[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up.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.]
[First to receive sannyas tonight was Gery, a physical education teacher from Holland. Anand means bliss. Gery means brave and loyal, Osho began, and set the tears rolling down Gery's cheeks.]
Bliss needs both qualities, they are absolute requirements: one has to be brave and one has to be loyal.
Misery exists in the world because people don't have any of the qualities which are basic requirements for bliss to happen. Everybody seeks bliss and almost everybody fails. Millions of people go through life just hoping that something will happen, but the ultimate things that comes to their hands is only frustration, failure. And it is not only so with those who have failed, it is also so with those who seem to have succeeded.
Even Alexander the Great died with a deep sorrow seeing that his whole life had been a wastage although he conquered the world. But what can you do with the world if you have not conquered yourself?
Albert Einstein died in deep frustration although he came to know the secret of matter, the very heart of matter. But what can you do with it if you don't know even your own heart?
Unless one knows oneself and the secret of one's being, life remains miserable. But to know one's own secret, a few basic requirements are needed. The first is courage.
We are born in a society, in a family, and automatically the family, the society, the state, the church, go on giving century-old stupidities, superstitions, they condition every child And because they are all miserable and they have lived in misery, they condition the child to be miserable.
It is something to be understood -- because every parent wants the child to be happy. Still every parent creates difficulties in being happy. That is bound to happen because the parents wish, intend, everything good for the child, but because they themselves have lived in misery they can only impart what they have known. They will give all the conditions to the child in which he will simply repeat the whole story again.
Very few people in this world live their own lives; others only repeat others' lives. And to live one's life is what sannyas is all about. It needs courage; you need such courage that you can put aside all that has been imposed upon you -- Christianity, Hinduism, Mohammedanism. One has to put aside all without any discrimination. It is not a question of keeping the right thing, and putting aside the wrong things. Who is going to decide?
You are not in a state of consciousness where you can know what is right and what is wrong. If you decide what is right, what is wrong, you'll be deciding according to the same conditions which have to be put aside. This is a basic dilemma.
So my suggestion to my people is to put everything aside. Don't be bothered with discrimination, don't choose -- because who will choose and how will you choose? It will be the same mind choosing.
To put everything aside great courage is needed. It is jumping out of your mind, it is getting rid of the whole past. And I am not saying all is wrong in it, but when you have put everything aside and you start from ABC, as if you are born anew, then slowly slowly you will be able to see what is right and what is wrong. And then of course you will find much that is beautiful in the Koran and the Gita and the Bible. But only a meditator can find it.
To put everything aside needs tremendous courage. It is easy to renounce the family, it is easy to renounce wealth, it is easy to renounce society and escape to the Himalayas; the most difficult renunciation is of the mind.
The people who renounce society, wealth, family, and go into the caves or into the monasteries carry their minds within themselves -- and that was the real problem. The world is not the problem, you are the problem. The mind is the problem and the mind will be with you.
I have come across Jaina monks who have renounced everything, even clothes -- naked they live -- but they are still Jainas. And when I say to them, "This is something! If you have renounced society why have you not renounced the knowledge that society, the same society, gave you? If you have renounced the family why have you not renounced all the conditionings that the same family imposed upon you? Why are you still a Jaina? That means nothing has been renounced; deep down you are the same person.
The Christian becomes a monk, he leaves the home and goes to the monastery; somebody becomes a Buddhist, somebody takes the path of a Hindu or a Mohammedan -- but they remain the same people.
By changing outer circumstances nothing is changed; the change has to happen inside. And the first step is to put the mind aside. Once you put the mind aside, once you gather enough courage to put the mind aside, your heart starts speaking for the first time. And the voice of the heart is trust, is love. It knows no doubt. The heart knows only loyalty, it knows only surrender: surrender to the whole, surrender to the universe, surrender to existence itself.
When these two things are fulfilled bliss is a natural, spontaneous phenomenon. You become full of bliss, overflowing with it. And unless this happens one can never feel at home, one can never feel at ease. One can never know what god is because god is another name for bliss.
Bliss is a better name because there is less controversy about bliss. The atheist, the theist, both agree that bliss is the goal. But the moment you know bliss you know god too; they are the same phenomenon, described by different names.
[It seems a paradox but Osho says only the person who can be alone can be happy in relationship. He explained the whys and hows of it to Dhyan Smadar from Israel.]
Love is possible only if you become centered in your being, rooted, grounded; otherwise you cannot love. You can dream about love. In fact people who talk about love are always talking as if love is something that you get from others. They are always complaining that "My wife does not love me," that "My husband does not love me," that "My father does not love me," that "My children do not love me." Everybody all over the world is complaining. The complaint is that nobody loves them. Nobody ever thinks that the basic question is not whether others love you or not. The basic question is, do you love?
