[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up.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.]
[Love can be the prelude to enlightenment, Osho said tonight.]
Enlightenment is not something that can be made a goal, it cannot be made an achievement, it cannot be an object of ambition because it is our intrinsic nature; we are already it. It has to be discovered and the way to discover it is love, because the thing that keeps it covered is the ego and love absolutely kills the ego and leaves no trace behind. Love means absence of ego.
If A happens between two persons, that means between those two persons ego is no more present, that they commune without the ego. If it happens between a person and the whole universe that means prayer, the highest form of love. Now there is no ego in the part against the whole.
The moment ego drops the tremendous energy of love is released and in that very release one realises, recognises, one's true nature. That true nature is what is known in the West as Christ consciousness, in the East as Buddha consciousness. That true nature is always enlightened because it is light and nothing else -- pure light, eternal light.
[Then to Liesbeth, a Dutch woman, he expanded on the relationship between the part and the whole.]
The greatest bliss in life is to become part of the whole. Ordinarily we try in every possible way to remain separate, we try to keep our identity, we try to remain an island -- and that is the whole cause of our misery.
Religion is nothing but the simple art of dissolving yourself in the whole. The whole is called god. That's why the man who has attained to god is called holy -- because he has become whole, he is no more separate, he has dropped that stupid idea of being separate. He is no longer like an ice cube, he has melted and merged into the ocean.
That moment is the moment of great bliss. And after that one can never fall from bliss. way to fall. Even if one wants to be miserable one cannot be.
The ordinary person who lives like an ego tries hard to be blissful but he cannot be; he remains miserable. And the surrendered person, even if he tries to be miserable he cannot be. Bliss is the consequence of surrender and misery the consequence of resistance.
[And then turning to Roberto, a teacher from Italy, Osho said:]
A man without love is dull. A man without love is not really alive, he is yet unborn. Physically he is out of the womb of the mother but psychologically he still lives in an encapsulated way -- closed to the wind, to the rain, to the sun, to all that is. He remains in fear.
These two words, "fear" and "love" are very important because these are the only two styles of living: either you live out of fear or you live out of love. The energy that becomes fear is the same that becomes love. It depends on you, in what direction you help the energy to move.
If you remain closed the energy starts moving within yourself. It loses contact with the whole. And whenever you lose contact with the whole you create misery, your flow stops, you start dying, you become uprooted. You are no more a river, you become a small muddy pond. Soon you will stink.
Fear can bring only death; it has no life-giving sources in it. But the same energy, if you are open, all the doors, all the windows open, becomes love. The same energy, when it starts moving, flowing... the same water of the muddy pond becomes pure when it moves in a river. The very movement of the river is towards the ocean. The very direction is purifying because one is moving towards the bigger, the higher, the infinite.
Live life as love, never live life as fear. And if you live life as love you will come to know eternal life and the fragrance of a Buddha, of a Jesus, of a Mohammed and the whole poetry that follows such a loving heart, the whole grace, the whole benediction. Not only is such a person blissful, he becomes a blessing to the whole existence.
[The man who has never known anything of meditation lives a barren life, just like a desert, Osho told someone else. Then he recounted a joke.]
I have heard about an American tourist dressed in his swimming suit, running towards the ocean, perspiring. He met a man and he asked, "How far is the ocean?" The man looked at the American, felt very sorry for him and said "It will be difficult to reach it -- this is the Sahara and the ocean is at least eight hundred miles away from here." The American said "Then I will have to rest here on the beach!"
You can believe your desert to be a beach. That's how people are living, believing their desert is a beach. It is simply desert. At least in the Sahara after eight hundred miles you will find the ocean, but in a life without meditation the Sahara is unending -- not even after eight hundred miles...
Meditation brings a totally new perspective to life, a new vision. It opens doors to new potentials and possibilities. Meditation comes like spring and suddenly things start growing. Meditation does not do a thing, it is just a catalytic agent. The seeds are already in you; meditation is only a catalytic agent. Meditation means a silent state of consciousness; no more noise of the mind, no more chattering of the mind. The mind is put aside and you are simply silent.
