[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been copy-typed. It is for reference purposes only.]
(To Linda) -- This is your name: Ma Anand Linda. Anand means bliss. Linda means beautiful.
Bliss is the only real beauty in existence Everything else is superficial Everything else is phony. Only bliss is our ultimate truth Only bliss is not false because It comes from our deepest core From the very roots of our being. It arises out of the center. Everything else is on the circumference Except bliss -- hence the search for bliss: It is really the search for one's own being, It is the search for self-knowledge It is the search to discover one's own nature. The moment we know who we are, bliss happens Or vice versa: The moment we are blissful We know who we are. Bliss is the taste of our being, the flavour The fragrance of our being. And once the bliss has happened -- And everybody is entitled for it It is everybody's birthright... If it doesn't happen, only we are responsible: We are not searching and seeking for it We are not really interested Involved into the search, We are not intense enough to go into the depth. We talk about it but we don't risk anything. Sannyas is the first step Of risking for the search. And the more you risk, the more you gain. When one is ready to risk all, unconditionally Immediately bliss happens. Suddenly it starts welling up. One's whole being becomes full of A new kind of joy, untasted before, unknown before. And it transforms everything: It makes everything beautiful It transforms everything into golden.
(To Elizabeth) -- This is your name: Ma Anand Elizabeth. Anand means bliss. Elizabeth means consecrated to god, Surrendered to god.
One can be surrendered to god Out of despair or, out of bliss. And from the outside both appear to be the same, They are not; they are diametrically opposite. The surrender that comes out of despair Is of no value at all: It is no surrender, It is failure, it is frustration. One is doing it as the last resort Not out of joy. One is not going into it dancingly One is not moving into it as a celebration. Misery is never a bridge between you and god And the strangest thing is that People remember god only in misery. When they are happy they forget all about god -- Who cares about god? For what? They don't need, they are already happy Things are going perfectly well. When things are not going well Then they start thinking of god. They want to use god as a means And god cannot be used as a means -- that is ugly That is profane, that is very irreligious.
God is the ultimate end. You can consecrate yourself Out of joy only, out of bliss only Then only you will not use god as a means, There is no question of using god. You are simply surrendering to him because He has given you so much -- it is out of gratitude It is out of thankfulness. You are not asking anything You are not desiring anything. He has already given so much -- What can we desire?
A real religious person has no desire To be fulfilled from god: he surrenders In joy, in gratitude. And that's my whole approach here That's why I don't want to believe in god. I want to love, to live, to laugh To enjoy life so totally that Out of that very enjoyment You start becoming aware Of the great gift that existence has given to you. And then the natural outcome is that A thankful starts arising out of your heart Out of the very depths of your being -- It is not something in the head It is not cultivated by the priests. One cannot avoid it, it is inevitable. If you have tasted life in its totality If you are drunk with life
It is impossible not to feel thankful It is impossible not to bow down to the ultimate Not to say yes to the ultimate. And when yes comes out of joy It has tremendous beauty.
An sannyasin has to be blissful And out of blissfulness, prayer And out of prayer, the experience of god.
(To Daniel) -- This is your name: Swami Anand Jayesh. Anand means bliss. Jayesh means the victorious one.
Bliss makes one victorious. Money cannot make one victorious; at the most It covers up your property It does not make you rich, remember. It simply helps you to forget your poverty, That's all -- poverty remains, persists But becomes repressed.
Wealth is a way to repress poverty Power is a way To repress your inferiority complex, But you remain inferior Power cannot make you superior. You can become the president of a country You can become a prime minister of a country But you remain the same person, Only the label changes, nothing else. It changes nothing in you but One can become hypnotised by the label. People live by labels People become very hypnotized by labels.
Vincent Van Gogh's paintings were not sold So he used to give to his friends -- What else to do with the paintings? Not even a single painting was sold. When he died even friends Were not ready to hang his paintings In their sitting rooms, in their drawing rooms Because those paintings were very strange. To hang them there Was thought to become a laughing stock. Anybody will see and he will think, 'Have you gone mad or something? What is this? What nonsense is this?' So they will accept Just not to hurt the feeling of Van Gogh But they will throw the paintings in the basement And then Van Gogh became famous when he died And then people Started searching for his paintings and suddenly Paintings started coming into the drawing rooms Of the kings and the emperors And the prime minister and the presidents -- Even ordinary people were not ready!
