Chapter #21 The Miracle #21

Date: 1980-08-21 (pm)
Place: Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Osho's Commentary

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up.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.]

[To bee or not to bee -- to drop our limitations or remain in misery. Osho spoke first tonight to a German woman.]

Misery consists in our limitations and we impose those limitations on ourselves, otherwise there is misery at all, life is pure bliss.

One should be like a honey bee. The honey bee loves flowers but without any attachment. From one flower to another it moves. It believes in no limitations, it does not become confined to one flower. It does not destroy its love for the flowers but its love is vast; hence it is capable of collecting honey.

Man's love should also be vast, unconfined, then there is a possibility of collecting spiritual honey, great fragrance, great sweetness. Life can be immensely rich if we keep all our doors and windows open.

The only thing to be remembered by my sannyasins is: don't try ever to possess anybody and don't allow anybody to possess you. Respect freedom above all -- even above god, above truth, above love, above everything -- because it is through freedom that everything else becomes possible. God, truth, love, bliss -- everything becomes possible through freedom. The spirit of freedom is the spirit of sannyas.

[A blissless life is a listless life was the message for Vito, a student from Italy.]

Bliss is life. Those who have not tasted of bliss are dead, they only vegetate. Their life is not worth calling life. They are not likely. There is nothing for them to live for. They simply drag themselves from the cradle to the grave. It is with reluctance that they go through life -- all the way resisting, all the way grumbling, complaining -- and the reason is: they do not know that there is a possibility of great bliss in life. They do not know their own flowers, they remain seeds.

My effort here is to create a garden where your seeds can be helped to reach to the ultimate expression of being flowers. This is what sannyas is all about: creating more and more opportunities for you to be blissful because that's what makes you more and more lively.

When one knows the uttermost in bliss one has known god, because god is nothing but the highest peak of life.

[Meditation is the door to god; he who hesitates is lost. Osho addressed a German woman, a musician, next.]

It is very unfortunate that very few people have been able to know bliss, very few people have known what it is to be a blessed one, for the simple reason that very few people have ever tried to move into meditation. Meditation is the door of god. Without it life remains a constant misery, a sadness, a despair, a frustration, a long long nightmare, an unending nightmare.

Mind cannot give you anything of blessedness; that is not mind's nature. You have to slip out of the mind -- and that's what meditation is all about.

[Astrid is a beautiful name, with a very significant meaning, Osho began, addressing a teacher from Germany. It has two meanings: one is, impulse of love, and the other is, strength of god.]

Apparently they aren't connected at all, but to me, to my way of looking at things, they are two aspects of the same coin. The impulse of love and the strength of god are not two things: the moment love arises in you god arises in you, the moment love dies in you god dies in you.

In fact all the religions have been against god because they have been against love, they have taught people a very life-negative attitude. They thought that if people can renounce their love for life then they will more easily be able to concentrate their whole energy on god. They were wrong because god and love are not two things. If you are life-negative, if you don't love life, god becomes just a word without any meaning, without any content.

[Astrid actually means just what sannyas means, Osho went on to say, and reminded Astrid that loving the creation is loving the creator. There is no other god somewhere else -- he is here. There is no other god, in some other time, he is now, Osho continued.]

Once this becomes your understanding and your experience then you are on the right path. Problems start evaporating like dewdrops in the morning sun and life becomes a thrill, an adventure, a great ecstasy.

[Meditation is a self-love affair. It needs a lot of courage, Osho warned Dhyan Gesa.]

... for the simple reason that you will be moving into a dimension where nobody can accompany you, you will be moving into your aloneness because at the deepest core of your being only you can exist; nobody else can go with you.

All relationships are on the periphery, even the greatest love affairs are always on the periphery. Relationship as such cannot be more than that; it is something outside you. You can touch the other, you can love the other, but you cannot BE the other and neither can the other be you. And we are very much afraid of aloneness, hence a courageous spirit is needed. We always want people around. We are brought up in a family -- that is one of the reasons. From the very beginning we are surrounded by people -- brothers, sisters, father, mother -- and then the school and the society, and the college and the university and the clubs.... We are always part of some crowd somewhere; we never leave even a few moments for our own selves.

