[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]
[Osho spoke about the difference between meditation and concentration. In the past the two have been thought to be synonymous, and they are not.]
Not only are they not synonymous, they are absolutely opposite dimensions. They never meet anywhere, they never cross each other's path -- different worlds altogether.
Concentration is something within the mind and meditation is something beyond the mind. Concentration has its own utility. If you are working on a scientific project then concentration is needed; then you have to focus all your mind-energy on a single point. The more focussed you are, the more clear will be your observation, obviously, because your energy will not be spread out; you will not be moving here and there, wavering, thinking of this and that. Your whole energy will be pouring into a single point, you will be ore penetrating. But this state is a state of tension hence the word 'attention'.
Attention means concentration. And one cannot concentrate for a long period because it is unnatural, it is against the natural flow of your being. It keeps you stagnant, and one point, and life is riverlike, life is a flow. Life wants to move, life wants to explore. It feels suffocated being stuck at one point. But concentration has its utility; it helps you to understand the object of observation.
Meditation is relaxation. It is not tension, it is not strain. It has nothing to do with focussing, on the contrary, it is a relaxed opening to all that is. You are not interested in something special, you are not excluding anything from your consciousness.
Concentration excludes much, only then can it focus on the small object that it wants to understand. Meditation does not want to understand anything at all, it wants to relax with existence. It is a let-go. It is not an effort to understand, it is an effort to merge and melt into the reality with no desire to understand -- full of wonder a child, full of awe, ready to go into the mysterious, into the miraculous, with no motive to understand -- because that motive becomes a tension.
I teach relaxation, being at ease with existence, so totally at ease that there is no question of distraction at all. When you are concentrating there are thousands of things which will try to distract you; a train passing by will be a distraction. The scientist needs a soundproof air-conditioned room so nothing distracts him, but in an absolutely soundproof air-conditioned room new distractions are felt. For the first time you start hearing your own heartbeat. If it is really sound proof, totally soundproof, you will start hearing your heartbeat as loudly as if you are hearing it through a stethoscope. You will start hearing the noise, the sound of your breathing. Not only that, people who are very sensitive start hearing the sound of the blood running through the body.
You cannot avoid distraction. If you are trying to concentrate then distraction and anger are bound to be there because whenever you are distracted you will be angry at yourself that you missed again. You will force yourself again.
Concentration needs a tremendous effort to control. It is a bracketing. The whole reality has to be bracketed out except for a small thing on which you are focussing. Hence the definition of science: knowing more and more about less and less. That's why science creates so many branches.
In the beginning there was only one science; they used to call it natural philosophy. In tradition universities like Oxford and science departments are still called the Departments of Natural Philosophy. That is a three-hundred-year-old idea -- when science was not yet divided into many branches. Then physics and chemistry became separate; then chemistry also became divided into organic and inorganic, then physics also became divided into pure and practical, and so on, so forth. Now there are so many divisions and they go on dividing.
I have heard a twenty-first century story: a man goes to an eye specialist and tells him his eye is getting worse and worse every day; "Please help me. I cannot see with one of my eyes." The doctor says "Which eye s getting worse? -- right or left." The man says "The right," and the doctor says "Sorry -- I specialise only in the left eye. You will have to go to some other expert."
That's how the situation is. In the old days there was only one physician. A good doctor was needed and he would do everything. Now you go to one doctor and he will send you to a thousand doctors. Every doctor has his own specialisation.
If science is knowing more and more about less and less, then I define religion as knowing less and less about more and more. And the day you know nothing about all, you have become enlightened. That is the day one becomes a buddha. He knows nothing about the whole. He lives it, he enjoys it, he loves it, but he knows nothing. He has become as innocent as a child again. That's my understanding of meditation.
And Inge is also a beautiful name; it comes from Norse mythology. In Norse mythology Inge was the god of creativity, peace and prosperity. Through meditation all these things happen naturally; no endeavour is needed. As you relax you become more and more sensitive, more and more creative, more and more peaceful. And this is true prosperity. I am not saying you will become rich, that money will start pouring in, that money will start growing on trees. What to say about money? -- even bananas don't grow on trees!
Just the other day I was looking at a scientific book and I cam across this new discover of the scientists that bananas don't grow on trees because the banana tree is not a tree, in fact. It cannot be called a tree; it has no branches, no trunk. Linguistically it is wrong to call it a tree. It is only a stalk; it is just leaves and nothing else. You go on peeling the leaves and nothing is left. It is not a tree. I liked the idea!