That silence has tremendous power. It becomes a catalytic agent and all the seeds that you have been carrying for lives start sprouting. Your life becomes green with trees. All the green, all the gold, all the red of the trees, suddenly starts happening to you. The birds start singing in your heart. Only then does one know god is, not before that. One can believe but belief is just belief, more belief. The real thing happens only when you have transformed your being into a flowering garden. Then only do you know god is. Before that you are Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan -- these are all conditionings, these don't make anybody religious. The truly religious person is neither Christian nor Hindu nor Mohammedan, he is simply religious.
That's my work here, to help you to become simply religious without any adjective to it. I want you to become a garden so that you have intrinsic proof for the existence of god. I don't argue for god; I only create situations in which you become aware that god is, that not only god is, but only god is. Nothing else exists. Existence is synonymous with god.
[To Cornelia, an occupational therapist from Germany, Osho spoke about awareness as being the essence of meditation.]
Man lives unconsciously; he goes on doing many things because others are doing them. He goes on following and imitating. He is not exactly aware of why he is doing these things, he is not even aware of who he is. What else can you expect when a man is not aware of who he is, from where he is coming, to where he is going and why?
These are the basic questions which can be solved only through meditation. No philosophy can help you to solve them. They will supply many many answers but all answers will be hypothetical and if you ponder over them you can always find many flaws, many faults. Meditation is existential, not philosophical. It helps you to become aware so much so that you encounter yourself.
That is the meaning of Cornelia vigilant spirit. Meditation makes you a vigilant spirit. You full of consciousness. As unconsciousness starts receding and consciousness starts claiming more and more ground, your life becomes more and more centred, more and more fulfilled, more and more joyous, more and more significant. And when the whole darkness of the unconscious has disappeared and you are full of light, just pure awareness and nothing else, all the mysteries are revealed to you.
Truth is a revelation, not a conclusion of thought -- a revelation in meditation, not a conclusion through mentation.
[To Aline from Belgium he spoke of the transformation that happens to the meditator.]
We live in the mind and we have completely forgotten that we can also live as a no-mind, because everything has its opposite. If there is day there is night, if there is life there is death, if there is love there is hate. Nothing can exist without its opposite -- this is an absolutely established fact.
So if mind exists then there must be a space within us which we can call no-mind. And that is the whole search of meditation. It is not far away, it is just by the side of the mind. They are like twins just a little effort and you can enter a state of no-mind. And to enter the spirit of no-mind is to be reborn. It is a resurrection.
That is the meaning of Aline: noble. One who is born out of meditation, I call him noble. By noble I don't mean the ordinary meaning of being an aristocrat, because the ordinary birth is the same -- whether you are born in the royal family or in the poor man's family, it doesn't matter.
The real birth happens through meditation. Buddha is noble, Zarathustra is noble, Lao Tzu is noble, but their nobility, their aristocracy, is authentic, true. It has nothing to do with their ordinary birth. They have attained to a new life, they have given birth to themselves. That's what Jesus means when he says to Nicodemus: Unless you are born again you shall not enter into my kingdom of god.
[Michele's name, with "prem" prefixing it, means god is love, Osho explained.]
I am not teaching my sannyasins to believe in god. My teaching is simple: Love life, be in love with love itself. And one day you are in for a great surprise. Suddenly god walks in and says "Hello! Michele, what are you doing?" Because love is the door, you can enter into god from the door, god can enter from the door into you! And why bother, when god himself is ready to enter you?
[Life is in flow, in liquidity, so it's truer to use verbs and not nouns, Osho began in his address to the next sannyasin.]
Knowledge is a dead thing, knowing is alive and flowing. In fact some day in the future we will have to evolve a totally new language because all our old languages are out of date. They were evolved by different people, for different purposes, in different situations. Now that whole thing has disappeared but the language is a hangover.
Now we know both religiously and scientifically that in existence there is nothing static. Everything is always in a movement.
Sir Eddington is reported to have said "The word 'rest' is absolute nonsense because I have never come across anything like it in existence. Nothing is ever in a state of rest. Everything is changing, moving, it is a dynamic existence."
So instead of saying knowledge I say knowing, instead of saying love I would prefer loving, instead of being, I would prefer loving. But we have become so accustomed to nouns that we even call a river a river; it is just a rivering. It is never the same even for two consecutive moments. We call trees, trees; they are all treeing, growing each moment: some old leaves falling, some new leaves coming up. Except for change, nothing is permanent in existence.
