consciousness-beginningless, endless.

Love is the first acquaintance with God; the first encounter with God is love. And as you move deeper into love you become more and more acquainted with God. Finally one knows that God and love are only two names for the same reality. Love is our home because God is our home.

Sannyas is a search for the home, for the true home. We have lost track of it: we have gone so far away from ourselves that we cannot even remember who we are. We can't remember where we got lost, where we went astray.

The function of the Master is to remind you of where you went astray, where you got lost and to show you how things can be put back into the right order again.

The function of the disciple is to become so attuned with the Master that there is no question of obedience or disobedience. Even the person who says "I am obedient" is not yet one with the Master. One who is obedient can be disobedient any day, any moment. It is not a question of obedience or disobedience: it is becoming one with the Master. Then whatsoever is the Master's will is your will too; there is no separation. There is only union and that union is the beginning of the greater union -- union with God.

(To Annette-Christine): Prayer is the only way to follow Christ or Buddha or Krishna because it is only in prayer that we are no more the body, no more the mind; it is only in prayer that we are pure consciousness.

Prayer has not to be just verbal. A verbal prayer is a pseudo phenomenon: it pretends to be prayer but it is plastic; it is not a real flower. The real prayer has nothing to do with language at all because God understands no language. There are three thousand languages on earth and scientists say that there are fifty thousand earths in existence with life on them. You can just imagine God going mad -- he has to understand so many languages. God understands only one language; the name of that language is silence -- and silence is neither German nor English nor French.

Anybody who falls into silence is no more part of any nationality, any linguistic group, any race, any religion. Silence knows no boundaries, it is infinite and to be in silence is to be in prayer.

Learn to be silent -- that is the only way to follow Christ. One cannot follow Christ by becoming a Christian. That is the sure way to miss him. One has to forget all about churches and bibles, dogmas, creeds; they are all manmade, manufactured by the inventive mind. Silence is not manufactured by man; it is a divine gift. When you are silent you are in tune with God.

THE TWO MEANINGS OF SYBILLE:

If you surrender your will totally to the whole and you allow the will of God to function through you... That's what Jesus did in the last moments of his life on earth; his last utterance was "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done." He dropped his will totally. Just a moment before a little will was lingering. Before he said this he looked at the sky and said "Have you forsaken me? Why are you forcing me to see all this?" That simply shows that there was some expectation and that Jesus was frustrated, that there was something he wanted to happen and it was not happening, that God was not going according to his will. He understood immediately; he was a man of great intelligence. He immediately understood his failure, that his surrender was not total, that something was missing. He was surrendered, but a part -- maybe a very tiny part -- a fragment was still there which is not surrendered. Otherwise who is saying "Have you forsaken me, and why?" -- because whatsoever God does is right.

The question that he has forsaken you does not arise. The question arises only when you were expecting -- maybe unconsciously, vaguely -- that this is going to happen and it is not happening. Instead of being crowned he was being crucified.

But he understood, and at the last moment he dropped that small fragment also; then he was not holding anything back. Immediately he corrected himself. In that moment he really became Christ. In that moment he became a Buddha. The surrender was absolute, irrevocable. The surrender was so whole and so total that there was no question of coming back out of it; there was nobody left to come back to.

That is the first meaning. Bliss is possible only if you surrender yourself totally. It is exactly in the same proportion: the more you surrender, the more blissful you are; the less you surrender, the more miserable you are. The person who is not surrendered at all lives in hell; and the person who is wholly surrendered has entered paradise again.

And the second meaning comes from Latin. It means one who has the capacity to see the reality, the seer, the Buddha, the awakened one, the wise one; all these meanings are there in the Greek root A person who has surrendered himself totally naturally becomes a seer. He automatically becomes perceptive because all the illusions disappear when the ego is dropped and all the dreams and the dust of the dreams disappear when the ego is dropped.

The dropping of the ego is the dropping of all barriers. Then your eyes are absolutely clear, utterly empty; you only see that which is, and that is God. That which is, is another way of saying God.

Krishamurti loves to say "That which is.: He avoids using the word "God." Instead of the word "God" he uses that which is"; but in fact that is exactly the meaning of the word "God" -- you cannot avoid it. In the ancient Hebrew symbols "g" stands for that, "o" for which, "d" for is: that which is.

JULIE HAS ANAND ADDED...

Bliss is never old; bliss is always young, always fresh, because it is not part of the past. It arises moment to moment -- it is a present phenomenon. It has nothing to do with memory, with mind. It is this moment in all its beauty, in all its silence, in all its innocence. When you are in tune with the moment there is bliss. Because it has no past it cannot be old.

It is because of this phenomenon that in the East we have always depicted Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna, Rama as young. You will not find a single statue of Buddha in his old age: not that he never became old -- he became old -- but no statue has ever been made of his old age because that is not true to his Buddhahood. Only his body became old; his bliss, his innermost core, his reality remained young.

Live moment to moment and bliss will be there and youthfulness will be there. And one who knows how to live in the moment knows how to live in eternity because the moment is not part of time. Past and future are part of time; the present is transcendental -- it comes from the beyond.

SOME MORE ON BLISS: SWAMI ANAND SAMADHAN

(To Samadhan): It is not the solution to any particular problem, it is a solution for all problems. Those who try to solve single problems are never going to succeed because there are millions of problems. You can go on solving; there will be no end to it. New problems are arising every day: you can solve a few but meanwhile many more will have arisen.

One can go crazy in trying to solve problems individually. It is like cutting the leaves of a tree. The tree is huge and you go on cutting the leaves and new leaves go on coming up. Instead of one, three leaves will pop up; you cut one and the tree will respond with three leaves. It will become thicker, the foliage will be thicker because the tree takes on the challenge; you cannot defeat it so easily. But cut the roots and the whole tree is gone, all the leaves will fall on their own. But roots are invisible and leaves are visible; hence many people go on pruning the leaves for the whole of their life.