Others can love only as a response. Others are just like mirrors. If you bring an ugly face to the mirror, what can the mirror do? If a monkey looks into a mirror, then a buddha cannot look out of the mirror. It is not the mirror's fault! But when a buddha looks into the mirror, of course there is a buddha in the mirror too.
The world is full of hatred, violence, anger, and completely lacks love, for the simple reason that we have not gone into the heart of the matter. The heart of the matter is that only a meditator can be a lover. Why do I say that? Because a meditator knows how to be blissful alone. And one who knows how to be blissful alone can be blissful with anybody. If he can be blissful alone then there is no problem: he can be blissful with his wife, with his children, with his parents, with his friends. He has solved the problem by being a meditator.
Ordinarily people are not happy when they are alone. They feel very empty, they feel something is missing. They can't live alone for long periods; even an hour looks like many hours. They escape into a relationship. The relationship is just an escape from oneself. It is not a true relationship, it is negative: a man falls in love with a woman just to avoid his loneliness, a woman falls in love with a man just to avoid her loneliness. Their relationship is negative, and out of a negative relationship what can you expect? Misery, quarrelling, nagging, fighting, jealousy, possessiveness, domination -- all kinds of ugly things.
The positive relationship is a totally different one. You are not trying to escape from yourself. You love to be yourself, you love your aloneness, you rejoice in it, and whenever you find time you move into it. But in aloneness so much bliss is created that you have to share it. It becomes a burden, like a cloud full of rainwater -- it has to shower. It doesn't matter whether the earth needs it or not, it does not matter whether the trees are receptive or not; it has to shower, it has to unburden itself.
Remember, the greatest burden in life is experienced when you are overflowing with bliss. Everything else can be carried, but bliss has to be shared. It is the greatest burden -- sweet, but a mountainous burden. You cannot carry it alone, you need friends to share it with. Then a relationship is positive. Then you don't fall in love, you rise in love. Then a man rises in love with a woman.
I don't care much about language. It may be wrong language, but I know that it is existentially true: when one shares one's bliss, one rises in love. And if the woman is also a meditator, then there is a miracle. Then both help each other to rise higher and higher and higher. And there is no limit to it -- even the sky is not the limit!
And it is a totally different kind of relationship; I call it relatedness, not relationship. Nothing dead and static, but something flowing, something alive and dynamic. And then great songs arise.
When two people are sharing their bliss, what else can there be except songs? What else can there be except flowers? And there is another meaning of Smadar -- it is really a beautiful word. The second meaning is, blossom of grapes.
"Song of love" and "blossom of grapes"... flowers, songs, stars. But first one has to learn how to be blissful alone, then one can be blissful with others. If you will be unhappy alone you will be more unhappy in your togetherness, because two unhappy persons joining together in a relationship not only double the misery, they multiply it.
And the same is true about bliss. Two blissful persons coming closer don't double the bliss, they multiply it. And this is my whole teaching here: First meditate, and secondly, love. "How long will you be here?" "I don't know." "Be here forever!" Osho beams. "Good."
[Meditation is essentially a state of stillness, just like a calm sea or a lake, Osho told Dhyan Kaye.]
Truth is always there, we are surrounded by it, but we are so perturbed inside that we cannot reflect it. The full-moon is there, the stars are there, but disturbed, there are so many waves, that it cannot reflect the full-moon. It cannot rejoice in the full-moon, it cannot rejoice in the stars. It remains blind to the sky which is just there. All that is needed is that the lake should become a little silent.
My whole effort here is to help you to make a silent lake of your consciousness. And it is possible. If it can happen to me, it can happen to you. I don't claim any extraordinariness.
Religions have done a great harm to humanity by claiming extraordinariness for their founders -- because if Jesus is the son of god, then of course, he can be silent. But we are ordinary human beings; how can we attain to that height? That is his special privilege. All that we can do is worship him. We can be Christians, we cannot be Christs. That is the conclusion of the whole of human history.
Krishna is god's incarnation, so perhaps he can make it possible to be a no-mind. But how can we make it? -- we are just ordinary mortals, we are not incarnations of god.
These foolish ideas, that their founder is special, have been promulgated by all religions, propagated by all theologies. Once you make the founder of a religion special then he becomes absolutely useless and disconnected from humanity.
I am a very ordinary person, just like you no son of god, no incarnation of god -- all that is bullshit. I know only one thing, that it has happened to me, it can happen to you. It can happen to everybody -- just a little effort is needed, nothing else. No special privilege of birth, just a little effort, a little intelligence which is provided to everybody. And the moment you attain to inner silence, a radical change happens.
Your name, Kaye, is of great importance. It simply means I rejoice. If you can attain to silence you will be fulfilling the meaning of your name. Then you can say "I rejoice!"