This is the way a sannyasin has to start looking at life and not only looking, but living also. A sannyasin has to become liquid, flowing, dynamic, always ready to move into the unknown. And then knowing goes on and on. It is a pilgrimage which never ends. And the beauty is the wonder remains, the mystery remains. We go on knowing yet there is so much to know. Inexhaustible is existence and one can always remain like a child, full of wonder and awe.
I don't teach my sannyasins to become knowledgeable, I teach them how to remain in wonder and awe because god is a mystery, not an object of knowledge. If god is an object of knowledge, sooner or later he will end up in a scientific laboratory.
God is a mystery and is available only to those whose hearts are dancing with wonder, whole being is thrilled with awe -- that is the way of my sannyasins.
[Meditation isn't concentration; in fact it's the ultimate in relaxation, Osho told a Japanese sannyasin.]
When you are totally relaxed, doing nothing, thinking nothing, simply enjoying the moment for the sheer sake of enjoying it, with no other motive, for no purpose, you are in meditation. And those are the rarest moments in life because only in those relaxed moments do windows open into the temple of god, glimpses start coming to you.
And once you have tasted the joy of relaxing, you can relax even while working. Action remains on the surface and relaxation goes on like an undercurrent. That is the ultimate in meditation. Then one goes on doing the ordinary things of life and still one remains centred in god.
[He gave the name Veet Asmito to a German woman. Asmito" meant subtle ego, he explained.]
In English there is only one word for the ego. In Sanskrit there are two words: "ahankar" -- that is exactly equivalent to the ego -- and "asmita" -- for which there is no equivalent in English.
Asmita means such a subtle ego that it can even look like humbleness, it can even pretend to be egolessness.
The sannyasin has to be aware of both. The gross ego is not much of a problem -- we are all aware of it. We can see it in others, we can see it in ourselves. The person who brags about his money or his house or his power, we know; these are gross expressions. But the saint who brags about his purity, who brags about his humbleness, who brags about his devotion, who brags about his austerities... it is very difficult to find out whether this is ego or something else. It is ego, and my sannyasins have to be aware of it. It is ego coming in from the back door.
The front-door ego is not much of a problem because it gives you so much suffering that sooner or later everybody becomes fed up with it. But the subtle ego that comes in from the backdoor is very dangerous. In the first place you cannot see it, it is very invisible. In the second place it does not give you any trouble because it never comes in conflict with other egos. All other people have subtle egos, but undeveloped. Their gross egos are developed.
So if you have a gross ego you are always in conflict with everybody's ego; if you have a subtle ego you are very rarely in competition with somebody. Of course, if two saints are there they will fight, but ordinarily a saint will not find anybody else to compete with. Hence two saints are very much unwilling even to meet each other because even the meeting is enough to bring their egos up. They are perfectly humble with the gross-ego people, but when it comes to the subtle-ego people they start trying to be greater than you, bigger than you, higher than you, more superior than you, holier than you.
I have heard of three Christian monks meeting at a crossroad coming back from the town to their monasteries. One of them was a Trappist. He said "Our monks are the most disciplined people in the whole Christian world, the most austere. Their work is hard, they have risked all.
The second monk said "That is true, but our monks are the most knowledgeable people in the whole Christian world. Their whole life is devoted to knowledge, to scholarship. Your people cannot compete with our people as far as scholarship is concerned -- and scholarship is a far greater thing than fasting. And stupid person can fast. In fact only stupid people fast, otherwise why should they fast? Either fat people fast or stupid people fast -- and fat people are stupid, otherwise why should they be fat in the first place? But knowledge is a great achievement."
The third was listening silently. He said "It is true that nobody can compete with the Trappists as far as austerities are concerned and nobody can compete with you as far as knowledge is concerned, but as far as humbleness is concerned we are at the top!"
Humbleness "at the top"...! Now this is the most subtle ego. "We are the most humble people, at the top. Nobody can compete with us."
Asmita means subtle ego. We have to drop both the gross and the subtle. We have to become nobodies, just nobodies -- not even religious, holy, spiritual people, just nobodies. And the moment you are a nobody something exquisite happens to you, something tremendously significant, because in those moments when you are nobody god knocks on your door -- and only in those moments, never otherwise.'