One man was hanging a painting in his bathroom Because nobody else will see except himself. And he can tolerate it -- he is a friend of Van Gogh And the man is dead: Just in his memory He can suffer it. When Van Gogh's name started becoming famous The painting moved to the drawing room and He was jubilant that he has a real painting. But some critic wrote an article and proved that It is phony, it is not true, it is not authentic So he threw it into the basement -- The same painting. But then there was great controversy And other critics proved that it was authentic Other scholars proved it was authentic. When it was proved authentic It came back again into the drawing room.
People live by labels! Nobody seems To be interested in the painting itself. The man is more concerned what others say. And these are the power seekers: They are always concerned what others are saying And they completely forget who they are. These are not the victorious people. They may have money, they may have power But they are poor people, very poor They are beggars.
They real victorious people are very few. They are the Buddhas, the awakened ones. The are the people who have achieved bliss. And the miracle is that If you want to conquer the world It is a very very arduous task because There are so many competitors And if you want to conquer yourself There is no competition at all. You can simply go in and conquer yourself -- No fight with anybody No competition with anybody No jealousy, no question of any politics... But people never go inside.
Sannyas means a radical change in your life style Turning your energies inwards A one-hundred-eighty degree turn is needed. And bliss is there, just you have to turn in.
You have to become again rooted in your being. You have become uprooted, That's why you are miserable. Once you gain roots again Into the soil of your being There will be great greenery and great flowering And life will become a joy. Each moment then is so lovely, is so ecstatic That even Alexander the Great Will find himself poorer in comparison. He had really found him poorer in comparison When he came to India and met few mystics. He wept! -- because he could see the point That he has wasted his life And these people have nothing, still They are so blissful, so peaceful As if they own the whole world. And I own the whole world and I am so miserable. So what is the point of owning the whole world? In fact there is no point -- but it was to late.
He had gone back with a deep decision in his mind That one he is back home He will start pondering over the matter Of inner journey, of inner conquest because He has heard many stories here... Buddha was still in the air -- Just three hundred years had passed: Buddha was still very much alive. When Alexander came, Buddha's vibe Was still very much all over the country. Wherever he went he found many enlightened people Buddha had left a great chain Of enlightened people. And wherever he went he heard the name of Buddha And the bliss that he had attained And the truth and the ultimate. He went with the decision But he could not reach home -- he died in the middle He never reached back home, it was too late. Otherwise this man had power, had the energy. If he could conquer the whole world He could have conquered himself too, But nobody had told him. He was being taught by A stupid philosopher, Plato.
He was just a philosopher, he was not a mystic. Although he had lived with Socrates And he had reported Socrates very authentically He was a good tape recorder, but that's all, A good computer, but that's all. He himself was not a mystic. He himself was in search of some mystic. When Alexander was coming to India He had asked him that, 'At least Bring one sannyasin from India for me as a gift.' But no sannyasin was ready to go. Sannyasins are not interested in going anywhere They are interested in going only inwards Because that is where their real home is. To go in and become victorious.
(To Elke) -- This is your name: Ma Anand Pakhi. Anand means bliss; pakhi means a bird -- a bliss bird.
And you look like a bird! -- just ready to be pushed out of the nest and you will be able to fly into the sky.
We have wings but we have not used them yet. And because we have not used them, we have become oblivious that they are there. And small wings are not that small; because they can cover the whole sky, their capacity is infinite, immense, immeasurable. There is nothing more beautiful than a bird on the wing.
That's what a buddha is: a bird on the wing -- containing the whole sky under his small wings. Moving towards the ultimate frontier of existence, always moving from the known towards the unknown, never afraid of the unknown; in fact, always intrigued with the unknown. Always dropping the known because once you have known it, it is only for stupid people to repeat it. It is sheer stupidity to go on repeating an experience. The intelligent person would like new experiences, new vistas to open up, new visions. And that's what the bird on the wing represents.
