[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up.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.]
[Turn in -- that's where the turning on happens. Osho talked first tonight to Dhyan Gail from Canada.]
Man lives in misery only for one single reason, that he goes on desiring joy but never searches for its source, from where exactly it arises. And the problem becomes more complex because all our senses open outwards.
When you see a beautiful sunset and you feel joyous you naturally think that the joy is arising out of the beautiful sunset. That is not true. Tue beautiful sunset has simply triggered a process of meditation in you; it is so beautiful that your thinking has stopped. You are in a state of awe; it has possessed you. And the moment thinking stops you fall into deep meditation and you touch the source of joy within. But the logical mind infers that it was the beautiful sunset that caused the joy.
It has not caused the joy, it has simply triggered a process. Or even better is the word used by Carl Gustav Jung, "synchronicity". It has not caused it -- because so many people may remain absolutely unaffected by it.
Fire burns ; nobody can remain unaffected by it -- it is a cause. Water evaporates at one -- hundred degree heat -- all water, in all countries, in all cultures, whether a Hindu boils it or a Christian, it doesn't make any difference. And the water cannot say "I am not in the mood to evaporate. " Hence a one -- hundred-degree heat is the cause. When something is a cause there is no exception. Synchronicity is not a cause, because millions may remain absolutely unaffected by the beauty of the sunset. Or there may be a few people who even become sad looking at it -- it depends on them, their state of mind, their mood. It ls not inevitable that one feels joyous.
When two lovers are looking at the moon it is a different moon. The same moon is being looked at by somebody who has lost his lover or beloved. But it is not the same moon now. For the lovers it creates great joy, to the person whose beloved has died it may cause great sorrow. Hence it is not a cause; it only triggers something in you. Now what happens to you is not dependent on it, it depends on you.
So in a certain mood it can trigger meditation and then you feel joyous. But the logical mind infers it is the cause, so you start seeking beautiful sunsets again and again. And the problem is that you have missed the whole point; looking at the sunset every day is not going to help meditation. That's why next time you see it -- the same, sunset -- you are not so joyous; the third time, even less.
You can have a picture of the same sunset in your bedroom; slowly slowly you stop looking at it, you forget all about it for the simple reason that it becomes boring. It loses something and what it loses is the impact. You are no more in awe, you know what it is. It does not cause, help, trigger, synchronise anything in you in any way; you have become indifferent, you are disconnected.
The same man, the same woman, who used to bring so much joy one day brings no joy any more; still we go on thinking that the other was the cause of joy. The other was not the cause of joy. The woman used to trigger something in you, the man used to trigger something in you. It was always happening in you. Everything that happens to you happens within you -- there is the source.
Once this is understood then in each joyful moment you can immediately catch hold of a natural state of meditation. That's how meditation was discovered in the beginning. And it is always the same state; no -- thought, mind stops and suddenly there is joy.
Once you have understood the secret then there is no need for the outer event to trigger it ; you can simply close your eyes and fall into a state of silence. That's what meditation is all about. Rather than going via a long route -- the sunset, the stars, the flowers, the people, lovers -- the meditator simply takes the most short-cut: he closes his eyes and starts dispersing the thoughts, starts getting out of the thoughts.
The same happens while making love. In a deep orgasmic state thinking stops. But people infer that it is through sex that they have attained the joy. It is not sox, sex has nothing to do with it.
You can see two animals making love but you will not see any joy on their faces because they don't have any mind so they can't experience meditation. They are below mind; meditation needs to go beyond mind. Even mind has not happened to them. Hence a strange observation: animals don't look happy while making love or after making love they don I t seem to be happy. It seems almost a chemical force within them, instinctive, that they have to make it.
But man can find... You can watch, when you are coming closer to the orgasmic release suddenly the mind disappears. For a moment the window opens, there is meditation. That's how Tantra was discovered.
Yoga was discovered by watching the sunset, the moon, the sunrise, the flowers -- the outside world. And yoga came to the same conclusion: meditation. Tantra was discovered through sexual orgasm, but the conclusion was the same. Tantra also concluded that meditation is the thing that causes it, the real thing happens within you.