Jesus says again and again to his disciples, "Rejoice, rejoice, I say to you, rejoice!" But I don't think that his disciples understood him; I don't think that they were able to rejoice. In fact the Christian church says that Christ never laughed. That is simply ridiculous, saying that about a man like Jesus who continuously says to people "Rejoice!", and who rejoices in every small thing; who rejoices in eating, in drinking, who rejoices in meeting people, who rejoices in ordinary humanity -- the carpenters, the farmers, the gardeners, even the gamblers, the prostitutes, even the tax collectors. He rejoices in everybody! He was a feast, a festival -- and for two thousand years these fools have been telling the world that he never laughed!
You will not see a single picture of Christ laughing, or even smiling -- laughter is far away. They have created the image of Christ so miserable, so sad, that sometimes I wonder whether they are more interested in Christ or in the cross.
The cross does not laugh, that is true. And my feeling is that it is wrong to call these people Christians, to call this religion Christianity. It would be better to call it Crossianity. It is so sad -- there is no dance, no music, no love, all is serious and sombre. And this is happening in the name of a m an who was one of the men who must have rejoiced the most. Buddha never says rejoice so much, Lao Tzu never says rejoice, Zarathustra never says rejoice; it is only Jesus who says it again and again.
I love him for the simple fact that he loved ordinary humanity, that he lived like an ordinary human being and that his whole effort was to make people cheerful, blissful. But he failed in his mission for the simple reason that in the Jewish tradition there was no place for meditation.
So he told people to rejoice, to smile, but he could not manage to create the foundation for it Meditation is almost a foreign concept to the Judaic tradition, it knows nothing of it.
Prayer is okay. Prayer is very ordinary compared to meditation. In prayer you are not silent, you are still talking, if not to your husband then to your god -- the same nagging. Sometimes you nag your husband and sometimes you nag your god. What is prayer? -- nagging! "Do this, do that! look how miserable I am! you don't care for me, love me more, give me more..."
It is a nagging, it is nothing very important. It is again talk, again chattering, again words, again language.
Meditation means language disappears, words disappear, there is nothing to say; one is simply silent. And in that silence a great rejoicing arises. In that silence is song, in that silence is dance and in that silence is god.
[The only temple that isn't man-made is the one god chooses to reside in, Osho told Prem Mandir. And the name of that temple is love.]
The Bible says god made man in his own image, but the truth is that all the images of god are made by man in his own image. The Chinese god looks like a Chinese and the Negro god looks like a Negro -- with the same kind of hair, with the same colour, with the same type of lips the Chinese god has the same kind of hair, just a few hairs sticking out from his beard -- you can count them easily -- the same kind of nose, the eyes. The Hindu has his god, he looks like a Hindu.
If donkeys were religious they would make a god in the image of donkeys -- obviously! They would not make a god in the image of man. What has man done for them? -- tortured them in every possible way. They would make their devil look like man. Their god would be a donkey just like themselves. It is a projection.
All our temples, all our churches and mosques, are our projections. If you want to see good architecture go and see them, if you want to see good sculpture go and see them, but don't think that these are the places where you will find god.
God can be found only in the temple of love, and that temple exists within your heart. God has created it already, it is a given fact -- you just have to discover it within yourself. And the moment you have discovered your heart you have found the key that unlocks all the doors, the master key that unlocks all the doors of the divine.
Love unconditionally, love non-possessively, love non-demandingly; simply love for the sheer joy of love. And you will be surprised that as your love deepens, your insight into god deepens. Ultimately love becomes god.
Jesus says god is love; I say love is god. Jesus still makes god more important than love; I make love more important than god.
If somebody says to me "I don't believe in god," I say "Then there is no problem,-you can still be a sannyasin. If you can love, that's enough." Jesus would not have been able to say that; if you don',t believe in god then you cannot be a follower of Jesus. And asking someone to believe in god is asking something impossible. You don't know anything about god -- how can you believe in god?
But you know something about love -- just a little bit. Everybody knows something of it. Once in a while the breeze has come to everybody, once in a while the window has opened, once in a while one has experienced love.
Hence love need not be believed in, it is our experience. Of course we don't know the whole possibility and the whole potential of it. The day we know the whole possibility and the whole potential of it we will know love is god.'
[Then he pointed out to Veet Gyan the difference between knowledge and wisdom.]
Knowledge is one of the greatest barriers. Knowledge means all that you know but you know only from others, all that is borrowed. It is not your experience. If it is your experience it is not knowledge, it is wisdom. Wisdom is a bridge; knowledge is a barrier for the simple reason that it deceives you. It gives you the false idea that you know while you know not. It is like a man who is ill but believes he is healthy -- he is in great danger. It is better he knows that he is ill so that he can find a physician. But he believes that he is not ill at all -- why should he find a physician?