So keep that as a symbol deep in your heart: all my sannyasins have to become birds. We are all living in cages -- Christian cages, Hindu cages, Mohammedan cages, beautifully decorated: on some cages the Koran is inscribed, on some other cages the Gita is inscribed, on some other cages there is something else... sayings of Buddha, Confucius, Moses. And there are golden cages studded with diamonds -- but cages are cages. We are not made to live in cages.
A sannyasin has to get rid of all cages: of religion, of nation, of caste, of ideology. You have to go on dropping all cages so that one day the whole sky opens up and becomes available to you.
That's what god is all about: the whole open sky. And freedom is the only thing worth trying for. Freedom achieved, everything follows; without freedom there is no possibility of anything.
Jesus says, "First ye seek the kingdom of god then all else shall be added unto you." That is an old type of expression, but what he means by the kingdom of god is exactly what I mean by freedom. So if I have to say, I will say, "First seek ye the ultimate freedom then all else shall be added unto you."
(To Marinus) -- This is your name: Swami Anand Vissarjan. Anand means bliss. Vissarjan means dissolved in.
Bliss is possible only If you are ready to dissolve into it. Just like a river dissolves into the ocean If you are ready to dissolve into the whole Bliss is the outcome. If you resist dissolution If you try to remain a separate entity -- That's what everybody is doing: Trying to be an ego Trying to protect oneself, defend oneself. Everybody is fencing oneself against the whole Everybody is afraid of the whole because The whole is vast, surrounds you from everywhere And we are creating great walls, China Walls To protect ourselves Otherwise it will flood us, it will overwhelm us So we make great China Walls And hide behind them and remain small. This is the way of the stupid man But the majority consists of the stupid people. The intelligent person knows that This is futile, it is an exercise In futility, utter futility.
We are not separate, no man is an island. We are part of the continent So it is useless to fight with the continent. There is no need to waste your energy in fighting The same energy can be used into celebrating. Dissolve into the whole, drop the ego Forget yourself that you are separate And that is the beginning of sannyas. Feel yourself as part of the whole.
In the beginning it is only a feeling Slowly slowly it deepens. One day it is not a feeling: It is a truth, it is your being. That day sannyas is fulfilled You have arrived -- you have arrived home! Then bliss is yours and eternal bliss is yours. Then there is not death because Once ego is dropped you cannot die It is the ego that dies. It is a false entity, it is bound to die. You can put all your energies into saving it Still, it is going to die.
Don't try to do the impossible See the point of it: Live the whole And forget yourself as a separate entity And then see how beautiful it is And how sweet it is And how each moment becomes a benediction.
(To Gerda) -- This is your name: Ma Anand Geha Anand means bliss. Geha means home.
Bliss is our true home; without bliss We are homeless wanderers, wanderers in a desert. Without bliss we are refugees We don't have a home. And man's foolishness is such that he Is carrying everything he needs within himself But he does not look in. He goes on searching everywhere else
Except in his own being... and bliss is there! Hence he never finds bliss. He will find everything else except bliss But that is the only thing worth finding.
Sannyas has to become a revolution in your life. After sannyas you have to live In a totally new style. Things that you were never concerned about Will become valuable now; for example Money will not be so valuable as meditation Power trips will not be valuable any more Then inner ecstasies, Prestige will not be of your concern any more, But integrity, an inner integration. You will become less and less interested In the outer concerns of the day to day world And you will become more and more concerned About your subjective world, Which has been ignored, neglected for lives But it contains the real treasure It contains the very kingdom of god It contains your real home.
Osho's Commentary
(To Linda) -- This is your name: Ma Anand Linda.
Anand means bliss. Linda means beautiful.
Bliss is the only real beauty in existence
Everything else is superficial
Everything else is phony.
Only bliss is our ultimate truth
Only bliss is not false because
It comes from our deepest core
From the very roots of our being.
It arises out of the center.
