[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up.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.]
[He was listed as being a drummer from Denmark and sported the name of Pygge. But you pronounce it Pooga. I have given thousands of names to people, Osho began, but 'Pygge' is rare!]
In the first place it means nothing. In the second place it is a word of endearment used for addressing small children. And I quote Jesus often, "Unless you are like small children you will not enter into my kingdom of god."
One has to be an innocent as a child, then and only then do the doors open. The doors of the divine remain closed for the knowledgeable people; for pandits, scholars, priests, the doors are completely closed. They already know, they don't need anything more. They have repressed their ignorance by accumulating borrowed knowledge. They have lost the quality of wonder, which is the most essential thing to know god.
The child has tremendous wonder. His heart is continuously feeling the mysterious, the miraculous. His eyes are full of awe -- at small things: pebbles on the seashore, seashells... he goes on accumulating them as if he has found diamonds. And he is intrigued by such small things -- a butterfly, just a flower, an ordinary flower, and he is enchanted, almost hypnotised.
These are the qualities which help you to open to god, to bliss, to truth, to the mystery of existence. My sannyasins have to be just like small children.
[Prayer is blissfulness Osho told us.]
To be cheerful is to be religious, to be sad is to be irreligious. Hence the so-called saints in my evaluation are not saints at all. They look so sad, so dull, so dead -- how can they be experiencing god? If the experience of god brings such sadness then it is not worth experiencing. If the experience of god makes people so dull, with such long faces, then it is better to avoid god. Even if by chance you meet him, run away!
That is not my vision of god. It must be the devil masquerading as god before these saints; he must have deceived these people. God can only mean celebration, god can only mean festivity. God to me is nothing but the festive dimension. So be blissful and let blissfulness be your prayer.
[Prayer is blissfulness... and bliss is god, he went on to say.]
In fact nobody needs god, everybody needs bliss. Nobody is searching for god, everybody is searching bliss. Even the people who say they are seeking and searching god, if you ask them why, for what, immediately you will see their motive. They will say because without knowing god one cannot be blissful. So really they are not seeking god but blissfulness. They have been told for centuries that bliss is possible only when you attain to god, hence they are seeking god. But their goal is bliss.
If the road goes via god they have to go via god, otherwise they would by-pass him. I have never seen a single person who is really interested in god. In fact nobody can really be interested in god. It is a very arbitrary word. Bliss is something natural, it is intrinsic. Our very heart beats for it, our very life longs for it. Hence I say bliss is god. God is another name for bliss and nothing else. And if you want to find bliss or god, start by being blissful.
In the beginning it may not be so much, but brick by brick you can make the whole temple.
The story about Daniel is very beautiful. Mind you, I call it a story, not history, because to me parables, stories, are far more significant than history. History records only facts; parables record truths. Facts are ordinary. This is a parable; it cannot be historical.
Daniel was cast into a den of lions for refusing to deny his faith, but he emerged unharmed. Now, I don't believe that lions are so religious or so vegetarian. Even in old days they were the same people -- a little worse maybe...
Just the other day I was reading about a woman who applied for a job in a circus. The manager told her that her work was to go into the cage of the lion and just to sit by the side of the lion hugging him and kissing him. The woman started trembling and she said "I don't want this job." The manager said "Don't be worried. The lion has been brought up only on milk, so there is no need to worry." the woman said "I was also brought up on milk but now I am non-vegetarian. So it does not prove anything -- that he has been brought up on milk -- he may turn non-vegetarian any day, any moment."
But the parable that Daniel came out of the den of lions unharmed is beautiful. It says only one thing, that love for truth is greater than life itself, that one can sacrifice one's life for truth, but not vice versa.
It also says that although man has evolved so much still the basic instincts in man remain the same. Still people of trust are bound to suffer like Daniel, because society lives on untruths and it cannot tolerate a man of truth.
Secondly, it says that the man of truth need not be afraid; he cannot be harmed by anything, not even by lions, because the man of truth knows something which is eternal in him, indestructible. Even death cannot take it away.