That is the situation of knowledgeable people. And as man has evolved more and more educational institutions, schools, colleges, universities -- now thousands of universities exist on earth -- naturally everybody is becoming more and more knowledgeable.
This is one of the causes why now it is so difficult to find a wise man like a Buddha or Lao Tzu or Jesus or Moses or Mohammed. It has become very difficult to find a man like that for the simple reason that everybody has become knowledgeable. And with the toy which is not the real thing, with the plastic flower which is not a real rose, they are satisfied.
My first work on sannyasins is to destroy their knowledge so that they can know their ignorance. Ignorance is beautiful; at least it is not borrowed from anybody, it is your own. It has a beauty; it is innocent, it is non-egoistic. And once you know you are ignorant then doors can open. Then you become humble, you become simple; you don't brag. You don't believe in the scriptures, you start enquiring for the first time. Then your enquiry is sincere, your questions are authentic.
And whenever there is a man with a sincere enquiry the answer is not very far. In fact the answer is always hidden in the question itself; all that is needed is a sincere heart to enquire. When the question is authentic... Our questions also are not authentic, they come out of borrowed knowledge.
For example if a Christian comes he will ask a question that no Hindu is ever going to ask. If a Hindu comes he will ask a question that no Mohammedan is ever going to ask. A Mohammedan asks a question which no Buddhist would ever ask.
I have known all these people -- they come with different questions. I was puzzled, puzzled because if the question is real then it can't be that a Christian will not ask something and only a Hindu will ask it. If the question is real it is everybody's question. But their questions are also false.
The Christian can ask a question about the trinity -- god the father, the holy ghost, god the son. He can ask "Who is this holy ghost?" Now no Hindu will ever ask that. This is not a real question. The knowledge is borrowed; out of that borrowed knowledge the question has arisen.
Once you put aside your knowledge your unreal questions will be gone. And you will be surprised: real questions are not many. In fact the real question is only one: Who am I? -- that is neither Hindu nor Mohammedan nor Christian. It is human, it is existential. And the moment all knowledge is dropped and you know nothing and the question arises "Who am I?"... in the very question the answer is hidden.
One of the greatest enlightened men of this age, Maharshi Ramana, used to say to his disciples that if you meditate over this single question, "Who am I?", that is enough -- you will find the answer. No need to do anything else; just sit silently and ponder over this question "Who am I?" And don't accept any borrowed answers, go on rejecting them: "This is not my answer. This is the Bible, this is the Koran, this is the Upanishad, this is the Gita -- this is not my answer." Eliminate all others! answers and then you will be surprised: the day your question is pure, your own, suddenly it bursts forth. The question disappears and the answer is there in the very core of the question. That is wisdom.
By going beyond knowledge one can enter into the world of wisdom. And wisdom liberates. Knowledge is a bondage, wisdom is freedom.
[Some evenings ago Osho outlined the journey of a sannyasin as being the passage from the ego to the self to the no-self. Tonight he expanded on the nature of the ego.]
The ego is a false phenomenon. It does not really exist, it is only a belief. It is a belief like the name. Each child is born without a name, each child brings a nameless reality into the world. But it would be very difficult to live namelessly. For utilitarian purposes we have to give him a name, we have to call him something -- ABC or maybe in the future when names also become scientific, then Z-700... but he will have to be called something. It is all the same; whether you call him this name or that name or a number, it doesn't matter, but something has to be given to him so that he can be addressed.
But slowly slowly he tends to forget that this is only a given thing, a label put on him from the outside. He starts believing in his name, he becomes autohypnotized by the name. If you say something against that name he will feel offended, insulted. He cannot laugh about it and say that it is nothing for him to worry about, that he doesn't have any name, it is just a word, a mere word. And you can change the word very easily.
That is the purpose of changing your name in sannyas, so that you know that it is only a utilitarian thing. You can change it as many times as you want -- it is nothing that really exists, it is not part of reality; it is a fiction. The name is for others to address you by.
But one thing more is needed: you have sometimes to address yourself. For that purpose the ego has invented -- I. Somebody can say to you, "Asmi, where are you going?" But if you are thirsty and you say "Asmi is thirsty" and you are hungry and you say, "Asmi is hungry," it will look a little awkward. If somebody asks, "Asmi, where are you going?" and you say, "Asmi is going to the marketplace," it will look a little awkward. For that purpose I is invented, so you can say, "I am thirsty." But again the problem arises: one becomes identified with the concept of I, as if I is separate from the whole universe.
We are not separate, we are not like islands. No man is an island. We are all part of the vast continent, of one universe. And the moment you know it, the moment you experience it, great benediction happens.
That's why I define sannyas as the dropping of the ego. It means dropping the idea of being separate from the whole. It is like a dewdrop slipping from the lotus leaf into the lake and becoming the lake again. The moment you slip out of the ego you become divine, you become part of godliness.