Everything else is on the circumference
Except bliss -- hence the search for bliss:
It is really the search for one's own being,
It is the search for self-knowledge
It is the search to discover one's own nature.
The moment we know who we are, bliss happens
Or vice versa: The moment we are blissful
We know who we are.
Bliss is the taste of our being, the flavour
The fragrance of our being.
And once the bliss has happened --
And everybody is entitled for it
It is everybody's birthright...
If it doesn't happen, only we are responsible:
We are not searching and seeking for it
We are not really interested
Involved into the search,
We are not intense enough to go into the depth.
We talk about it but we don't risk anything.
Sannyas is the first step
Of risking for the search.
And the more you risk, the more you gain.
When one is ready to risk all, unconditionally
Immediately bliss happens.
Suddenly it starts welling up.
One's whole being becomes full of
A new kind of joy, untasted before, unknown before.
And it transforms everything:
It makes everything beautiful
It transforms everything into golden.
(To Elizabeth) -- This is your name: Ma Anand Elizabeth.
Anand means bliss. Elizabeth means consecrated to god,
Surrendered to god.
One can be surrendered to god
Out of despair or, out of bliss.
And from the outside both appear to be the same,
They are not; they are diametrically opposite.
The surrender that comes out of despair
Is of no value at all: It is no surrender,
It is failure, it is frustration.
One is doing it as the last resort
Not out of joy.
One is not going into it dancingly
One is not moving into it as a celebration.
Misery is never a bridge between you and god
And the strangest thing is that
People remember god only in misery.
When they are happy they forget all about god --
Who cares about god? For what?
They don't need, they are already happy
Things are going perfectly well.
When things are not going well
Then they start thinking of god.
They want to use god as a means
And god cannot be used as a means -- that is ugly
That is profane, that is very irreligious.
God is the ultimate end.
You can consecrate yourself
Out of joy only, out of bliss only
Then only you will not use god as a means,
There is no question of using god.
You are simply surrendering to him because
He has given you so much -- it is out of gratitude
It is out of thankfulness.
You are not asking anything
You are not desiring anything.
He has already given so much --
What can we desire?
A real religious person has no desire
To be fulfilled from god: he surrenders
In joy, in gratitude.
And that's my whole approach here
That's why I don't want to believe in god.
I want to love, to live, to laugh
To enjoy life so totally that
Out of that very enjoyment
You start becoming aware
Of the great gift that existence has given to you.
And then the natural outcome is that
A thankful starts arising out of your heart
Out of the very depths of your being --
It is not something in the head
It is not cultivated by the priests.
One cannot avoid it, it is inevitable.
If you have tasted life in its totality
If you are drunk with life
It is impossible not to feel thankful
It is impossible not to bow down to the ultimate
Not to say yes to the ultimate.
And when yes comes out of joy
It has tremendous beauty.
An sannyasin has to be blissful
And out of blissfulness, prayer
And out of prayer, the experience of god.
(To Daniel) -- This is your name: Swami Anand Jayesh.
Anand means bliss. Jayesh means the victorious one.
Bliss makes one victorious.
Money cannot make one victorious; at the most
It covers up your property
It does not make you rich, remember.
It simply helps you to forget your poverty,
That's all -- poverty remains, persists
But becomes repressed.
Wealth is a way to repress poverty
Power is a way
To repress your inferiority complex,
But you remain inferior
Power cannot make you superior.
You can become the president of a country
You can become a prime minister of a country
But you remain the same person,
Only the label changes, nothing else.
It changes nothing in you but
One can become hypnotised by the label.
People live by labels
People become very hypnotized by labels.
Vincent Van Gogh's paintings were not sold
So he used to give to his friends --
What else to do with the paintings?
Not even a single painting was sold.
When he died even friends
Were not ready to hang his paintings
In their sitting rooms, in their drawing rooms
Because those paintings were very strange.
To hang them there
Was thought to become a laughing stock.
Anybody will see and he will think,
'Have you gone mad or something? What is this?
What nonsense is this?'