My own feeling is that if it is really a historical fact that Daniel was thrown into the den of lions he must have been killed but not harmed. He must have died blissfully, joyously, ecstatically, because he was dying for truth.
To live for lies is worthless, to die for truth is one of the greatest blessings in life.
[The inner trek consists of three steps, Osho told Hannelore.]
The journey begins in love and ends in light or in enlightenment and the bridge is prayer. The whole pilgrimage from ignorance to wisdom is nothing but a pilgrimage of prayer.
Prayer means "I am so small that nothing is possible through me unless the whole helps me." Prayer is a surrender of the ego to the whole -- surrender not in despair but in deep understanding. How can the small wave go against the ocean? -- the very effort is absurd. But that's what the whole of humanity goes on doing. We are all small waves in the vast ocean of consciousness. Call that ocean of consciousness god, truth, enlightenment, nirvana, tao, dhamma -- they all mean the same thing, that we are part of an infinite ocean. But we are very small waves -- we cannot have our own will and we cannot have our own destiny. The very desire to have our own will and to achieve something out of our own desires is the whole cause of misery.
Prayer means that in understanding the futility of human will, one surrenders to the divine will. One says "Thy will be done, thy kingdom come."
It is possible only if there is great love for existence. Hence I say the journey begins in love and ends in enlightenment. And the middle of the journey consists only of prayer, of deep let-go. How long will you be here? I'm leaving in one week.
Then come back again for a longer period. This is not like a German. Next time come like a German!
[But before even the first step is taken you need some provisions. Trust is a must, he told Prem Martyn.]
Love is possible only for those few fortunate people who have the capacity to trust. People live in doubts; not in one, but in millions of doubts. And it is because of their doubts they cannot love, they cannot trust, they cannot be loyal, they cannot be committed, they cannot get involved in anything totally. But then they miss their whole life. And life is a great opportunity because here we can discover god, and god can only be discovered here.
That's why in the East we have this idea, the very significant idea, that unless you realize god you will have to be sent back to life again and again. The Judaic religions -- Mohammedanism, Christianity, and Judaism -- have missed this beautiful idea; they believe only in one life. Because of the idea of one life they have missed many things.
First, they have created a great hurry in people -- that's why the West is in so much of a hurry. The roots go deep into the religions that have dominated the western mind. If there is only one life, only this life and then you will be in the grave, who knows for how long... who knows when the last Judgement Day will come? For almost an eternity you will be in the grave, so make as much as you can make of your small life -- it is not much.
If you are going to live sixty years, twenty years will be wasted in sleep. Of the remaining forty years, for twenty years you will be working as a clerk or as a teacher or as a D.T. collector or as an engineer. There are thousands of kinds of stupid professions in which one can waste one's life.
For the last twenty years you will be rushing from the office to the home and from the home to the office, from this woman to that woman, from that woman to another woman, looking at that idiot box, television, watching a movie -- the same story, the same triangle, the same love affair repeated again and again. And then one needs time to shave and time to wash and clean and take a bath and go to church and listen to some religious discourse, some Pollack pope! And in only sixty years of life!
Naturally, one goes into a panic, and goes fast, so one cannot do anything totally; one is always running, rushing, and one is always thinking of how to do things more speedily.
The East has a totally different idea. The East says don't be so worried -- you cannot get rid of life so easily. You will be sent back. Life is a school; unless you learn the lesson you will be sent back again and again.
I have heard about a classical musician who was doing his first public performance. Now, classical music in India is a difficult phenomenon, very difficult; it needs tremendous effort, almost eight hours, ten hours per day practise and then too, to become a master of it is a rare phenomenon, very rare. The man had worked hard, particularly for this performance, and then he started.
He played one melody and the whole audience shouted "Once more!", so he played it again and they shouted "Once more!", so he played it again and they shouted "Once more!" So he said "Sirs, I have to play something else too."
Then one man stood up; he said, "Unless you play it rightly... we are going to say 'Once more, once more.' There is the whole night, we are here, you are here; you have to play it right!"