Osho's Commentary
[Love can be the prelude to enlightenment, Osho said tonight.]
Enlightenment is not something that can be made a goal, it cannot be made an achievement, it cannot be an object of ambition because it is our intrinsic nature; we are already it. It has to be discovered and the way to discover it is love, because the thing that keeps it covered is the ego and love absolutely kills the ego and leaves no trace behind. Love means absence of ego.
If A happens between two persons, that means between those two persons ego is no more present, that they commune without the ego. If it happens between a person and the whole universe that means prayer, the highest form of love. Now there is no ego in the part against the whole.
The moment ego drops the tremendous energy of love is released and in that very release one realises, recognises, one's true nature. That true nature is what is known in the West as Christ consciousness, in the East as Buddha consciousness. That true nature is always enlightened because it is light and nothing else -- pure light, eternal light.
[Then to Liesbeth, a Dutch woman, he expanded on the relationship between the part and the whole.]
The greatest bliss in life is to become part of the whole. Ordinarily we try in every possible way to remain separate, we try to keep our identity, we try to remain an island -- and that is the whole cause of our misery.
Religion is nothing but the simple art of dissolving yourself in the whole. The whole is called god. That's why the man who has attained to god is called holy -- because he has become whole, he is no more separate, he has dropped that stupid idea of being separate. He is no longer like an ice cube, he has melted and merged into the ocean.
That moment is the moment of great bliss. And after that one can never fall from bliss. way to fall. Even if one wants to be miserable one cannot be.
The ordinary person who lives like an ego tries hard to be blissful but he cannot be; he remains miserable. And the surrendered person, even if he tries to be miserable he cannot be. Bliss is the consequence of surrender and misery the consequence of resistance.
[And then turning to Roberto, a teacher from Italy, Osho said:]
A man without love is dull. A man without love is not really alive, he is yet unborn. Physically he is out of the womb of the mother but psychologically he still lives in an encapsulated way -- closed to the wind, to the rain, to the sun, to all that is. He remains in fear.
These two words, "fear" and "love" are very important because these are the only two styles of living: either you live out of fear or you live out of love. The energy that becomes fear is the same that becomes love. It depends on you, in what direction you help the energy to move.
If you remain closed the energy starts moving within yourself. It loses contact with the whole. And whenever you lose contact with the whole you create misery, your flow stops, you start dying, you become uprooted. You are no more a river, you become a small muddy pond. Soon you will stink.
Fear can bring only death; it has no life-giving sources in it. But the same energy, if you are open, all the doors, all the windows open, becomes love. The same energy, when it starts moving, flowing... the same water of the muddy pond becomes pure when it moves in a river. The very movement of the river is towards the ocean. The very direction is purifying because one is moving towards the bigger, the higher, the infinite.
Live life as love, never live life as fear. And if you live life as love you will come to know eternal life and the fragrance of a Buddha, of a Jesus, of a Mohammed and the whole poetry that follows such a loving heart, the whole grace, the whole benediction. Not only is such a person blissful, he becomes a blessing to the whole existence.
[The man who has never known anything of meditation lives a barren life, just like a desert, Osho told someone else. Then he recounted a joke.]
I have heard about an American tourist dressed in his swimming suit, running towards the ocean, perspiring. He met a man and he asked, "How far is the ocean?" The man looked at the American, felt very sorry for him and said "It will be difficult to reach it -- this is the Sahara and the ocean is at least eight hundred miles away from here." The American said "Then I will have to rest here on the beach!"
You can believe your desert to be a beach. That's how people are living, believing their desert is a beach. It is simply desert. At least in the Sahara after eight hundred miles you will find the ocean, but in a life without meditation the Sahara is unending -- not even after eight hundred miles...
Meditation brings a totally new perspective to life, a new vision. It opens doors to new potentials and possibilities. Meditation comes like spring and suddenly things start growing. Meditation does not do a thing, it is just a catalytic agent. The seeds are already in you; meditation is only a catalytic agent. Meditation means a silent state of consciousness; no more noise of the mind, no more chattering of the mind. The mind is put aside and you are simply silent.