Osho's Commentary
[First to receive sannyas tonight was Gery, a physical education teacher from Holland. Anand means bliss. Gery means brave and loyal, Osho began, and set the tears rolling down Gery's cheeks.]
Bliss needs both qualities, they are absolute requirements: one has to be brave and one has to be loyal.
Misery exists in the world because people don't have any of the qualities which are basic requirements for bliss to happen. Everybody seeks bliss and almost everybody fails. Millions of people go through life just hoping that something will happen, but the ultimate things that comes to their hands is only frustration, failure. And it is not only so with those who have failed, it is also so with those who seem to have succeeded.
Even Alexander the Great died with a deep sorrow seeing that his whole life had been a wastage although he conquered the world. But what can you do with the world if you have not conquered yourself?
Albert Einstein died in deep frustration although he came to know the secret of matter, the very heart of matter. But what can you do with it if you don't know even your own heart?
Unless one knows oneself and the secret of one's being, life remains miserable. But to know one's own secret, a few basic requirements are needed. The first is courage.
We are born in a society, in a family, and automatically the family, the society, the state, the church, go on giving century-old stupidities, superstitions, they condition every child And because they are all miserable and they have lived in misery, they condition the child to be miserable.
It is something to be understood -- because every parent wants the child to be happy. Still every parent creates difficulties in being happy. That is bound to happen because the parents wish, intend, everything good for the child, but because they themselves have lived in misery they can only impart what they have known. They will give all the conditions to the child in which he will simply repeat the whole story again.
Very few people in this world live their own lives; others only repeat others' lives. And to live one's life is what sannyas is all about. It needs courage; you need such courage that you can put aside all that has been imposed upon you -- Christianity, Hinduism, Mohammedanism. One has to put aside all without any discrimination. It is not a question of keeping the right thing, and putting aside the wrong things. Who is going to decide?
You are not in a state of consciousness where you can know what is right and what is wrong. If you decide what is right, what is wrong, you'll be deciding according to the same conditions which have to be put aside. This is a basic dilemma.
So my suggestion to my people is to put everything aside. Don't be bothered with discrimination, don't choose -- because who will choose and how will you choose? It will be the same mind choosing.
To put everything aside great courage is needed. It is jumping out of your mind, it is getting rid of the whole past. And I am not saying all is wrong in it, but when you have put everything aside and you start from ABC, as if you are born anew, then slowly slowly you will be able to see what is right and what is wrong. And then of course you will find much that is beautiful in the Koran and the Gita and the Bible. But only a meditator can find it.
To put everything aside needs tremendous courage. It is easy to renounce the family, it is easy to renounce wealth, it is easy to renounce society and escape to the Himalayas; the most difficult renunciation is of the mind.
The people who renounce society, wealth, family, and go into the caves or into the monasteries carry their minds within themselves -- and that was the real problem. The world is not the problem, you are the problem. The mind is the problem and the mind will be with you.
I have come across Jaina monks who have renounced everything, even clothes -- naked they live -- but they are still Jainas. And when I say to them, "This is something! If you have renounced society why have you not renounced the knowledge that society, the same society, gave you? If you have renounced the family why have you not renounced all the conditionings that the same family imposed upon you? Why are you still a Jaina? That means nothing has been renounced; deep down you are the same person.
The Christian becomes a monk, he leaves the home and goes to the monastery; somebody becomes a Buddhist, somebody takes the path of a Hindu or a Mohammedan -- but they remain the same people.
By changing outer circumstances nothing is changed; the change has to happen inside. And the first step is to put the mind aside. Once you put the mind aside, once you gather enough courage to put the mind aside, your heart starts speaking for the first time. And the voice of the heart is trust, is love. It knows no doubt. The heart knows only loyalty, it knows only surrender: surrender to the whole, surrender to the universe, surrender to existence itself.
When these two things are fulfilled bliss is a natural, spontaneous phenomenon. You become full of bliss, overflowing with it. And unless this happens one can never feel at home, one can never feel at ease. One can never know what god is because god is another name for bliss.
Bliss is a better name because there is less controversy about bliss. The atheist, the theist, both agree that bliss is the goal. But the moment you know bliss you know god too; they are the same phenomenon, described by different names.
[It seems a paradox but Osho says only the person who can be alone can be happy in relationship. He explained the whys and hows of it to Dhyan Smadar from Israel.]
Love is possible only if you become centered in your being, rooted, grounded; otherwise you cannot love. You can dream about love. In fact people who talk about love are always talking as if love is something that you get from others. They are always complaining that "My wife does not love me," that "My husband does not love me," that "My father does not love me," that "My children do not love me." Everybody all over the world is complaining. The complaint is that nobody loves them. Nobody ever thinks that the basic question is not whether others love you or not. The basic question is, do you love?