So they will accept
Just not to hurt the feeling of Van Gogh
But they will throw the paintings in the basement
And then Van Gogh became famous when he died
And then people
Started searching for his paintings and suddenly
Paintings started coming into the drawing rooms
Of the kings and the emperors
And the prime minister and the presidents --
Even ordinary people were not ready!
One man was hanging a painting in his bathroom
Because nobody else will see except himself.
And he can tolerate it -- he is a friend of Van Gogh
And the man is dead: Just in his memory
He can suffer it.
When Van Gogh's name started becoming famous
The painting moved to the drawing room and
He was jubilant that he has a real painting.
But some critic wrote an article and proved that
It is phony, it is not true, it is not authentic
So he threw it into the basement --
The same painting.
But then there was great controversy
And other critics proved that it was authentic
Other scholars proved it was authentic.
When it was proved authentic
It came back again into the drawing room.
People live by labels! Nobody seems
To be interested in the painting itself.
The man is more concerned what others say.
And these are the power seekers:
They are always concerned what others are saying
And they completely forget who they are.
These are not the victorious people.
They may have money, they may have power
But they are poor people, very poor
They are beggars.
They real victorious people are very few.
They are the Buddhas, the awakened ones.
The are the people who have achieved bliss.
And the miracle is that
If you want to conquer the world
It is a very very arduous task because
There are so many competitors
And if you want to conquer yourself
There is no competition at all.
You can simply go in and conquer yourself --
No fight with anybody
No competition with anybody
No jealousy, no question of any politics...
But people never go inside.
Sannyas means a radical change in your life style
Turning your energies inwards
A one-hundred-eighty degree turn is needed.
And bliss is there, just you have to turn in.
You have to become again rooted in your being.
You have become uprooted,
That's why you are miserable.
Once you gain roots again
Into the soil of your being
There will be great greenery and great flowering
And life will become a joy.
Each moment then is so lovely, is so ecstatic
That even Alexander the Great
Will find himself poorer in comparison.
He had really found him poorer in comparison
When he came to India and met few mystics.
He wept! -- because he could see the point
That he has wasted his life
And these people have nothing, still
They are so blissful, so peaceful
As if they own the whole world.
And I own the whole world and I am so miserable.
So what is the point of owning the whole world?
In fact there is no point -- but it was to late.
He had gone back with a deep decision in his mind
That one he is back home
He will start pondering over the matter
Of inner journey, of inner conquest because
He has heard many stories here...
Buddha was still in the air --
Just three hundred years had passed:
Buddha was still very much alive.
When Alexander came, Buddha's vibe
Was still very much all over the country.
Wherever he went he found many enlightened people
Buddha had left a great chain
Of enlightened people.
And wherever he went he heard the name of Buddha
And the bliss that he had attained
And the truth and the ultimate.
He went with the decision
But he could not reach home -- he died in the middle
He never reached back home, it was too late.
Otherwise this man had power, had the energy.
If he could conquer the whole world
He could have conquered himself too,
But nobody had told him.
He was being taught by
A stupid philosopher, Plato.
He was just a philosopher, he was not a mystic.
Although he had lived with Socrates
And he had reported Socrates very authentically
He was a good tape recorder, but that's all,
A good computer, but that's all.
He himself was not a mystic.
He himself was in search of some mystic.
When Alexander was coming to India
He had asked him that, 'At least
Bring one sannyasin from India for me as a gift.'
But no sannyasin was ready to go.
Sannyasins are not interested in going anywhere
They are interested in going only inwards
Because that is where their real home is.
To go in and become victorious.
(To Elke) -- This is your name: Ma Anand Pakhi. Anand means bliss; pakhi means a bird -- a bliss bird.
And you look like a bird! -- just ready to be pushed out of the nest and you will be able to fly into the sky.
We have wings but we have not used them yet. And because we have not used them, we have become oblivious that they are there. And small wings are not that small; because they can cover the whole sky, their capacity is infinite, immense, immeasurable. There is nothing more beautiful than a bird on the wing.