That silence has tremendous power. It becomes a catalytic agent and all the seeds that you have been carrying for lives start sprouting. Your life becomes green with trees. All the green, all the gold, all the red of the trees, suddenly starts happening to you. The birds start singing in your heart. Only then does one know god is, not before that. One can believe but belief is just belief, more belief. The real thing happens only when you have transformed your being into a flowering garden. Then only do you know god is. Before that you are Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan -- these are all conditionings, these don't make anybody religious. The truly religious person is neither Christian nor Hindu nor Mohammedan, he is simply religious.
That's my work here, to help you to become simply religious without any adjective to it. I want you to become a garden so that you have intrinsic proof for the existence of god. I don't argue for god; I only create situations in which you become aware that god is, that not only god is, but only god is. Nothing else exists. Existence is synonymous with god.
[To Cornelia, an occupational therapist from Germany, Osho spoke about awareness as being the essence of meditation.]
Man lives unconsciously; he goes on doing many things because others are doing them. He goes on following and imitating. He is not exactly aware of why he is doing these things, he is not even aware of who he is. What else can you expect when a man is not aware of who he is, from where he is coming, to where he is going and why?
These are the basic questions which can be solved only through meditation. No philosophy can help you to solve them. They will supply many many answers but all answers will be hypothetical and if you ponder over them you can always find many flaws, many faults. Meditation is existential, not philosophical. It helps you to become aware so much so that you encounter yourself.
That is the meaning of Cornelia vigilant spirit. Meditation makes you a vigilant spirit. You full of consciousness. As unconsciousness starts receding and consciousness starts claiming more and more ground, your life becomes more and more centred, more and more fulfilled, more and more joyous, more and more significant. And when the whole darkness of the unconscious has disappeared and you are full of light, just pure awareness and nothing else, all the mysteries are revealed to you.
Truth is a revelation, not a conclusion of thought -- a revelation in meditation, not a conclusion through mentation.
[To Aline from Belgium he spoke of the transformation that happens to the meditator.]
We live in the mind and we have completely forgotten that we can also live as a no-mind, because everything has its opposite. If there is day there is night, if there is life there is death, if there is love there is hate. Nothing can exist without its opposite -- this is an absolutely established fact.
So if mind exists then there must be a space within us which we can call no-mind. And that is the whole search of meditation. It is not far away, it is just by the side of the mind. They are like twins just a little effort and you can enter a state of no-mind. And to enter the spirit of no-mind is to be reborn. It is a resurrection.
That is the meaning of Aline: noble. One who is born out of meditation, I call him noble. By noble I don't mean the ordinary meaning of being an aristocrat, because the ordinary birth is the same -- whether you are born in the royal family or in the poor man's family, it doesn't matter.
The real birth happens through meditation. Buddha is noble, Zarathustra is noble, Lao Tzu is noble, but their nobility, their aristocracy, is authentic, true. It has nothing to do with their ordinary birth. They have attained to a new life, they have given birth to themselves. That's what Jesus means when he says to Nicodemus: Unless you are born again you shall not enter into my kingdom of god.
[Michele's name, with "prem" prefixing it, means god is love, Osho explained.]
I am not teaching my sannyasins to believe in god. My teaching is simple: Love life, be in love with love itself. And one day you are in for a great surprise. Suddenly god walks in and says "Hello! Michele, what are you doing?" Because love is the door, you can enter into god from the door, god can enter from the door into you!
And why bother, when god himself is ready to enter you?
[Life is in flow, in liquidity, so it's truer to use verbs and not nouns, Osho began in his address to the next sannyasin.]
Knowledge is a dead thing, knowing is alive and flowing. In fact some day in the future we will have to evolve a totally new language because all our old languages are out of date. They were evolved by different people, for different purposes, in different situations. Now that whole thing has disappeared but the language is a hangover.
Now we know both religiously and scientifically that in existence there is nothing static. Everything is always in a movement.
Sir Eddington is reported to have said "The word 'rest' is absolute nonsense because I have never come across anything like it in existence. Nothing is ever in a state of rest. Everything is changing, moving, it is a dynamic existence."
So instead of saying knowledge I say knowing, instead of saying love I would prefer loving, instead of being, I would prefer loving. But we have become so accustomed to nouns that we even call a river a river; it is just a rivering. It is never the same even for two consecutive moments. We call trees, trees; they are all treeing, growing each moment: some old leaves falling, some new leaves coming up. Except for change, nothing is permanent in existence.
