What is the message on Sambodhi Day?

Osho, what is the definition of God?

Words are very small. If you say God is light, then what of darkness? The scriptures have said that God is light. Suppose we accept this as a definition—then what about darkness? Where will darkness go? Darkness is too; in fact it is far more than light. Light sometimes is and sometimes is not; darkness is always, eternal. Where will you place darkness? If you say God is light, darkness is left out. If you say God is darkness, then light is left out. If you say God is both darkness and light, a contradiction arises: they cannot be together. Try to have both darkness and light in the same room. If you bring in light, darkness disappears; if you preserve darkness, you cannot have light. Then how can both be together? That becomes an impossibility. So you cannot say “both” either. Then the fourth device is to say: it…

The message is to never think about yourself in any way which condemns. One has to learn to respect oneself; that is the beginning of a great change. We have been taught to condemn, to despise, to hate. We have been told to love others but we have not been told to love ourselves, so we don't have a good image of ourselves. And without a good image of yourself, you will never be able to know who you are. One does not want to look at oneself if one is condemned as a sinner. One can enter into oneself only when one feels that one is going into something beautiful. The beginning of love is to love oneself. The beginning of god is to think of oneself as divine.

But one thing is certain, that if mind continues to work you will never be able to know your innermost core -- and that is the liberating experience, the most ecstatic experience. Once you have tasted of it you are freed from all kinds of nonsense. You are freed from politics, you are freed from the so-called religions, you are freed from all kinds of ideologies. You start living in the moment, immediately related with reality, in tune, a dance arises in you -- a dance of spontaneity. Of course, whenever you need the mind you can put it on and put it off. Sambodh means right intelligence. Intellect is the wrong intelligence. It pretends to be intelligence -- it is not. But we have accepted its pretension, so from the school to the university all that we do is to cultivate intellect.

And to know it is to become a song, to know it is to become a dance, to know it is to become a celebration. My sannyas is nothing but entering into the world of celebration. It is not renunciation, it is rejoicing. Rejoice, rejoice that life is! Rejoice in the stars and the sun and the moon and the rains and the wind. Rejoice in trees and animals and birds and people. Rejoice in your own being. If rejoicing becomes your whole life I call it religious. A religious person is blissful moment-to-moment and his bliss goes on growing, deepening. This deepening bliss brings you closer and closer to God. One day when there is only bliss and you are not -- not even to say that "I am blissful," but simply bliss is -- you have arrived home.

Samyam means: life in balance. Balance means: life in awareness, in apramad. Take each step with awareness; do not fear falling. If you must fall—no need to panic. Cultivate the capacity to recover. If you fall, cultivate the capacity to rise. If you err, cultivate the understanding to correct. But do not be afraid to move. Do not sit down on the roadside because the path has thorns, mistakes, robbers—“we might be looted, we might stray; better not to walk at all.” This is what happened in India. Many sat down by the roadside—India died. Not religious—only dead. The West is better—they made many mistakes; but what of it? They are alive, and the living can set things right. Becoming a corpse is not becoming religious. To be religious is to burn the trash off the gold—not to throw away the gold along with the trash.