So one has to come into life again and again. If one misses the opportunity god says "Once more, go back -- see you again!" But there is every possibility to realize the potential. And that's what sannyas is all about, the whole science of realizing the potential of your being. How long will you be here? I don't know. Be here as long as possible. See you again!
[Meditation needs your love, your whole love and nothing but your love. Osho pointed out that we dissipate our love energy.]
People love many kinds of things. There are lovers of money, lovers of power, lovers of fame -- All kinds of things have been turned into objects of love. But my whole concern is that all your love should become concentrated only on one thing and that is meditation.
Unless we pour our whole energy into meditation it only remains a dream, it never becomes a reality. Meditation needs our totality. You cannot do it partially; you cannot do it only once in a while, for one hour every day or for fifteen minutes in the morning and fifteen minutes in the evening. I am not talking about the transcendental meditation type of thing. Those things are only meant for fools. Who would not like to enjoy both worlds if it is so easy, if just by sitting for fifteen minutes in the morning and fifteen minutes in the evening with closed eyes, repeating some stupid mantra: Coca Cola, coca-cola... If you can attain the kingdom of god it is worth attaining!
And people are doing transcendental meditations in all kinds of places -- in bathrooms, sitting on their toilets because they can find no other place in the home. At least in the bathroom you are left alone for ten minutes, nobody will disturb you. It may give you a certain consolation, a certain happiness that you are doing something for the other world too. But it cannot transform you.
Transformation is possible only when the twenty-four hours of your day become a constant meditation, a continuum. So whatsoever you are doing -- walking you are meditating, eating you are meditating, listening, talking you are meditating... because to me meditation simply means awareness, not repeating a mantra. Because how can you repeat a mantra? -- if you are doing some work and you repeat a mantra your work will be disturbed. If you are doing something significant then it can be dangerous to you; you will be divided.
By meditation I simply mean an awareness. Whatsoever one is doing one is fully aware of each act -- physical, mental, emotional. Walking, you are aware of walking, running, you are aware of running, swimming you are aware of swimming. Eating, you are not simply stuffing yourself unconsciously and thinking of thousands of other things; you are simply eating and doing nothing else at that moment, totally in the act, alert aware. And then meditation becomes a twenty-four-hour-a-day phenomenon.
One day a miracle happens, and that miracle is that one can sleep with a meditative awareness. The body sleeps but somewhere deep down a current of awareness continues; you are aware that you are asleep. A very paradoxical phenomenon, but it happens. On that day meditation has come to its completion, is known in its entirety. Unless that happens something is still missing.
That is the ultimate goal for the sannyasin, to achieve a state of meditation which cannot be lost even while you are asleep. Only then can a person die meditatively. If you cannot sleep meditatively, how can you die meditatively? And the man who dies meditatively is never born again. He becomes part of the eternal cosmos, he lives in eternity, in god. He is never thrown back again into the bodily imprisonment.
[Then he talked about love and meditation, about how people have tended to divide themselves into two schools of thought -- the worldly and the other-worldly, the lovers and the meditators. Osho's idea is to create a synthesis of the two. But in his effort to do so he is misunderstood and put down by both parties.]
I will be condemned by religious people because I will be going against their whole tradition -- Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, Buddhist, Jaina -- all religious religions, because I am introducing love into the life of the sannyasin. And I will be opposed by the materialist, by the worldly, because they will be saying that I am introducing meditation into people's lives -- which can become a danger to their ordinary world, to their ordinary concerns. And that's actually happening.
I may be the only person in the whole history who is condemned by all unanimously. It is a rare privilege. But this is what I want to do and those who want to be with me have to be capable of both, while alone meditate, while with others love.
Your name, Premraj, will mean kingdom of love. But the kingdom can be total only when you are capable of both, because love will make available to you only half of the kingdom -- the outside, the peripheral -- and meditation will make you the master of the other half, the more substantial, the inner. If the two words are fulfilled in life nothing else is needed.