Meditation begins with this, that you start leaving a little space for yourself, a few moments JUST for yourself. In the beginning it is hard but that hardness soon melts and a great transformation happens: you start enjoying those few moments so tremendously that the greatest love affair is nothing compared to it, the deepest love orgasm is nothing compared to it. And we are carrying this immense possibility within us without making it a reality.

[Sannyas is a commitment, a decision, that we will make it a reality, that we will do everything to make it a reality. In his address to Anand Dhyano Osho told us a story about his father. First he instructed Dhyano to meditate on bliss and find ways to be blissful.]

Avoid everything that makes you miserable. It is only a question of a little intelligence.

There are people who have become experts in finding causes to be miserable. They cannot be happy unless they are miserable. They know only one happiness and that is that of misery. And when such people talk about their misery you can see in their eyes, in their face, in the way they are talking about it -- everything shows -- that they are enjoying it, they are bragging about it. They must be magnifying their misery, making it look as big as possible. Now how can these people ever be blissful?

And each moment always has both alternatives; you can choose to be miserable or to be blissful. Start looking in this way: in each situation, first try to find out what will make you miserable and what will make you happy.

When I was a small child, my father, made a beautiful house. But the architect deceived him -- he was a simple man -- so the house collapsed in the first rains. We were just going to move into the house; just two or three days more and we would have been in the house and the house collapsed. My father was far away; I telegrammed him, "Come immediately -- the house has collapsed!" He never came, he never answered. He came when he was expected to come and the first thing that he told me was "You are a fool! That house is gone -- why did you waste ten rupees in giving me such a long telegram? Those ten rupees could have been saved! And thank god that the house collapsed at the right time. If it had waited just four or five then it would have killed the whole family!"

He invited the whole village for a feast. I LOVED that idea! The whole town laughed saying "This is sheer nonsense: your house has collapsed, everything is feeling miserable about it!" And he called all the people of the town -- it was a small town -- for a big feast, to thank god for helping us. Just four days more and the whole family would have died!
This is what I call choosing, in every situation, the blissful part.

One of my sisters died. I loved that sister the most and I was very miserable because of that sister's death, although I had ten other brothers and sisters. My father told me "You are unnecessarily getting disturbed about it. Thank god that you have ten brothers and sisters still alive! He could have taken all -- what can we do? Just as he has taken one he could have taken ALL. He has taken only one out of eleven. That is nothing, that much we can afford. We can give one child to god; if he needs her let him have the child. But you have ten brothers and sisters -- be happy that ten are still alive, rather than being unhappy for the one who has died."

This has to be the approach of every religious person, then your life naturally becomes a blessed phenomenon.

Meditate on bliss and go on finding the blissful part of every situation. Soon you will have so many flowers that you will be surprised it is the same life and where has all the sadness and all the despair gone?

One can create hell, one can create heaven -- it is our own decision, it is our own responsibility.

[All the good things in life -- in fact life itself -- is a gift of god. Osho began in his talk to Prasado.]

So the problem isn't how to seek them but how to receive them. Take bliss, or receive bliss, for example:

It is not somewhere else far away in Tibet, in the Himalayas. It is not a question of travelling to it, the simple question is how to become more receptive. The gift goes on coming but finds our doors closed. The sun rises but we go on sitting in darkness because our eyes are closed. The gift is there -- it is only a question of opening our eyes and all is light. But by keeping our eyes closed we remain in darkness.

I don't teach my people how to achieve bliss; I only teach that it is already there -- just open up. Don't remain closed to life and existence, become more vulnerable. That's all there is to religion -- vulnerability, openness, trust. No need to be afraid of life, become available to it in all possible ways and you will be surprised that not even for a single moment was there any need to be miserable, one could have been blissful all along.

I don't say that bliss is a goal. It is not a goal -- it is already the case. We have forgotten the language, forgotten how to read it, how to decipher it, how to decode it. And that's what the whole discipline of sannyas is, learning to remember a forgotten language.

Each child knows how to be open, that's why all children are so beautiful and so blissful. Look into their eyes -- so silent -- and look at their joy -- so overflowing. Each child knows how to be blissful but forgets sooner or later. He forgets or we make him forget.

It can be relearned. And this is going to be your work: relearn the art, remember the art of opening up. And nothing is missing, nothing is imperfect -- this is the most perfect world that can be.

[Love's eyes see god's graffiti inscribed in stone and scrawled across skies. Osho next addressed Pujari, a chauffeur from France.]