By prosperity I mean something inner. Money will not grow, bananas will not grow but something more valuable -- nirvana -- will start growing within you. -- How long will you be here? -- As long as possible. -- That's good. Then nirvana is bound to grow! Avoid bananas -- there are many here!
[Dieter means full of justice, and a man who has never experienced meditation can never be that. Osho talks about the difference between a person who functions from their mind and a person who functions from a state of meditation.]
Mind can never be just for the simple reason that mind means all the accumulated prejudices. How can prejudices be just? When your mind is full of prejudices, concepts, ideologies, conclusions, beliefs, which have been handed over to you, which are not your own experiences which have been handed over by one generation to another generation for thousands of years... and sometimes such stupid ideas go on and on for centuries that one wonders whether to call man a rational being or not.
In fact Aristotle was the first man to define man as a rational being. He himself was not very rational. He went on writing in books that women have less teeth than men -- because that was the prevalent idea in Greece for thousands of years. He had two wives, he could have counted their teeth any day. Not only one but two wives were there, but he never counted their teeth. And this man says "Man is a rational being. " What kind of rational being is this? One woman is enough and you have two wives -- plenty! And it would have been no trouble; it was not such a great experiment that you needed money, sophisticated instruments or anything. He could have just told the wives "Open your mouth..." In fact wives always keep their mouths open! It is difficult to tell them to shut up! That's why every language is called "the mother tongue"... because the father never gets a chance to say anything!
In fact it is said that god created man first so that the poor man could at least say a few words before... He could not count his wives' teeth but he went on writing....
We always go on perpetuating prejudices, old ideas, because it is easier. Who wants to enquire about everything? And through these clouds we look at things. And then justice is not possible, it is absolutely impossible.
If Jews could have looked at Jesus by putting their minds aside there would have been justice, but they could not put their minds aside. They looked through the Jewish idea, so they started asking stupid things: "If you are the messiah, then prove this, prove that." In fact crucifying Jesus was only an effort to know whether he was the messiah or not. They were waiting for a miracle, for him to do his miracle, and if he had done a miracle he would have been accepted by the Jews.
But a man like Jesus never follows people's ideas; he lives according to his own light. He cannot be forced to adjust to a category.
If the Greeks could have put their mind aside they would have loved Socrates -- such a beautiful man and they had to poison him and kill him. The same thing has always been happening: they murdered Al Hillaj Mansoor just for a small simple thing; he declared "I am god," and that is very much against the Mohammedan idea. Mohammedans say a man can never be god. God is the creator. How can a creature be the creator? Now these are just your guesses.
Al Hillaj Mansoor was saying it not according to any logical thinking, he had experienced. He became silent, meditative and he came to know "I am one with the whole. There is no creation and no creator. There is no division; it is all one creative energy, one organic unity.
Because of this he declared "I am god" -- "Ana'l Haq" -- I am the truth. But Mohammedans could not tolerate it. This was against their ancient idea. They were far more interested in a stupid idea rather than in this beautiful man. They have not created another man of his calibre. It is easy to kill a Al Hillaj Mansoor; it takes centuries to create another Al Hillaj Mansoor. In fact with the death of Socrates Athens died, Athens disappeared from the world map; it lost its splendour, its glory. That whole glory was dependent on the presence of Socrates.
When Socrates was alive Athens had become the capital, the intellectual capital of the whole world. People were travelling towards Athens from all over the world to sit at the feet of Socrates. Twenty-five centuries have passed since then but the Greeks have not been able to produce another man who can be compared with Socrates. He still remains such a high peak that it seems almost impossible that the Greeks will ever be able to reach to that height.
Jesus was the very pinnacle of Jewish genius. But they killed their own flowering, they destroyed their own flower for which they had waited for centuries. And the simple reason is that we go on looking through the mind.
There is another was of looking at life, at people, at existence -- and that is by putting the mind aside. I call it meditation when you put the mind aside and you look without any interference from your thoughts. You simply look like a mirror, you simply reflect, with no desire to impose any idea, with no prejudice, no concept, with no philosophy, no religion. You come to know that which is. And after that whatsoever you do is just, it cannot be unjust.
[Osho speaks on love as the path to god because it is the heart that has a direct line to that experience. But we live in the head... ]
... And because we live in the head we have lost contact with god. And we never think that we have lost contact, on the contrary, we start thinking that there seems to be no god.