[His name, Dhyanraj, means kingdom of meditation -- which is another way of saying kingdom of god, Osho explained.]
To be in meditation is to be in god, to be silent is all that is needed. Once the noisy mind stops suddenly you become aware that all that you have been seeking all along is already within you; you contain the treasure.
Jesus says the kingdom of god is within you... But we are running everywhere else. We are going everywhere else except in. Meditation is simply a strategy to turn your outgoing consciousness into an ingoing consciousness. It is a way of turning in. All my efforts here are to turn you on and to turn you in.
[Live in the mind and you inhabit a madhouse Osho told his newest swami.]
The mind goes on driving you crazy for the simple reason that it has many contradictory desires. In fact each desire in the mind is always balanced by its opposite.
Mind lives in a constant struggle, conflict. For example you want to be with someone, you love someone, and at the same time you want to have your own space, you want to be alone. The desires are of the same strength, so it is not possible that one will ever be able to win over the other. All that we can manage is sometimes to have one on top, sometimes the other on top, but whatsoever the case you will be miserable. If you are with the loved one, the desire to be alone is frustrated; if you are alone the desire to be with the loved one is frustrated. You are in misery any way. Mind leaves no choice for you.
One wants to be famous and when one is famous one wants to be anonymous, because the moment you are famous you lose all your privacy. You cannot even walk silently by the road.
Ask the public figures how much they feel it, the misery of always being in the public eye. And they have achieved it through their whole life's effort.
It happened in Voltaire's life -- he became so famous... He had tried to be his whole life, ultimately he succeeded. That is one of the greatest things to understand: before you start trying something, remember, you may succeed! (laughter) He worked hard for his whole life and then he succeeded. And then he started feeling that he had lost all his privacy. He could not sit under a tree alone even for a few moments, he could not go for a morning walk, he could not go to the pub without being noticed and reported about in the newspapers. Wherever he went people followed him.
His fame became such that the police had to take him home from the railway station if he had come from somewhere, and from the home to the railway station -- because in those days there was a superstition in France that if you could get a little piece of the clothes of a very famous man it helped you to succeed in becoming famous.
So it happened many times that his clothes would be torn; he would come home almost naked. Then he started praying to god, "I want to be left alone, I don't want this face. What has it given to me? -- it is driving me crazy! He would get scratched, bruised, because the mob would be mad for his clothes.
And finally his prayer succeeded again; people forgot all about him. For ten years more he went on living and people came to know that he had still been alive when he died. And only four persons followed him to the cemetery; not really four, only three, because the fourth was his dog.
And in the last moments of his life he was suffering from privacy, from being nobody. He was hankering for the crowd but nobody even came to see him. For his whole life he suffered. Sometimes he suffered because he was nobody, sometimes because he had become somebody, but the suffering continued. And this is so with the mind.
But there is a totally different way of life: living out of the mind; not in the mind but beyond the mind. That's what meditation helps you to do. It helps you to transcend mind, then you are the master, then your awareness is such that mind cannot control you.
Once mind has no control over you all conflict ceases, all dualism disappears, there is great peace, and out of that peace, millions of flowers.
[Meditation is deserting the mind... and mining the desert of aloneness, Osho went on to say to the next sannyasin.]
... only you are in your absolute simplicity, just a pure being, just a moment of sheer existence uncontaminated by anything, unpolluted by anything.
This is the greatest experience a man is capable of because it brings him to his own truth, and that is the truth of the universe too. But for it great courage is needed.
Bernhard means as brave as a bear. One has to be really brave, really courageous, to go inwards. It is easy to be a warrior, it is far more difficult to be a sannyasin, because the warrior fights with others, the sannyasin fights with his own stupidity -- and that is the greatest enemy in the world. And at least the warrior is always surrounded by people, the sannyasin moves into his absolute aloneness. Nobody else can go with you. You have to go alone because the truth of your being can be experienced only by you and by nobody else -- hence courage is needed.
Be courageous and move into the innermost core of your being and you will be rewarded tremendously.