The case is exactly the same with man: the root of all problems is the mind, but the mind is invisible. The body is visible so people go on doing things with the body. They will stand on their heads and they will think they are doing something -- yoga -- that they are becoming spiritual by standing on their head. They are looking silly, that's all. You can go on distorting your body this way and that -- that is not going to help.

A young man came to a Zen Master. The Zen Master asked "Have you ever been to another Master before?" and the young man said "Yes, I have been to a certain Master."

The Zen Master asked "What have you learned there?" The young man said "I will show you." He sat in the Buddha posture and closed his eyes. The Master hit him hard on the head with his staff and said "You fool! Get lost! Get out of here! We already have so many stone Buddhas in our temple -- what are we going to do with you?"

Just sitting like a Buddha is not going to heip. It is easy to learn because the body is visible but inside the mind is going crazy -- and you are sitting like a Buddha. You can fast, you can learn exercises, you can chant mantras, because these things are visible-but the real thing is to become a witness of your mind. Mind is not visible; it has no weight. Thoughts are not things; they are weightless. That's why you can contain millions of thoughts. If they had weight it would be impossible to contain so many thoughts in the head; the head is so small.

As many weightless thoughts as you like can be contained. In fact they say that a single man's mind is capable of containing all the libraries of the world. Thoughts are weightless, they don't occupy space; hence it is great work to be alert about and watchful of these invisible things that surround you; but that is the way to cut the root. And once you have seen the mind in all its functionings, in all its craziness, and you have become detached, aloof, you have seen that "I am not it," immediately bliss descends, showers on you. In that showering all problems disappear.

Become a witness and you will attain to bliss -- and bliss becomes the solution, the ultimate solution.

ANAND DHYANO

Meditation means a state of no-mind. Meditation simply means being utterly still with not a single ripple of thought inside, no desire, no memory, no projection of the future... just being herenow so totally that there is no distraction. Not that in meditation one avoids distraction. If you try to avoid distractions you will be more distracted.

There is a certain law -- the science of hypnosis calls it the law of reverse effect. If you want not to be distracted then you will be surprised: you are more distracted. If you try to sit still, if you force yourself to be still, then... the music is going on and that distracts, somebody's radio is on, the children are laughing, the wife is working in the kitchen and there are sounds from the neighborhood and a dog starts barking... There are a thousand and one things going on -- you can't stop the whole world. And one feels really strange because when one was not trying to not be distracted one was not even aware that so many things were going on around. The train passes by, the airplane goes on making noise -- all kinds of things go on happening but because you are not trying not to be distracted, they can't distract you. Sit for a few moments and try not to be distracted and everything starts pulling you into different directions. This is the law of reverse effect.

So when I say that meditation is a state of non-distraction, I don't mean to try non-distraction -- no. Simply sit and allow everything, whatsoever is going on. Who are we to stop it? Then the music comes and passes through you and you remain still. The airplane goes by; the noise is heard, but there is no response, no reaction in you. The world continues outside but inside the world stops.

This happens not through effort, but through awareness. One has to sit silently, be vigilant -- whatsoever is happening, watch, with no judgment. Don't say that is is good, don't say that it is bad. It is hard in the beginning because our minds are so judgmental; we are continously judging. It may be conscious or unconscious but the judgment is continous. But slowly slowly one becomes aware that judgment is futile and that judgment is the cause of all disturbance. When you judge that something is good you want to cling to it; when you judge that something is bad you want to throuw it away -- when you want to throw something away it will cling to you, the law of reverse effect will function. When you want to cling to something it will try to escape from you, the law of reverse effect will function. This is one of the most fundamental laws for all meditators to understand.

And once you have dropped all judgment there is a gap between you and your mind. The mind is there, you are here, unconcerned. Slowly slowly the gap widens One day the mind has faded so far so far away it does not matter at all. Then simultaneously a coolness, a stillness, great bliss arises in you.

(To K....): Bliss is a by-product of awareness. One cannot be blissful while one goes on functioning like a robot -- and people function like machines. There are very few men on the earth; the crowd consists of machines, of course biologically produced, not manufactured in the factories... But sooner or later they are going to manufacture children in the factories too. And they will succeed. They will not succeed in creating a Buddha, but they will succeed in creating the so-called ordinary human being because the ordinary human being is not a human being at all, he functions mechanically.

Man is born only when he becomes a vigilant spirit -- that is the real birth. The first birth is only physiological. One has to be twice-born; the second birth makes one spiritual. Sannyas is a second birth. From this moment on live your life a little more alertly, more vigilantly, and you will be surprised that just by becoming a little more alert great changes start happening on their own You cannot do a few things when you are alert and you can do a few things only when you are alert. When you are alert things that were important before are no more impotant and things that you could never have imagined become so essential so significant. The whole gestalt changes.

It is just as a man asleep lives in a totally different world., in the world of dreams. Shake him, wake him and all that world disappears as he wakes up. He enters a totally different world, the waking world. But our wakefulness is not much of a wakefulness; it is only sleep with open eyes.

Real wakefulness comes only through meditation. Unless the inner eye opens up you are not awake. And the only way to open the inner eye is to start becoming more alert in small ways. In walking, walk with awareness; in eating, eat with awareness, listening, talking, become more alert. Don't go on in a sleepy way; don't remain a somnambulist any more.

Sannyas is the coming out of somnambulism, sleepwalking. That's what we are doing. Once we come out of sleepwalking a totally different world of great beauty, of great joy and of great benediction... deathless, is awaiting us. Misery has never entered that world. It knows nothing of misery; it knows only bliss. Bliss is its very climate.