Meditation brings you to the source of joy. That is the meaning of the name, Gail, it comes from a root which is also beautiful," means to dance. And that's my only message to my sannyasins: Dance god, much as possible, dance so that you can disappear into it. When one disappears then only does the ultimate bliss happen.
[And to a student from Mexico Osho talked of bliss as being the scent of the self-realised.]
A man without bliss is a flower without fragrance, and a flower without fragrance is not much of a flower. Only the appearance is that of a flower, but it is very poor. It has no richness, it does not contribute any fragrance to existence, it does not share; it is empty.
When the flower is full of fragrance there is sharing, it enriches existence; it is creative because it shares. The same is true about man: a man without bliss is just a so-called man. He has not yet arrived. He is like a man but the real man has not yet happened.
Human beings are different from other animals, but they are animals of different forms. But the moment bliss happens man transcends animality, he is no more a species of other animals, he is no more an animal. He is part of the divine, he is part of godhood.
Hence the search for bliss is there in every heart, but if we don't try to find it in the right direction we can go on trying and we will go on failing. And then slowly slowly one becomes so frustrated with so many failures that one stops even searching. One starts accepting the way life is.
It is not the acceptance that happens through bliss, through meditation, through love, through understanding, but a reluctant acceptance, a negative acceptance -- what to do? Somehow one has to console oneself, one has to say this is the way life is. The grapes are sour because you cannot reach them. There are even people who start saying there are no grapes at all. At least in the Aesop's fable the fox was not so philosophical; it simply said the grapes are sour. It was not as cunning as are the many philosophers who say there is no god, no soul, no bliss, for the simple reason that they have not been able to achieve it.
Now this is a consolation, this is trying to console oneself. What can I do if the thing itself does not exist? -- nothing can be done about it. So one has to live in misery. And once out of frustration this kind of acceptance happens one is almost dead, one has stopped enquiring.
Before it happens one should make a whole-hearted effort to seek bliss in the right direction. We are always seeking it somewhere outside. That is the wrong direction, it is not there; it is within you. The sought is in the seeker ; that which we are searching for is really hidden in our own being, it is our very being.
Sannyas means a turning in, a one -- hundred-and -- eighty -- degree turn. And the moment you look within you are surprised that this is what you have been seeking and searching for and how ridiculous it was that you were searching for something that you already had. It is a gift of god!
Look within, feel cheerful, blissful, and your life will become full of fragrance. And the moment life has fragrance many things follows. One becomes creative, one becomes a giver, one becomes a lover. Then whatsoever one does has a magical touch to it.
The man of bliss can transform dust into gold. Just by his touch he can impart his bliss. He can help others also to find bliss -- he can help others also to go inwards.
[Man is in such a mess that a happy person feels like a misfit Osho told Barbara.]
That's why Socrates is not accepted by the people; he is not one of them. Jesus is not accepted by the masses; he seems to be of some other planet. Whatsoever he is saying seems to be nonsense to people. To the worldly, to the so-called clever and cunning, his statements seem to be absurd.
Jesus says, "Blessed are the meek for theirs is the kingdom of God." Now, no politician can agree with that because the whole effort of the politician is to be at the top -- and Jesus says, "Blessed are the meek"? Jesus says, "Blessed are the poor in spirit."
Now nobody who is greedy and is trying to become richer in every possible way can accept this. Whatsoever Jesus is saying is being felt by the masses as strange and a little bit dangerous too, because this stranger can contaminate one.
That's what they go on saying against me, that I contaminate people's mind, that I destroy people's religion, their culture, their tradition, their heritage. Even in India I am a stranger. Even the foreigners who are in India are not so foreign as I am, because you may be speaking a different language, the color of your skin may be different, the color of your hair may be different, but these are not great differences. What I am saying and doing is very fundamental, very essential.
It has always been so, and in many ways people have tried to explain away Jesus, Buddha, Socrates, Krishna.
If the people were a very primitive type then they killed: Jesus was crucified, Mansoor was murdered. If the people were a little bit sophisticated they did not physically kill. For example, in India, Buddha was not killed, Mahavira was not killed, Patanjali was not killed, but people tried to explain them away... and in beautiful ways.