It is like a man sitting with closed eyes and thinking there is darkness, there is no light. Rather than thinking "I may be sitting with closed eyes," he is ready to deny the sun, the light, rather than trying to open his eyes.
God cannot be proved by any argumentation because it is not a question of logic, god can be known only through love. It is an experience of union, union with the whole. And the only way to be united with the whole is love.
My sannyasins have to live love. They need not bother about churches and temples and mosques and they need not bother about great philosophical and theological treatises, all kinds of esoteric nonsense, occult stupidities. They have to be very simple, in a single word "lovers", lovers of all that is. And then god is not far away.
[Anand Sargam means the seven notes of music.]
Indian music believes is seven notes: sa, re, ga, ma, pa, dha, nee, sa. This contains the whole spectrum of Indian music. This is just like the seven colors of the sunrays; when a sunray passes through a prism it becomes divided into seven colors. The sunray is white. It is really a miracle to see it becoming a rainbow. And if you mix those seven colors together again, it becomes white. White contains all the colors.
The same is the case with music. Silence contains all the seven notes; the moment you express it, it becomes seven notes. Silence contains the whole world of music, just like the color white; hence those who have known silence have known tremendous music. But it is a music which cannot be expressed, it is a music which cannot even be heard. It is only experienced, it is like a taste on the tongue.
Bliss also is a multi-splendored phenomenon; it also has seven notes to it. Those who have gone into the innermost world of man have discovered that man consists of seven centers. Each center gives its own kind of pleasure. Ordinarily we are acquainted with the lowest center, the sex center; hence in peoples' minds pleasure means something sexual. That is only the first dimension of bliss, the lowest. Nothing is wrong in it but one should not be confined to it. One should use it as a jumping board for something higher.
There are still six planes and the seventh is samadhi, the seventh is the ultimate of meditation. At the seventh you come to know the highest peak of bliss.
My approach is that a man should be capable of knowing all seven notes, the whole spectrum, the whole ladder from the lowest rung to the highest; only then is man whole and only then does he become holy. Hence I am not in favor of renouncing anything. Absorb everything, renounce nothing. Digest every experience, renounce nothing. Rejoice in everything, renounce nothing. And then one day that ultimate music explodes and fills you with bliss, benediction.
[Anand Utsavo means bliss and celebration.] Religion has been dominated by ill and pathological people for centuries...
My approach to religion is totally different. It is rooted in celebration, in wholeness, in health. I am not against life, I am in absolute love with life because to me life is god. There is no god other than life. One need not bother about any god up above there, in the heavens. God is within you and god is all around you, within everything. God means existence, that which exists is divine; hence even death is divine because that too exists. It exists as much as life itself, it is the very culmination of life. Life comes to a crescendo in death.
And I teach my sannyasins to celebrate everything. Celebrate birth, celebrate life, celebrate death. Celebration has to be the most fundamental thing in my sannyasin's life. Accept everything with totality because nothing wrong can ever happen. And if anything happens it cannot be wrong because only god can happen, because only god is.
So I am against all those so-called saints who live a sad kind of life with long faces, very serious looking, as if they are doing something great. They are simply stupid and nothing else! To me, children are more saintly because they can dance so light-heartedly, they can sing and they can rejoice in small things. Just watch them running on the seashore, on the beach, collecting colored stones, seashells, as if they have found a mine of diamonds. Their joy is radiant, overflowing. And that is my vision of a real saint. A real saint becomes a child again.
Jesus says, "Unless you are like small children you will not enter into my kingdom of god," and I absolutely agree with him. Love and laughter are far more precious to me than these so-called prayers and the worship and rituals of religion. You will have to learn a totally new dimension of life with me. You will have to unburden yourself, because I say if you can dance god is yours, if you can sing he sings within you. If you can love he is always present. Whenever there is love happening, god is happening. If you can cry joyously and laugh joyously, if you can laugh so deeply that you start crying, then know well that god is around you. God is always there whenever you are passionately, intensely into something.
A sannyasin has to learn to live life moment to moment with total intensity, as if there is going to be no other moment, as if this is the last moment -- the first and the last both, because he never bothers about the past -- that which is gone is gone -- and he never bothers about the future -- that which has not come yet has not come yet. He lives in the moment. And because there is only this moment to live all his energy is poured into this moment. His life starts having a flavor of totality. And that flavor is religion, that flavor is prayer.