This is the way a sannyasin has to start looking at life and not only looking, but living also. A sannyasin has to become liquid, flowing, dynamic, always ready to move into the unknown. And then knowing goes on and on. It is a pilgrimage which never ends. And the beauty is the wonder remains, the mystery remains. We go on knowing yet there is so much to know. Inexhaustible is existence and one can always remain like a child, full of wonder and awe.
I don't teach my sannyasins to become knowledgeable, I teach them how to remain in wonder and awe because god is a mystery, not an object of knowledge. If god is an object of knowledge, sooner or later he will end up in a scientific laboratory.
God is a mystery and is available only to those whose hearts are dancing with wonder, whole being is thrilled with awe -- that is the way of my sannyasins.
[Meditation isn't concentration; in fact it's the ultimate in relaxation, Osho told a Japanese sannyasin.]
When you are totally relaxed, doing nothing, thinking nothing, simply enjoying the moment for the sheer sake of enjoying it, with no other motive, for no purpose, you are in meditation. And those are the rarest moments in life because only in those relaxed moments do windows open into the temple of god, glimpses start coming to you.
And once you have tasted the joy of relaxing, you can relax even while working. Action remains on the surface and relaxation goes on like an undercurrent. That is the ultimate in meditation. Then one goes on doing the ordinary things of life and still one remains centred in god.
[He gave the name Veet Asmito to a German woman. Asmito" meant subtle ego, he explained.]
In English there is only one word for the ego. In Sanskrit there are two words: "ahankar" -- that is exactly equivalent to the ego -- and "asmita" -- for which there is no equivalent in English.
Asmita means such a subtle ego that it can even look like humbleness, it can even pretend to be egolessness.
The sannyasin has to be aware of both. The gross ego is not much of a problem -- we are all aware of it. We can see it in others, we can see it in ourselves. The person who brags about his money or his house or his power, we know; these are gross expressions. But the saint who brags about his purity, who brags about his humbleness, who brags about his devotion, who brags about his austerities... it is very difficult to find out whether this is ego or something else. It is ego, and my sannyasins have to be aware of it. It is ego coming in from the back door.
The front-door ego is not much of a problem because it gives you so much suffering that sooner or later everybody becomes fed up with it. But the subtle ego that comes in from the backdoor is very dangerous. In the first place you cannot see it, it is very invisible. In the second place it does not give you any trouble because it never comes in conflict with other egos. All other people have subtle egos, but undeveloped. Their gross egos are developed.
So if you have a gross ego you are always in conflict with everybody's ego; if you have a subtle ego you are very rarely in competition with somebody. Of course, if two saints are there they will fight, but ordinarily a saint will not find anybody else to compete with. Hence two saints are very much unwilling even to meet each other because even the meeting is enough to bring their egos up. They are perfectly humble with the gross-ego people, but when it comes to the subtle-ego people they start trying to be greater than you, bigger than you, higher than you, more superior than you, holier than you.
I have heard of three Christian monks meeting at a crossroad coming back from the town to their monasteries. One of them was a Trappist. He said "Our monks are the most disciplined people in the whole Christian world, the most austere. Their work is hard, they have risked all.
The second monk said "That is true, but our monks are the most knowledgeable people in the whole Christian world. Their whole life is devoted to knowledge, to scholarship. Your people cannot compete with our people as far as scholarship is concerned -- and scholarship is a far greater thing than fasting. And stupid person can fast. In fact only stupid people fast, otherwise why should they fast? Either fat people fast or stupid people fast -- and fat people are stupid, otherwise why should they be fat in the first place? But knowledge is a great achievement."
The third was listening silently. He said "It is true that nobody can compete with the Trappists as far as austerities are concerned and nobody can compete with you as far as knowledge is concerned, but as far as humbleness is concerned we are at the top!"
Humbleness "at the top"...! Now this is the most subtle ego. "We are the most humble people, at the top. Nobody can compete with us."
Asmita means subtle ego. We have to drop both the gross and the subtle. We have to become nobodies, just nobodies -- not even religious, holy, spiritual people, just nobodies. And the moment you are a nobody something exquisite happens to you, something tremendously significant, because in those moments when you are nobody god knocks on your door -- and only in those moments, never otherwise.'