The Hindus have a story about Buddha... It is a far better way than the Jews chose, because to crucify Jesus proved dangerous; that's how Christianity was born. But from India Buddhism completely disappeared, absolutely disappeared; for centuries there has not been a single Buddhist. The Hindus proved to be more cunning and clever than the Jews; at least in this matter they defeated the Jews.
They invented a story. The story is that when God made the world he made hell and heaven too -- to punish people and to reward people. Then millions of years passed but nobody committed any sin so nobody was sent to hell and the devil became tired -- just sitting there, doing nothing.
He approached God and he said, "This is ridiculous -- why have you created hell? The whole place is empty and we are unnecessarily sitting there with the whole staff doing nothing because not a single person has entered.
So God said "Wait. Now I will come into the world as Gautam the Buddha and I will destroy people's religion, their virtue, their morality."
A very cunning story! So God himself comes in the form of Gautam the Buddha -- so they accept that Buddha is a god -- but the purpose of his coming is to fill hell, so beware of this god.
And the story ends: since then hell is overfull. Now if you commit a sin and you go to hell you will have to wait in the queue for thousands of years because the people who reached before you are still outside, at the gate.
The Hindus tried a more cunning way: they did not crucify Buddha but they crucified him philosophically. And of course people became afraid; if this man is so dangerous -- first he is a god so he has infinite power, secondly he has come to fill hell -- beware, escape from him, don't get trapped by him.
If people were primitive they killed, if people were a little philosophical, then they killed in subtle ways. But one thing has always been done: these strangers have been avoided. And my effort here is to create strangers, blissful strangers.
My sannyasins have to be aware of the fact that wherever they go they will be strangers -- in their own country, in their own home they will be strangers. They have to gather enough courage to live as strangers.
If you want to live as part of the larger humanity you have to be miserable because that is the way of ordinary mankind. Misery is their style of life. To be blissful here means to be a stranger. Become a stranger, because bliss is the goal of life.
The goal of life is not to conform with the masses and with the collective mind.
The goal is to attain individuality, to become your own true self. That's what sannyas is all about.
[Johan means god's gracious gift, Osho told the psychotherapist from Holland. And meditation is the most gracious gift god could possibly give you.]
Without it life is not life, love is not love, creativity is not creativity. You see yet you don't see, you hear yet you don't hear. Without meditation you may have everything and still you will remain utterly empty, you will never know the feeling of fullness, the feeling of overflowing joy.
Life is a great gift but nothing compared to meditation. In fact, life becomes life only when meditation becomes its center, otherwise people only exist, they don't live. To just exist is one thing, to live is totally another. To just exist is nothing of any worth -- animals exist, trees exist, rocks exist. Only man has the privilege of being totally alive, fully aware and alive.
Without meditation love is not love. Everybody loves and still love brings only misery and hell. What kind of love is this? Something essential is missing. It is not love, it is possessiveness, it is sexuality. It is not love, it is an ego trip. Each lover is trying to reduce the lover to a thing. That is the conflict between the lovers, the continuous conflict: who is the master, who is the boss? Said or not said, direct or indirect, gross or subtle, but there is a continuous fight -- who is the master?
I have heard, a salesman knocked on a door and exactly at the same time as he knocked, somebody threw a man out of the window. The man fell on the ground by the side of the salesman and the salesman said, "You can knock on the door -- it has just been decided who the master of the house is!" It is a continuous fight...
A woman was chasing her husband and he went under the bed and sat there. The woman was big and fat and she could not...(the rest of the sentence is absorbed in laughter). Just then a few visitors knocked on the door. The woman said..."Come out, come out -- somebody has come!"
The man said, "Let them come and see who the master of the house is. I am the master of the house; wherever I want to sit I will sit!"
In every possible way people are trying to prove who the master of the house is. Now, the woman is on her knees begging, "Come out. Okay, you are the master, but please come out. What will they think?"