Osho's Commentary
[Osho spoke about the difference between meditation and concentration. In the past the two have been thought to be synonymous, and they are not.]
Not only are they not synonymous, they are absolutely opposite dimensions. They never meet anywhere, they never cross each other's path -- different worlds altogether.
Concentration is something within the mind and meditation is something beyond the mind. Concentration has its own utility. If you are working on a scientific project then concentration is needed; then you have to focus all your mind-energy on a single point. The more focussed you are, the more clear will be your observation, obviously, because your energy will not be spread out; you will not be moving here and there, wavering, thinking of this and that. Your whole energy will be pouring into a single point, you will be ore penetrating. But this state is a state of tension hence the word 'attention'.
Attention means concentration. And one cannot concentrate for a long period because it is unnatural, it is against the natural flow of your being. It keeps you stagnant, and one point, and life is riverlike, life is a flow. Life wants to move, life wants to explore. It feels suffocated being stuck at one point. But concentration has its utility; it helps you to understand the object of observation.
Meditation is relaxation. It is not tension, it is not strain. It has nothing to do with focussing, on the contrary, it is a relaxed opening to all that is. You are not interested in something special, you are not excluding anything from your consciousness.
Concentration excludes much, only then can it focus on the small object that it wants to understand. Meditation does not want to understand anything at all, it wants to relax with existence. It is a let-go. It is not an effort to understand, it is an effort to merge and melt into the reality with no desire to understand -- full of wonder a child, full of awe, ready to go into the mysterious, into the miraculous, with no motive to understand -- because that motive becomes a tension.
I teach relaxation, being at ease with existence, so totally at ease that there is no question of distraction at all. When you are concentrating there are thousands of things which will try to distract you; a train passing by will be a distraction. The scientist needs a soundproof air-conditioned room so nothing distracts him, but in an absolutely soundproof air-conditioned room new distractions are felt. For the first time you start hearing your own heartbeat. If it is really sound proof, totally soundproof, you will start hearing your heartbeat as loudly as if you are hearing it through a stethoscope. You will start hearing the noise, the sound of your breathing. Not only that, people who are very sensitive start hearing the sound of the blood running through the body.
You cannot avoid distraction. If you are trying to concentrate then distraction and anger are bound to be there because whenever you are distracted you will be angry at yourself that you missed again. You will force yourself again.
Concentration needs a tremendous effort to control. It is a bracketing. The whole reality has to be bracketed out except for a small thing on which you are focussing. Hence the definition of science: knowing more and more about less and less. That's why science creates so many branches.
In the beginning there was only one science; they used to call it natural philosophy. In tradition universities like Oxford and science departments are still called the Departments of Natural Philosophy. That is a three-hundred-year-old idea -- when science was not yet divided into many branches. Then physics and chemistry became separate; then chemistry also became divided into organic and inorganic, then physics also became divided into pure and practical, and so on, so forth. Now there are so many divisions and they go on dividing.
I have heard a twenty-first century story: a man goes to an eye specialist and tells him his eye is getting worse and worse every day; "Please help me. I cannot see with one of my eyes." The doctor says "Which eye s getting worse? -- right or left." The man says "The right," and the doctor says "Sorry -- I specialise only in the left eye. You will have to go to some other expert."
That's how the situation is. In the old days there was only one physician. A good doctor was needed and he would do everything. Now you go to one doctor and he will send you to a thousand doctors. Every doctor has his own specialisation.
If science is knowing more and more about less and less, then I define religion as knowing less and less about more and more. And the day you know nothing about all, you have become enlightened. That is the day one becomes a buddha. He knows nothing about the whole. He lives it, he enjoys it, he loves it, but he knows nothing. He has become as innocent as a child again.
That's my understanding of meditation.
And Inge is also a beautiful name; it comes from Norse mythology. In Norse mythology Inge was the god of creativity, peace and prosperity. Through meditation all these things happen naturally; no endeavour is needed. As you relax you become more and more sensitive, more and more creative, more and more peaceful. And this is true prosperity. I am not saying you will become rich, that money will start pouring in, that money will start growing on trees. What to say about money? -- even bananas don't grow on trees!
Just the other day I was looking at a scientific book and I cam across this new discover of the scientists that bananas don't grow on trees because the banana tree is not a tree, in fact. It cannot be called a tree; it has no branches, no trunk. Linguistically it is wrong to call it a tree. It is only a stalk; it is just leaves and nothing else. You go on peeling the leaves and nothing is left. It is not a tree. I liked the idea!