Love is prayer, love is worship, love is religion -- all else is bullshit! (laughter) All else is just invented by the crafty priests to exploit humanity, otherwise it is a very simple phenomenon. The priest is not needed at all, these great rituals in churches and temples are not needed at all, but millions of people are exploiting others.

There is a certain need in man to seek and search for the truth. Because of that longing man is available for exploitation; otherwise religion is a very simple phenomenon, no complexity.

Make yourself a lover of existence in all its manifestations, then you are neither a Hindu, nor a Christian nor a Mohammedan. Then you will find sermons in stones. You will be surprised that there is really no need to look into the religious scriptures because the whole universe is the real scripture. Everywhere there is god's signature on it and all those so-called religious scriptures are man-made.

[And he spoke on the holiness of humour again tonight. He began:]

Bliss is the path. Be cheerful -- that is my definition of being religious. To be sad is to be a sinner, to be cheerful is to be a saint. If you can laugh wholeheartedly your life starts becoming holy.

A wholehearted laugh is something unique. Nothing can make your life more holy than a wholehearted laugh. And when you laugh, let all the cells of your body laugh with you. From the head to the toe let the laughter spread. Let it reach to the deepest, innermost recess of your being. And you will be surprised that one comes closer to god more easily through laughter than through prayer. Prayer is something formal, superficial. Love is not formal, love is of the heart.

Bliss has to be your path -- that is the path of all of my sannyasins. Laugh all along the way.

In the old days the saints believed that the whole journey had to be sad and that when finally, at the very end, you reached the doors of god there would be joy. Bliss would be at the end but the journey had to be very sad, very serious. It is absolutely illogical.

If a person has been sad and serious for millions of lives, even if he finds god he will not be able to laugh, he would have completely forgotten how to.

My own feeling is that if your so-called saints ever enter paradise... I don't think that they ever do, but suppose, if they ever enter paradise they will not be able to sing hallelujah, they will not be able to dance. Even if harps are supplied to them...

But my sannyasins, even in hell, will make a celebration of it. If we reach hell we are going to initiate the devil! We are going to turn hell orange!

[Listen rightly and you hear god plop in rain drops... Osho turned to the last sannyasin and explained the meaning of Prem Simone.]

Everybody, except a few totally deaf people, thinks he is capable of hearing. Everybody, except those few who are blind thinks he is capable of seeing. But this is not true.

Jesus says again and again to his disciples, "If you can hear, hear, if you can see, see." Certainly he is not always talking to the blind and to the deaf; he is talking to people such as we are.

Buddha used to start his sermon by telling the people how to listen. J. Krishnamurti emphasises very much that one should prepare oneself for the great art of listening, right-listening. Mahavira has gone a step further than all these people -- Jesus, Buddha, Krishnamurti. He says there are only two ways to reach the truth: one is to hear rightly and the second is to strive rightly.

The first is enough, then there is no need to strive for truth. If you are capable of hearing rightly then there is no need to strive. The second is only for those who cannot hear; then they have to strive, then they have to struggle.

Right listening means listening with deep love and sympathy. One can listen in an antagonistic way, one can listen with a priori conclusions, one can listen with all the prejudices, with all the conditionings of the mind -- then it is not right listening. But love is capable of putting all aside, love is capable Or listening in silence, in total silence. And then anything can trigger the process of enlightenment.

It is not only a question of listening rightly to the master; that is only one of the aspects of it. This sound of rain falling on the roof.... If one can listen rightly -- pure listening with no idea, with no desire to interpret, with no effort to understand -- then this is enough. Then certainly you will find it is not rain falling on the roof, it is god himself.

Then the wind passing through the pine trees is god passing through the pine trees, and the sound of running water, then anything, it is not a question of what you listen to, the basic question is how you listen. One should listen with no-mind, then the master can help immediately. Much time is wasted only because people are so full of knowledge. They already believe in many things, they have already accumulated much information, they have already given superstitions. They are all borrowed, nothing is their own, but they brag as if all this knowledge is their own. It helps the ego, it puffs up the ego. So people are always listening through great barriers and they go on hearing whatsoever THEY want which is said.

But the whole art of being a sannyasin is how to listen to the master, how to be with the master in deep silence, in total love and trust. And then anything, just a small gesture, just a look of the master is enough to transplant you into a totally different world.

Let your name become a reality. Listen through love and then truth is not far away.

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