Others can love only as a response. Others are just like mirrors. If you bring an ugly face to the mirror, what can the mirror do? If a monkey looks into a mirror, then a buddha cannot look out of the mirror. It is not the mirror's fault! But when a buddha looks into the mirror, of course there is a buddha in the mirror too.
The world is full of hatred, violence, anger, and completely lacks love, for the simple reason that we have not gone into the heart of the matter. The heart of the matter is that only a meditator can be a lover. Why do I say that? Because a meditator knows how to be blissful alone. And one who knows how to be blissful alone can be blissful with anybody. If he can be blissful alone then there is no problem: he can be blissful with his wife, with his children, with his parents, with his friends. He has solved the problem by being a meditator.
Ordinarily people are not happy when they are alone. They feel very empty, they feel something is missing. They can't live alone for long periods; even an hour looks like many hours. They escape into a relationship. The relationship is just an escape from oneself. It is not a true relationship, it is negative: a man falls in love with a woman just to avoid his loneliness, a woman falls in love with a man just to avoid her loneliness. Their relationship is negative, and out of a negative relationship what can you expect? Misery, quarrelling, nagging, fighting, jealousy, possessiveness, domination -- all kinds of ugly things.
The positive relationship is a totally different one. You are not trying to escape from yourself. You love to be yourself, you love your aloneness, you rejoice in it, and whenever you find time you move into it. But in aloneness so much bliss is created that you have to share it. It becomes a burden, like a cloud full of rainwater -- it has to shower. It doesn't matter whether the earth needs it or not, it does not matter whether the trees are receptive or not; it has to shower, it has to unburden itself.
Remember, the greatest burden in life is experienced when you are overflowing with bliss. Everything else can be carried, but bliss has to be shared. It is the greatest burden -- sweet, but a mountainous burden. You cannot carry it alone, you need friends to share it with. Then a relationship is positive. Then you don't fall in love, you rise in love. Then a man rises in love with a woman.
I don't care much about language. It may be wrong language, but I know that it is existentially true: when one shares one's bliss, one rises in love. And if the woman is also a meditator, then there is a miracle. Then both help each other to rise higher and higher and higher. And there is no limit to it -- even the sky is not the limit!
And it is a totally different kind of relationship; I call it relatedness, not relationship. Nothing dead and static, but something flowing, something alive and dynamic. And then great songs arise.
When two people are sharing their bliss, what else can there be except songs? What else can there be except flowers? And there is another meaning of Smadar -- it is really a beautiful word. The second meaning is, blossom of grapes.
"Song of love" and "blossom of grapes"... flowers, songs, stars. But first one has to learn how to be blissful alone, then one can be blissful with others. If you will be unhappy alone you will be more unhappy in your togetherness, because two unhappy persons joining together in a relationship not only double the misery, they multiply it.
And the same is true about bliss. Two blissful persons coming closer don't double the bliss, they multiply it. And this is my whole teaching here:
First meditate, and secondly, love.
"How long will you be here?"
"I don't know."
"Be here forever!" Osho beams. "Good."
[Meditation is essentially a state of stillness, just like a calm sea or a lake, Osho told Dhyan Kaye.]
Truth is always there, we are surrounded by it, but we are so perturbed inside that we cannot reflect it. The full-moon is there, the stars are there, but disturbed, there are so many waves, that it cannot reflect the full-moon. It cannot rejoice in the full-moon, it cannot rejoice in the stars. It remains blind to the sky which is just there. All that is needed is that the lake should become a little silent.
My whole effort here is to help you to make a silent lake of your consciousness. And it is possible. If it can happen to me, it can happen to you. I don't claim any extraordinariness.
Religions have done a great harm to humanity by claiming extraordinariness for their founders -- because if Jesus is the son of god, then of course, he can be silent. But we are ordinary human beings; how can we attain to that height? That is his special privilege. All that we can do is worship him. We can be Christians, we cannot be Christs. That is the conclusion of the whole of human history.
Krishna is god's incarnation, so perhaps he can make it possible to be a no-mind. But how can we make it? -- we are just ordinary mortals, we are not incarnations of god.
These foolish ideas, that their founder is special, have been promulgated by all religions, propagated by all theologies. Once you make the founder of a religion special then he becomes absolutely useless and disconnected from humanity.
I am a very ordinary person, just like you no son of god, no incarnation of god -- all that is bullshit. I know only one thing, that it has happened to me, it can happen to you. It can happen to everybody -- just a little effort is needed, nothing else. No special privilege of birth, just a little effort, a little intelligence which is provided to everybody.
And the moment you attain to inner silence, a radical change happens.
Your name, Kaye, is of great importance. It simply means I rejoice. If you can attain to silence you will be fulfilling the meaning of your name. Then you can say "I rejoice!"