But it is never proved conclusively, it cannot be proved because nobody is the master. The very idea of mastering the other is absurd. It is not the nature of things.
Everybody is a master of himself, herself, but nobody is a master of somebody else. But this is what we call love.
Unless meditation grows in you you will not know real love. Meditation takes away all poison, jealousy, possessiveness, ego. Then love is a pure perfume. Life is life then, love is love then and your eyes are so clear you can see what is right and what is wrong. And your ears are so silent, they can hear the still, small voice of god.
Hence I say meditation is the most gracious gift of god. There is nothing compared to it. And it is available -- one just has to be open to receive it.
[Osho talked about how one can know through love and through logic ; but while logic is useful to know about the objective world, it's not a valid way to know anything about the inner, about consciousness, being, love, truth, beauty, god. That's where love comes into its own.]
Religion, music, poetry, aesthetics -- all kinds of art, the whole world of creativity, is based on love.
Logic is good in its own sphere but the moment it starts interfering with the world of love it is an enemy. Love has its own way of knowing; it does not need any help from logic. Logic utterly fails. For example, logic cannot understand beauty. There is nothing like beauty as far as logic is concerned because beauty cannot be proved.
You can dissect a flower, you can find all the chemicals in it but you will not find any beauty. You can dissect a man, you will find all the chemicals in the man too, but you will not find his being. You will only find the circumference, you will not find his centre, you will not find his soul.
I Love is a higher way of knowing. All that is valuable is known through love. Science is mundane, love is sacred. And one should be capable of knowing the higher world of values, otherwise life remains very superficial, meaningless, insignificant. One can go on dragging but one cannot dance. And unless you dance out of the sheer joy of being here and now you will remain blind to the truth that existence is, to the truth of your own being and of the being of others.
And you will remain blind about your eternity; you will know only your birth and death.
In India, for centuries, we have only celebrated the birthdays of the Buddhas, and for very strange reasons -- because these were the people who knew that there is no birth and no death; hence we have celebrated their birth, we have celebrated their death. But as far as ordinary human beings are concerned, nobody in India even remembers his birthday.
The idea that everybody celebrates his birthday has come from the West. There is nothing worth celebrating because nothing has happened yet ! Unless you know that you were before your birth, your birthday is not of any value. Unless you know you will remain after your death, your death also has no value.
We celebrate Krishna's birthday and Buddha's birthday, and of course, the day they disappeared from the world, we have celebrated that too, but ordinarily nobody bothers to celebrate his birthday. The has come from the West. Now many rich Indians, educated Indians, have started celebrating their birthday. It is sheer stupidity!
Only when you come to know something beyond time do you have meaning -- and that happens through love.
[We sit here, the extra lucky ones evening, and still are bowled over by the beauty of his words. This is what Osho said last thing tonight:]
The greatest music in life is experienced when you surrender to the whole, when you drop your identity, when you forget that you are separate, when the union happens, union with the whole.
I Sannyas means surrender. It means a deep deep let-go. You are no more but the whole is. And when you are no more all your problems naturally disappear. They linger with you, they exist with you; without you they cannot exist, not even for a single moment. It would be impossible to have anxiety if you were not. Who would be anxious? It would be impossible to feel anguish if you were not. These are all branches of the ego.
Ego is the very root cause of our hell. The moment we drop the ego, the moment we feel "I am nobody, just a pure nothingness, a hollow bamboo," immediately the miracle happens, the miracle of miracles: the hollow bamboo is no more a hollow bamboo, a flute. Suddenly some unknown lips are felt: you are being kissed and music starts flowing through you.
It is not your music because you are no more. It is divine, it is god's. And to experience the music of god, the music of ultimate harmony with existence, is to experience all that is worth experiencing. After that life is a celebration, a constant celebration, a festival, a feast.
I don't teach fasting, I teach feasting. All the religions of the world have talked too much about fasting, I talk about feasting. They have taught how to renounce life; I teach how to live it totally and festively, because the moment you are utterly lost in life you have found god. To be utterly lost is samarpan, is let-go.
It looks paradoxical but that's how it is the moment you lose yourself you find yourself -- there is no other way.