That's what a buddha is: a bird on the wing -- containing the whole sky under his small wings. Moving towards the ultimate frontier of existence, always moving from the known towards the unknown, never afraid of the unknown; in fact, always intrigued with the unknown. Always dropping the known because once you have known it, it is only for stupid people to repeat it. It is sheer stupidity to go on repeating an experience. The intelligent person would like new experiences, new vistas to open up, new visions. And that's what the bird on the wing represents.
So keep that as a symbol deep in your heart: all my sannyasins have to become birds. We are all living in cages -- Christian cages, Hindu cages, Mohammedan cages, beautifully decorated: on some cages the Koran is inscribed, on some other cages the Gita is inscribed, on some other cages there is something else... sayings of Buddha, Confucius, Moses. And there are golden cages studded with diamonds -- but cages are cages. We are not made to live in cages.
A sannyasin has to get rid of all cages: of religion, of nation, of caste, of ideology. You have to go on dropping all cages so that one day the whole sky opens up and becomes available to you.
That's what god is all about: the whole open sky. And freedom is the only thing worth trying for. Freedom achieved, everything follows; without freedom there is no possibility of anything.
Jesus says, "First ye seek the kingdom of god then all else shall be added unto you." That is an old type of expression, but what he means by the kingdom of god is exactly what I mean by freedom. So if I have to say, I will say, "First seek ye the ultimate freedom then all else shall be added unto you."
(To Marinus) -- This is your name: Swami Anand Vissarjan.
Anand means bliss. Vissarjan means dissolved in.
Bliss is possible only
If you are ready to dissolve into it.
Just like a river dissolves into the ocean
If you are ready to dissolve into the whole
Bliss is the outcome.
If you resist dissolution
If you try to remain a separate entity --
That's what everybody is doing:
Trying to be an ego
Trying to protect oneself, defend oneself.
Everybody is fencing oneself against the whole
Everybody is afraid of the whole because
The whole is vast, surrounds you from everywhere
And we are creating great walls, China Walls
To protect ourselves
Otherwise it will flood us, it will overwhelm us
So we make great China Walls
And hide behind them and remain small.
This is the way of the stupid man
But the majority consists of the stupid people.
The intelligent person knows that
This is futile, it is an exercise
In futility, utter futility.
We are not separate, no man is an island.
We are part of the continent
So it is useless to fight with the continent.
There is no need to waste your energy in fighting
The same energy can be used into celebrating.
Dissolve into the whole, drop the ego
Forget yourself that you are separate
And that is the beginning of sannyas.
Feel yourself as part of the whole.
In the beginning it is only a feeling
Slowly slowly it deepens.
One day it is not a feeling:
It is a truth, it is your being.
That day sannyas is fulfilled
You have arrived -- you have arrived home!
Then bliss is yours and eternal bliss is yours.
Then there is not death because
Once ego is dropped you cannot die
It is the ego that dies.
It is a false entity, it is bound to die.
You can put all your energies into saving it
Still, it is going to die.
Don't try to do the impossible
See the point of it: Live the whole
And forget yourself as a separate entity
And then see how beautiful it is
And how sweet it is
And how each moment becomes a benediction.
(To Gerda) -- This is your name: Ma Anand Geha
Anand means bliss. Geha means home.
Bliss is our true home; without bliss
We are homeless wanderers, wanderers in a desert.
Without bliss we are refugees
We don't have a home.
And man's foolishness is such that he
Is carrying everything he needs within himself
But he does not look in.
He goes on searching everywhere else
Except in his own being... and bliss is there!
Hence he never finds bliss.
He will find everything else except bliss
But that is the only thing worth finding.
Sannyas has to become a revolution in your life.
After sannyas you have to live
In a totally new style.
Things that you were never concerned about
Will become valuable now; for example
Money will not be so valuable as meditation
Power trips will not be valuable any more
Then inner ecstasies,
Prestige will not be of your concern any more,
But integrity, an inner integration.
You will become less and less interested
In the outer concerns of the day to day world
And you will become more and more concerned
About your subjective world,
Which has been ignored, neglected for lives
But it contains the real treasure
It contains the very kingdom of god
It contains your real home.