Jesus says again and again to his disciples, "Rejoice, rejoice, I say to you, rejoice!" But I don't think that his disciples understood him; I don't think that they were able to rejoice. In fact the Christian church says that Christ never laughed. That is simply ridiculous, saying that about a man like Jesus who continuously says to people "Rejoice!", and who rejoices in every small thing; who rejoices in eating, in drinking, who rejoices in meeting people, who rejoices in ordinary humanity -- the carpenters, the farmers, the gardeners, even the gamblers, the prostitutes, even the tax collectors. He rejoices in everybody! He was a feast, a festival -- and for two thousand years these fools have been telling the world that he never laughed!
You will not see a single picture of Christ laughing, or even smiling -- laughter is far away. They have created the image of Christ so miserable, so sad, that sometimes I wonder whether they are more interested in Christ or in the cross.
The cross does not laugh, that is true. And my feeling is that it is wrong to call these people Christians, to call this religion Christianity. It would be better to call it Crossianity. It is so sad -- there is no dance, no music, no love, all is serious and sombre. And this is happening in the name of a m an who was one of the men who must have rejoiced the most. Buddha never says rejoice so much, Lao Tzu never says rejoice, Zarathustra never says rejoice; it is only Jesus who says it again and again.
I love him for the simple fact that he loved ordinary humanity, that he lived like an ordinary human being and that his whole effort was to make people cheerful, blissful. But he failed in his mission for the simple reason that in the Jewish tradition there was no place for meditation.
So he told people to rejoice, to smile, but he could not manage to create the foundation for it Meditation is almost a foreign concept to the Judaic tradition, it knows nothing of it.
Prayer is okay. Prayer is very ordinary compared to meditation. In prayer you are not silent, you are still talking, if not to your husband then to your god -- the same nagging. Sometimes you nag your husband and sometimes you nag your god. What is prayer? -- nagging! "Do this, do that! look how miserable I am! you don't care for me, love me more, give me more..."
It is a nagging, it is nothing very important. It is again talk, again chattering, again words, again language.
Meditation means language disappears, words disappear, there is nothing to say; one is simply silent. And in that silence a great rejoicing arises. In that silence is song, in that silence is dance and in that silence is god.
[The only temple that isn't man-made is the one god chooses to reside in, Osho told Prem Mandir. And the name of that temple is love.]
The Bible says god made man in his own image, but the truth is that all the images of god are made by man in his own image. The Chinese god looks like a Chinese and the Negro god looks like a Negro -- with the same kind of hair, with the same colour, with the same type of lips the Chinese god has the same kind of hair, just a few hairs sticking out from his beard -- you can count them easily -- the same kind of nose, the eyes. The Hindu has his god, he looks like a Hindu.
If donkeys were religious they would make a god in the image of donkeys -- obviously! They would not make a god in the image of man. What has man done for them? -- tortured them in every possible way. They would make their devil look like man. Their god would be a donkey just like themselves. It is a projection.
All our temples, all our churches and mosques, are our projections. If you want to see good architecture go and see them, if you want to see good sculpture go and see them, but don't think that these are the places where you will find god.
God can be found only in the temple of love, and that temple exists within your heart. God has created it already, it is a given fact -- you just have to discover it within yourself. And the moment you have discovered your heart you have found the key that unlocks all the doors, the master key that unlocks all the doors of the divine.
Love unconditionally, love non-possessively, love non-demandingly; simply love for the sheer joy of love. And you will be surprised that as your love deepens, your insight into god deepens. Ultimately love becomes god.
Jesus says god is love; I say love is god. Jesus still makes god more important than love; I make love more important than god.
If somebody says to me "I don't believe in god," I say "Then there is no problem,-you can still be a sannyasin. If you can love, that's enough." Jesus would not have been able to say that; if you don',t believe in god then you cannot be a follower of Jesus. And asking someone to believe in god is asking something impossible. You don't know anything about god -- how can you believe in god?
But you know something about love -- just a little bit. Everybody knows something of it. Once in a while the breeze has come to everybody, once in a while the window has opened, once in a while one has experienced love.
Hence love need not be believed in, it is our experience. Of course we don't know the whole possibility and the whole potential of it. The day we know the whole possibility and the whole potential of it we will know love is god.'
[Then he pointed out to Veet Gyan the difference between knowledge and wisdom.]
Knowledge is one of the greatest barriers. Knowledge means all that you know but you know only from others, all that is borrowed. It is not your experience. If it is your experience it is not knowledge, it is wisdom. Wisdom is a bridge; knowledge is a barrier for the simple reason that it deceives you. It gives you the false idea that you know while you know not. It is like a man who is ill but believes he is healthy -- he is in great danger. It is better he knows that he is ill so that he can find a physician. But he believes that he is not ill at all -- why should he find a physician?