Osho's Commentary
[He was listed as being a drummer from Denmark and sported the name of Pygge. But you pronounce it Pooga.
I have given thousands of names to people, Osho began, but 'Pygge' is rare!]
In the first place it means nothing. In the second place it is a word of endearment used for addressing small children. And I quote Jesus often, "Unless you are like small children you will not enter into my kingdom of god."
One has to be an innocent as a child, then and only then do the doors open. The doors of the divine remain closed for the knowledgeable people; for pandits, scholars, priests, the doors are completely closed. They already know, they don't need anything more. They have repressed their ignorance by accumulating borrowed knowledge. They have lost the quality of wonder, which is the most essential thing to know god.
The child has tremendous wonder. His heart is continuously feeling the mysterious, the miraculous. His eyes are full of awe -- at small things: pebbles on the seashore, seashells... he goes on accumulating them as if he has found diamonds. And he is intrigued by such small things -- a butterfly, just a flower, an ordinary flower, and he is enchanted, almost hypnotised.
These are the qualities which help you to open to god, to bliss, to truth, to the mystery of existence. My sannyasins have to be just like small children.
[Prayer is blissfulness Osho told us.]
To be cheerful is to be religious, to be sad is to be irreligious. Hence the so-called saints in my evaluation are not saints at all. They look so sad, so dull, so dead -- how can they be experiencing god? If the experience of god brings such sadness then it is not worth experiencing. If the experience of god makes people so dull, with such long faces, then it is better to avoid god. Even if by chance you meet him, run away!
That is not my vision of god. It must be the devil masquerading as god before these saints; he must have deceived these people. God can only mean celebration, god can only mean festivity. God to me is nothing but the festive dimension. So be blissful and let blissfulness be your prayer.
[Prayer is blissfulness... and bliss is god, he went on to say.]
In fact nobody needs god, everybody needs bliss. Nobody is searching for god, everybody is searching bliss. Even the people who say they are seeking and searching god, if you ask them why, for what, immediately you will see their motive. They will say because without knowing god one cannot be blissful. So really they are not seeking god but blissfulness. They have been told for centuries that bliss is possible only when you attain to god, hence they are seeking god. But their goal is bliss.
If the road goes via god they have to go via god, otherwise they would by-pass him. I have never seen a single person who is really interested in god. In fact nobody can really be interested in god. It is a very arbitrary word. Bliss is something natural, it is intrinsic. Our very heart beats for it, our very life longs for it. Hence I say bliss is god. God is another name for bliss and nothing else. And if you want to find bliss or god, start by being blissful.
In the beginning it may not be so much, but brick by brick you can make the whole temple.
The story about Daniel is very beautiful. Mind you, I call it a story, not history, because to me parables, stories, are far more significant than history. History records only facts; parables record truths.
Facts are ordinary. This is a parable; it cannot be historical.
Daniel was cast into a den of lions for refusing to deny his faith, but he emerged unharmed. Now, I don't believe that lions are so religious or so vegetarian. Even in old days they were the same people -- a little worse maybe...
Just the other day I was reading about a woman who applied for a job in a circus. The manager told her that her work was to go into the cage of the lion and just to sit by the side of the lion hugging him and kissing him. The woman started trembling and she said "I don't want this job." The manager said "Don't be worried. The lion has been brought up only on milk, so there is no need to worry." the woman said "I was also brought up on milk but now I am non-vegetarian. So it does not prove anything -- that he has been brought up on milk -- he may turn non-vegetarian any day, any moment."
But the parable that Daniel came out of the den of lions unharmed is beautiful. It says only one thing, that love for truth is greater than life itself, that one can sacrifice one's life for truth, but not vice versa.
It also says that although man has evolved so much still the basic instincts in man remain the same. Still people of trust are bound to suffer like Daniel, because society lives on untruths and it cannot tolerate a man of truth.
Secondly, it says that the man of truth need not be afraid; he cannot be harmed by anything, not even by lions, because the man of truth knows something which is eternal in him, indestructible. Even death cannot take it away.