Osho's Commentary
[Turn in -- that's where the turning on happens. Osho talked first tonight to Dhyan Gail from Canada.]
Man lives in misery only for one single reason, that he goes on desiring joy but never searches for its source, from where exactly it arises. And the problem becomes more complex because all our senses open outwards.
When you see a beautiful sunset and you feel joyous you naturally think that the joy is arising out of the beautiful sunset. That is not true. Tue beautiful sunset has simply triggered a process of meditation in you; it is so beautiful that your thinking has stopped. You are in a state of awe; it has possessed you. And the moment thinking stops you fall into deep meditation and you touch the source of joy within. But the logical mind infers that it was the beautiful sunset that caused the joy.
It has not caused the joy, it has simply triggered a process. Or even better is the word used by Carl Gustav Jung, "synchronicity". It has not caused it -- because so many people may remain absolutely unaffected by it.
Fire burns ; nobody can remain unaffected by it -- it is a cause. Water evaporates at one -- hundred degree heat -- all water, in all countries, in all cultures, whether a Hindu boils it or a Christian, it doesn't make any difference. And the water cannot say "I am not in the mood to evaporate. " Hence a one -- hundred-degree heat is the cause. When something is a cause there is no exception.
Synchronicity is not a cause, because millions may remain absolutely unaffected by the beauty of the sunset. Or there may be a few people who even become sad looking at it -- it depends on them, their state of mind, their mood. It ls not inevitable that one feels joyous.
When two lovers are looking at the moon it is a different moon. The same moon is being looked at by somebody who has lost his lover or beloved. But it is not the same moon now. For the lovers it creates great joy, to the person whose beloved has died it may cause great sorrow. Hence it is not a cause; it only triggers something in you. Now what happens to you is not dependent on it, it depends on you.
So in a certain mood it can trigger meditation and then you feel joyous. But the logical mind infers it is the cause, so you start seeking beautiful sunsets again and again. And the problem is that you have missed the whole point; looking at the sunset every day is not going to help meditation. That's why next time you see it -- the same, sunset -- you are not so joyous; the third time, even less.
You can have a picture of the same sunset in your bedroom; slowly slowly you stop looking at it, you forget all about it for the simple reason that it becomes boring. It loses something and what it loses is the impact. You are no more in awe, you know what it is. It does not cause, help, trigger, synchronise anything in you in any way; you have become indifferent, you are disconnected.
The same man, the same woman, who used to bring so much joy one day brings no joy any more; still we go on thinking that the other was the cause of joy. The other was not the cause of joy. The woman used to trigger something in you, the man used to trigger something in you. It was always happening in you. Everything that happens to you happens within you -- there is the source.
Once this is understood then in each joyful moment you can immediately catch hold of a natural state of meditation. That's how meditation was discovered in the beginning. And it is always the same state; no -- thought, mind stops and suddenly there is joy.
Once you have understood the secret then there is no need for the outer event to trigger it ; you can simply close your eyes and fall into a state of silence. That's what meditation is all about. Rather than going via a long route -- the sunset, the stars, the flowers, the people, lovers -- the meditator simply takes the most short-cut: he closes his eyes and starts dispersing the thoughts, starts getting out of the thoughts.
The same happens while making love. In a deep orgasmic state thinking stops. But people infer that it is through sex that they have attained the joy. It is not sox, sex has nothing to do with it.
You can see two animals making love but you will not see any joy on their faces because they don't have any mind so they can't experience meditation. They are below mind; meditation needs to go beyond mind. Even mind has not happened to them. Hence a strange observation: animals don't look happy while making love or after making love they don I t seem to be happy. It seems almost a chemical force within them, instinctive, that they have to make it.
But man can find... You can watch, when you are coming closer to the orgasmic release suddenly the mind disappears. For a moment the window opens, there is meditation. That's how Tantra was discovered.
Yoga was discovered by watching the sunset, the moon, the sunrise, the flowers -- the outside world. And yoga came to the same conclusion: meditation. Tantra was discovered through sexual orgasm, but the conclusion was the same. Tantra also concluded that meditation is the thing that causes it, the real thing happens within you.