That is the situation of knowledgeable people. And as man has evolved more and more educational institutions, schools, colleges, universities -- now thousands of universities exist on earth -- naturally everybody is becoming more and more knowledgeable.
This is one of the causes why now it is so difficult to find a wise man like a Buddha or Lao Tzu or Jesus or Moses or Mohammed. It has become very difficult to find a man like that for the simple reason that everybody has become knowledgeable. And with the toy which is not the real thing, with the plastic flower which is not a real rose, they are satisfied.
My first work on sannyasins is to destroy their knowledge so that they can know their ignorance. Ignorance is beautiful; at least it is not borrowed from anybody, it is your own. It has a beauty; it is innocent, it is non-egoistic. And once you know you are ignorant then doors can open. Then you become humble, you become simple; you don't brag. You don't believe in the scriptures, you start enquiring for the first time. Then your enquiry is sincere, your questions are authentic.
And whenever there is a man with a sincere enquiry the answer is not very far. In fact the answer is always hidden in the question itself; all that is needed is a sincere heart to enquire. When the question is authentic... Our questions also are not authentic, they come out of borrowed knowledge.
For example if a Christian comes he will ask a question that no Hindu is ever going to ask. If a Hindu comes he will ask a question that no Mohammedan is ever going to ask. A Mohammedan asks a question which no Buddhist would ever ask.
I have known all these people -- they come with different questions. I was puzzled, puzzled because if the question is real then it can't be that a Christian will not ask something and only a Hindu will ask it. If the question is real it is everybody's question. But their questions are also false.
The Christian can ask a question about the trinity -- god the father, the holy ghost, god the son. He can ask "Who is this holy ghost?" Now no Hindu will ever ask that. This is not a real question. The knowledge is borrowed; out of that borrowed knowledge the question has arisen.
Once you put aside your knowledge your unreal questions will be gone. And you will be surprised: real questions are not many. In fact the real question is only one: Who am I? -- that is neither Hindu nor Mohammedan nor Christian. It is human, it is existential. And the moment all knowledge is dropped and you know nothing and the question arises "Who am I?"... in the very question the answer is hidden.
One of the greatest enlightened men of this age, Maharshi Ramana, used to say to his disciples that if you meditate over this single question, "Who am I?", that is enough -- you will find the answer. No need to do anything else; just sit silently and ponder over this question "Who am I?" And don't accept any borrowed answers, go on rejecting them: "This is not my answer. This is the Bible, this is the Koran, this is the Upanishad, this is the Gita -- this is not my answer." Eliminate all others! answers and then you will be surprised: the day your question is pure, your own, suddenly it bursts forth. The question disappears and the answer is there in the very core of the question. That is wisdom.
By going beyond knowledge one can enter into the world of wisdom. And wisdom liberates. Knowledge is a bondage, wisdom is freedom.
[Some evenings ago Osho outlined the journey of a sannyasin as being the passage from the ego to the self to the no-self. Tonight he expanded on the nature of the ego.]
The ego is a false phenomenon. It does not really exist, it is only a belief. It is a belief like the name. Each child is born without a name, each child brings a nameless reality into the world. But it would be very difficult to live namelessly. For utilitarian purposes we have to give him a name, we have to call him something -- ABC or maybe in the future when names also become scientific, then Z-700... but he will have to be called something. It is all the same; whether you call him this name or that name or a number, it doesn't matter, but something has to be given to him so that he can be addressed.
But slowly slowly he tends to forget that this is only a given thing, a label put on him from the outside. He starts believing in his name, he becomes autohypnotized by the name. If you say something against that name he will feel offended, insulted. He cannot laugh about it and say that it is nothing for him to worry about, that he doesn't have any name, it is just a word, a mere word. And you can change the word very easily.
That is the purpose of changing your name in sannyas, so that you know that it is only a utilitarian thing. You can change it as many times as you want -- it is nothing that really exists, it is not part of reality; it is a fiction. The name is for others to address you by.
But one thing more is needed: you have sometimes to address yourself. For that purpose the ego has invented -- I. Somebody can say to you, "Asmi, where are you going?" But if you are thirsty and you say "Asmi is thirsty" and you are hungry and you say, "Asmi is hungry," it will look a little awkward. If somebody asks, "Asmi, where are you going?" and you say, "Asmi is going to the marketplace," it will look a little awkward. For that purpose I is invented, so you can say, "I am thirsty." But again the problem arises: one becomes identified with the concept of I, as if I is separate from the whole universe.
We are not separate, we are not like islands. No man is an island. We are all part of the vast continent, of one universe. And the moment you know it, the moment you experience it, great benediction happens.
That's why I define sannyas as the dropping of the ego. It means dropping the idea of being separate from the whole. It is like a dewdrop slipping from the lotus leaf into the lake and becoming the lake again. The moment you slip out of the ego you become divine, you become part of godliness.