My own feeling is that if it is really a historical fact that Daniel was thrown into the den of lions he must have been killed but not harmed. He must have died blissfully, joyously, ecstatically, because he was dying for truth.
To live for lies is worthless, to die for truth is one of the greatest blessings in life.
[The inner trek consists of three steps, Osho told Hannelore.]
The journey begins in love and ends in light or in enlightenment and the bridge is prayer. The whole pilgrimage from ignorance to wisdom is nothing but a pilgrimage of prayer.
Prayer means "I am so small that nothing is possible through me unless the whole helps me." Prayer is a surrender of the ego to the whole -- surrender not in despair but in deep understanding. How can the small wave go against the ocean? -- the very effort is absurd. But that's what the whole of humanity goes on doing. We are all small waves in the vast ocean of consciousness. Call that ocean of consciousness god, truth, enlightenment, nirvana, tao, dhamma -- they all mean the same thing, that we are part of an infinite ocean. But we are very small waves -- we cannot have our own will and we cannot have our own destiny. The very desire to have our own will and to achieve something out of our own desires is the whole cause of misery.
Prayer means that in understanding the futility of human will, one surrenders to the divine will. One says "Thy will be done, thy kingdom come."
It is possible only if there is great love for existence. Hence I say the journey begins in love and ends in enlightenment. And the middle of the journey consists only of prayer, of deep let-go.
How long will you be here?
I'm leaving in one week.
Then come back again for a longer period. This is not like a German. Next time come like a German!
[But before even the first step is taken you need some provisions. Trust is a must, he told Prem Martyn.]
Love is possible only for those few fortunate people who have the capacity to trust. People live in doubts; not in one, but in millions of doubts. And it is because of their doubts they cannot love, they cannot trust, they cannot be loyal, they cannot be committed, they cannot get involved in anything totally. But then they miss their whole life. And life is a great opportunity because here we can discover god, and god can only be discovered here.
That's why in the East we have this idea, the very significant idea, that unless you realize god you will have to be sent back to life again and again. The Judaic religions -- Mohammedanism, Christianity, and Judaism -- have missed this beautiful idea; they believe only in one life. Because of the idea of one life they have missed many things.
First, they have created a great hurry in people -- that's why the West is in so much of a hurry. The roots go deep into the religions that have dominated the western mind. If there is only one life, only this life and then you will be in the grave, who knows for how long... who knows when the last Judgement Day will come? For almost an eternity you will be in the grave, so make as much as you can make of your small life -- it is not much.
If you are going to live sixty years, twenty years will be wasted in sleep. Of the remaining forty years, for twenty years you will be working as a clerk or as a teacher or as a D.T. collector or as an engineer. There are thousands of kinds of stupid professions in which one can waste one's life.
For the last twenty years you will be rushing from the office to the home and from the home to the office, from this woman to that woman, from that woman to another woman, looking at that idiot box, television, watching a movie -- the same story, the same triangle, the same love affair repeated again and again. And then one needs time to shave and time to wash and clean and take a bath and go to church and listen to some religious discourse, some Pollack pope! And in only sixty years of life!
Naturally, one goes into a panic, and goes fast, so one cannot do anything totally; one is always running, rushing, and one is always thinking of how to do things more speedily.
The East has a totally different idea. The East says don't be so worried -- you cannot get rid of life so easily. You will be sent back. Life is a school; unless you learn the lesson you will be sent back again and again.
I have heard about a classical musician who was doing his first public performance. Now, classical music in India is a difficult phenomenon, very difficult; it needs tremendous effort, almost eight hours, ten hours per day practise and then too, to become a master of it is a rare phenomenon, very rare. The man had worked hard, particularly for this performance, and then he started.
He played one melody and the whole audience shouted "Once more!", so he played it again and they shouted "Once more!", so he played it again and they shouted "Once more!"
So he said "Sirs, I have to play something else too."
Then one man stood up; he said, "Unless you play it rightly... we are going to say 'Once more, once more.' There is the whole night, we are here, you are here; you have to play it right!"