By prosperity I mean something inner. Money will not grow, bananas will not grow but something more valuable -- nirvana -- will start growing within you.
-- How long will you be here?
-- As long as possible.
-- That's good. Then nirvana is bound to grow! Avoid bananas -- there are many here!
[Dieter means full of justice, and a man who has never experienced meditation can never be that. Osho talks about the difference between a person who functions from their mind and a person who functions from a state of meditation.]
Mind can never be just for the simple reason that mind means all the accumulated prejudices. How can prejudices be just? When your mind is full of prejudices, concepts, ideologies, conclusions, beliefs, which have been handed over to you, which are not your own experiences which have been handed over by one generation to another generation for thousands of years... and sometimes such stupid ideas go on and on for centuries that one wonders whether to call man a rational being or not.
In fact Aristotle was the first man to define man as a rational being. He himself was not very rational. He went on writing in books that women have less teeth than men -- because that was the prevalent idea in Greece for thousands of years. He had two wives, he could have counted their teeth any day. Not only one but two wives were there, but he never counted their teeth. And this man says "Man is a rational being. " What kind of rational being is this? One woman is enough and you have two wives -- plenty! And it would have been no trouble; it was not such a great experiment that you needed money, sophisticated instruments or anything. He could have just told the wives "Open your mouth..." In fact wives always keep their mouths open! It is difficult to tell them to shut up! That's why every language is called "the mother tongue"... because the father never gets a chance to say anything!
In fact it is said that god created man first so that the poor man could at least say a few words before... He could not count his wives' teeth but he went on writing....
We always go on perpetuating prejudices, old ideas, because it is easier. Who wants to enquire about everything? And through these clouds we look at things. And then justice is not possible, it is absolutely impossible.
If Jews could have looked at Jesus by putting their minds aside there would have been justice, but they could not put their minds aside. They looked through the Jewish idea, so they started asking stupid things: "If you are the messiah, then prove this, prove that." In fact crucifying Jesus was only an effort to know whether he was the messiah or not. They were waiting for a miracle, for him to do his miracle, and if he had done a miracle he would have been accepted by the Jews.
But a man like Jesus never follows people's ideas; he lives according to his own light. He cannot be forced to adjust to a category.
If the Greeks could have put their mind aside they would have loved Socrates -- such a beautiful man and they had to poison him and kill him. The same thing has always been happening: they murdered Al Hillaj Mansoor just for a small simple thing; he declared "I am god," and that is very much against the Mohammedan idea. Mohammedans say a man can never be god. God is the creator. How can a creature be the creator? Now these are just your guesses.
Al Hillaj Mansoor was saying it not according to any logical thinking, he had experienced. He became silent, meditative and he came to know "I am one with the whole. There is no creation and no creator. There is no division; it is all one creative energy, one organic unity.
Because of this he declared "I am god" -- "Ana'l Haq" -- I am the truth. But Mohammedans could not tolerate it. This was against their ancient idea. They were far more interested in a stupid idea rather than in this beautiful man. They have not created another man of his calibre. It is easy to kill a Al Hillaj Mansoor; it takes centuries to create another Al Hillaj Mansoor. In fact with the death of Socrates Athens died, Athens disappeared from the world map; it lost its splendour, its glory. That whole glory was dependent on the presence of Socrates.
When Socrates was alive Athens had become the capital, the intellectual capital of the whole world. People were travelling towards Athens from all over the world to sit at the feet of Socrates. Twenty-five centuries have passed since then but the Greeks have not been able to produce another man who can be compared with Socrates. He still remains such a high peak that it seems almost impossible that the Greeks will ever be able to reach to that height.
Jesus was the very pinnacle of Jewish genius. But they killed their own flowering, they destroyed their own flower for which they had waited for centuries. And the simple reason is that we go on looking through the mind.
There is another was of looking at life, at people, at existence -- and that is by putting the mind aside. I call it meditation when you put the mind aside and you look without any interference from your thoughts. You simply look like a mirror, you simply reflect, with no desire to impose any idea, with no prejudice, no concept, with no philosophy, no religion. You come to know that which is. And after that whatsoever you do is just, it cannot be unjust.
[Osho speaks on love as the path to god because it is the heart that has a direct line to that experience. But we live in the head... ]
... And because we live in the head we have lost contact with god. And we never think that we have lost contact, on the contrary, we start thinking that there seems to be no god.
It is like a man sitting with closed eyes and thinking there is darkness, there is no light. Rather than thinking "I may be sitting with closed eyes," he is ready to deny the sun, the light, rather than trying to open his eyes.
God cannot be proved by any argumentation because it is not a question of logic, god can be known only through love. It is an experience of union, union with the whole. And the only way to be united with the whole is love.
My sannyasins have to live love. They need not bother about churches and temples and mosques and they need not bother about great philosophical and theological treatises, all kinds of esoteric nonsense, occult stupidities. They have to be very simple, in a single word "lovers", lovers of all that is. And then god is not far away.
[Anand Sargam means the seven notes of music.]
Indian music believes is seven notes: sa, re, ga, ma, pa, dha, nee, sa. This contains the whole spectrum of Indian music. This is just like the seven colors of the sunrays; when a sunray passes through a prism it becomes divided into seven colors. The sunray is white. It is really a miracle to see it becoming a rainbow. And if you mix those seven colors together again, it becomes white. White contains all the colors.
The same is the case with music. Silence contains all the seven notes; the moment you express it, it becomes seven notes. Silence contains the whole world of music, just like the color white; hence those who have known silence have known tremendous music. But it is a music which cannot be expressed, it is a music which cannot even be heard. It is only experienced, it is like a taste on the tongue.
Bliss also is a multi-splendored phenomenon; it also has seven notes to it. Those who have gone into the innermost world of man have discovered that man consists of seven centers. Each center gives its own kind of pleasure. Ordinarily we are acquainted with the lowest center, the sex center; hence in peoples' minds pleasure means something sexual. That is only the first dimension of bliss, the lowest. Nothing is wrong in it but one should not be confined to it. One should use it as a jumping board for something higher.
There are still six planes and the seventh is samadhi, the seventh is the ultimate of meditation. At the seventh you come to know the highest peak of bliss.
My approach is that a man should be capable of knowing all seven notes, the whole spectrum, the whole ladder from the lowest rung to the highest; only then is man whole and only then does he become holy. Hence I am not in favor of renouncing anything. Absorb everything, renounce nothing. Digest every experience, renounce nothing. Rejoice in everything, renounce nothing. And then one day that ultimate music explodes and fills you with bliss, benediction.
[Anand Utsavo means bliss and celebration.]
Religion has been dominated by ill and pathological people for centuries...
My approach to religion is totally different. It is rooted in celebration, in wholeness, in health. I am not against life, I am in absolute love with life because to me life is god. There is no god other than life. One need not bother about any god up above there, in the heavens. God is within you and god is all around you, within everything. God means existence, that which exists is divine; hence even death is divine because that too exists. It exists as much as life itself, it is the very culmination of life. Life comes to a crescendo in death.
And I teach my sannyasins to celebrate everything. Celebrate birth, celebrate life, celebrate death. Celebration has to be the most fundamental thing in my sannyasin's life. Accept everything with totality because nothing wrong can ever happen. And if anything happens it cannot be wrong because only god can happen, because only god is.
So I am against all those so-called saints who live a sad kind of life with long faces, very serious looking, as if they are doing something great. They are simply stupid and nothing else! To me, children are more saintly because they can dance so light-heartedly, they can sing and they can rejoice in small things. Just watch them running on the seashore, on the beach, collecting colored stones, seashells, as if they have found a mine of diamonds. Their joy is radiant, overflowing. And that is my vision of a real saint. A real saint becomes a child again.
Jesus says, "Unless you are like small children you will not enter into my kingdom of god," and I absolutely agree with him. Love and laughter are far more precious to me than these so-called prayers and the worship and rituals of religion. You will have to learn a totally new dimension of life with me. You will have to unburden yourself, because I say if you can dance god is yours, if you can sing he sings within you. If you can love he is always present. Whenever there is love happening, god is happening. If you can cry joyously and laugh joyously, if you can laugh so deeply that you start crying, then know well that god is around you. God is always there whenever you are passionately, intensely into something.
A sannyasin has to learn to live life moment to moment with total intensity, as if there is going to be no other moment, as if this is the last moment -- the first and the last both, because he never bothers about the past -- that which is gone is gone -- and he never bothers about the future -- that which has not come yet has not come yet. He lives in the moment. And because there is only this moment to live all his energy is poured into this moment. His life starts having a flavor of totality. And that flavor is religion, that flavor is prayer.