So one has to come into life again and again. If one misses the opportunity god says "Once more, go back -- see you again!" But there is every possibility to realize the potential. And that's what sannyas is all about, the whole science of realizing the potential of your being.
How long will you be here?
I don't know.
Be here as long as possible. See you again!
[Meditation needs your love, your whole love and nothing but your love. Osho pointed out that we dissipate our love energy.]
People love many kinds of things. There are lovers of money, lovers of power, lovers of fame -- All kinds of things have been turned into objects of love. But my whole concern is that all your love should become concentrated only on one thing and that is meditation.
Unless we pour our whole energy into meditation it only remains a dream, it never becomes a reality. Meditation needs our totality. You cannot do it partially; you cannot do it only once in a while, for one hour every day or for fifteen minutes in the morning and fifteen minutes in the evening. I am not talking about the transcendental meditation type of thing. Those things are only meant for fools. Who would not like to enjoy both worlds if it is so easy, if just by sitting for fifteen minutes in the morning and fifteen minutes in the evening with closed eyes, repeating some stupid mantra: Coca Cola, coca-cola... If you can attain the kingdom of god it is worth attaining!
And people are doing transcendental meditations in all kinds of places -- in bathrooms, sitting on their toilets because they can find no other place in the home. At least in the bathroom you are left alone for ten minutes, nobody will disturb you. It may give you a certain consolation, a certain happiness that you are doing something for the other world too. But it cannot transform you.
Transformation is possible only when the twenty-four hours of your day become a constant meditation, a continuum. So whatsoever you are doing -- walking you are meditating, eating you are meditating, listening, talking you are meditating... because to me meditation simply means awareness, not repeating a mantra. Because how can you repeat a mantra? -- if you are doing some work and you repeat a mantra your work will be disturbed. If you are doing something significant then it can be dangerous to you; you will be divided.
By meditation I simply mean an awareness. Whatsoever one is doing one is fully aware of each act -- physical, mental, emotional. Walking, you are aware of walking, running, you are aware of running, swimming you are aware of swimming. Eating, you are not simply stuffing yourself unconsciously and thinking of thousands of other things; you are simply eating and doing nothing else at that moment, totally in the act, alert aware. And then meditation becomes a twenty-four-hour-a-day phenomenon.
One day a miracle happens, and that miracle is that one can sleep with a meditative awareness. The body sleeps but somewhere deep down a current of awareness continues; you are aware that you are asleep. A very paradoxical phenomenon, but it happens. On that day meditation has come to its completion, is known in its entirety. Unless that happens something is still missing.
That is the ultimate goal for the sannyasin, to achieve a state of meditation which cannot be lost even while you are asleep. Only then can a person die meditatively. If you cannot sleep meditatively, how can you die meditatively? And the man who dies meditatively is never born again. He becomes part of the eternal cosmos, he lives in eternity, in god. He is never thrown back again into the bodily imprisonment.
[Then he talked about love and meditation, about how people have tended to divide themselves into two schools of thought -- the worldly and the other-worldly, the lovers and the meditators. Osho's idea is to create a synthesis of the two. But in his effort to do so he is misunderstood and put down by both parties.]
I will be condemned by religious people because I will be going against their whole tradition -- Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, Buddhist, Jaina -- all religious religions, because I am introducing love into the life of the sannyasin. And I will be opposed by the materialist, by the worldly, because they will be saying that I am introducing meditation into people's lives -- which can become a danger to their ordinary world, to their ordinary concerns. And that's actually happening.
I may be the only person in the whole history who is condemned by all unanimously. It is a rare privilege. But this is what I want to do and those who want to be with me have to be capable of both, while alone meditate, while with others love.
Your name, Premraj, will mean kingdom of love. But the kingdom can be total only when you are capable of both, because love will make available to you only half of the kingdom -- the outside, the peripheral -- and meditation will make you the master of the other half, the more substantial, the inner.
If the two words are fulfilled in life nothing else is needed.
[His name, Dhyanraj, means kingdom of meditation -- which is another way of saying kingdom of god, Osho explained.]
To be in meditation is to be in god, to be silent is all that is needed. Once the noisy mind stops suddenly you become aware that all that you have been seeking all along is already within you; you contain the treasure.
Jesus says the kingdom of god is within you... But we are running everywhere else. We are going everywhere else except in. Meditation is simply a strategy to turn your outgoing consciousness into an ingoing consciousness. It is a way of turning in. All my efforts here are to turn you on and to turn you in.
[Live in the mind and you inhabit a madhouse Osho told his newest swami.]
The mind goes on driving you crazy for the simple reason that it has many contradictory desires. In fact each desire in the mind is always balanced by its opposite.
Mind lives in a constant struggle, conflict. For example you want to be with someone, you love someone, and at the same time you want to have your own space, you want to be alone. The desires are of the same strength, so it is not possible that one will ever be able to win over the other. All that we can manage is sometimes to have one on top, sometimes the other on top, but whatsoever the case you will be miserable. If you are with the loved one, the desire to be alone is frustrated; if you are alone the desire to be with the loved one is frustrated. You are in misery any way. Mind leaves no choice for you.
One wants to be famous and when one is famous one wants to be anonymous, because the moment you are famous you lose all your privacy. You cannot even walk silently by the road.
Ask the public figures how much they feel it, the misery of always being in the public eye. And they have achieved it through their whole life's effort.
It happened in Voltaire's life -- he became so famous... He had tried to be his whole life, ultimately he succeeded. That is one of the greatest things to understand: before you start trying something, remember, you may succeed! (laughter) He worked hard for his whole life and then he succeeded. And then he started feeling that he had lost all his privacy. He could not sit under a tree alone even for a few moments, he could not go for a morning walk, he could not go to the pub without being noticed and reported about in the newspapers. Wherever he went people followed him.
His fame became such that the police had to take him home from the railway station if he had come from somewhere, and from the home to the railway station -- because in those days there was a superstition in France that if you could get a little piece of the clothes of a very famous man it helped you to succeed in becoming famous.
So it happened many times that his clothes would be torn; he would come home almost naked. Then he started praying to god, "I want to be left alone, I don't want this face. What has it given to me? -- it is driving me crazy! He would get scratched, bruised, because the mob would be mad for his clothes.
And finally his prayer succeeded again; people forgot all about him. For ten years more he went on living and people came to know that he had still been alive when he died. And only four persons followed him to the cemetery; not really four, only three, because the fourth was his dog.
And in the last moments of his life he was suffering from privacy, from being nobody. He was hankering for the crowd but nobody even came to see him. For his whole life he suffered. Sometimes he suffered because he was nobody, sometimes because he had become somebody, but the suffering continued. And this is so with the mind.
But there is a totally different way of life: living out of the mind; not in the mind but beyond the mind. That's what meditation helps you to do. It helps you to transcend mind, then you are the master, then your awareness is such that mind cannot control you.
Once mind has no control over you all conflict ceases, all dualism disappears, there is great peace, and out of that peace, millions of flowers.
[Meditation is deserting the mind... and mining the desert of aloneness, Osho went on to say to the next sannyasin.]
... only you are in your absolute simplicity, just a pure being, just a moment of sheer existence uncontaminated by anything, unpolluted by anything.
This is the greatest experience a man is capable of because it brings him to his own truth, and that is the truth of the universe too. But for it great courage is needed.
Bernhard means as brave as a bear. One has to be really brave, really courageous, to go inwards. It is easy to be a warrior, it is far more difficult to be a sannyasin, because the warrior fights with others, the sannyasin fights with his own stupidity -- and that is the greatest enemy in the world. And at least the warrior is always surrounded by people, the sannyasin moves into his absolute aloneness. Nobody else can go with you. You have to go alone because the truth of your being can be experienced only by you and by nobody else -- hence courage is needed.
Be courageous and move into the innermost core of your being and you will be rewarded tremendously.