Meditation brings you to the source of joy. That is the meaning of the name, Gail, it comes from a root which is also beautiful," means to dance. And that's my only message to my sannyasins: Dance god, much as possible, dance so that you can disappear into it. When one disappears then only does the ultimate bliss happen.
[And to a student from Mexico Osho talked of bliss as being the scent of the self-realised.]
A man without bliss is a flower without fragrance, and a flower without fragrance is not much of a flower. Only the appearance is that of a flower, but it is very poor. It has no richness, it does not contribute any fragrance to existence, it does not share; it is empty.
When the flower is full of fragrance there is sharing, it enriches existence; it is creative because it shares. The same is true about man: a man without bliss is just a so-called man. He has not yet arrived. He is like a man but the real man has not yet happened.
Human beings are different from other animals, but they are animals of different forms. But the moment bliss happens man transcends animality, he is no more a species of other animals, he is no more an animal. He is part of the divine, he is part of godhood.
Hence the search for bliss is there in every heart, but if we don't try to find it in the right direction we can go on trying and we will go on failing. And then slowly slowly one becomes so frustrated with so many failures that one stops even searching. One starts accepting the way life is.
It is not the acceptance that happens through bliss, through meditation, through love, through understanding, but a reluctant acceptance, a negative acceptance -- what to do? Somehow one has to console oneself, one has to say this is the way life is. The grapes are sour because you cannot reach them. There are even people who start saying there are no grapes at all. At least in the Aesop's fable the fox was not so philosophical; it simply said the grapes are sour. It was not as cunning as are the many philosophers who say there is no god, no soul, no bliss, for the simple reason that they have not been able to achieve it.
Now this is a consolation, this is trying to console oneself. What can I do if the thing itself does not exist? -- nothing can be done about it. So one has to live in misery. And once out of frustration this kind of acceptance happens one is almost dead, one has stopped enquiring.
Before it happens one should make a whole-hearted effort to seek bliss in the right direction. We are always seeking it somewhere outside. That is the wrong direction, it is not there; it is within you. The sought is in the seeker ; that which we are searching for is really hidden in our own being, it is our very being.
Sannyas means a turning in, a one -- hundred-and -- eighty -- degree turn. And the moment you look within you are surprised that this is what you have been seeking and searching for and how ridiculous it was that you were searching for something that you already had. It is a gift of god!
Look within, feel cheerful, blissful, and your life will become full of fragrance. And the moment life has fragrance many things follows. One becomes creative, one becomes a giver, one becomes a lover. Then whatsoever one does has a magical touch to it.
The man of bliss can transform dust into gold. Just by his touch he can impart his bliss. He can help others also to find bliss -- he can help others also to go inwards.
[Man is in such a mess that a happy person feels like a misfit Osho told Barbara.]
That's why Socrates is not accepted by the people; he is not one of them. Jesus is not accepted by the masses; he seems to be of some other planet. Whatsoever he is saying seems to be nonsense to people. To the worldly, to the so-called clever and cunning, his statements seem to be absurd.
Jesus says, "Blessed are the meek for theirs is the kingdom of God." Now, no politician can agree with that because the whole effort of the politician is to be at the top -- and Jesus says, "Blessed are the meek"? Jesus says, "Blessed are the poor in spirit."
Now nobody who is greedy and is trying to become richer in every possible way can accept this. Whatsoever Jesus is saying is being felt by the masses as strange and a little bit dangerous too, because this stranger can contaminate one.
That's what they go on saying against me, that I contaminate people's mind, that I destroy people's religion, their culture, their tradition, their heritage. Even in India I am a stranger. Even the foreigners who are in India are not so foreign as I am, because you may be speaking a different language, the color of your skin may be different, the color of your hair may be different, but these are not great differences. What I am saying and doing is very fundamental, very essential.
It has always been so, and in many ways people have tried to explain away Jesus, Buddha, Socrates, Krishna.
If the people were a very primitive type then they killed: Jesus was crucified, Mansoor was murdered. If the people were a little bit sophisticated they did not physically kill. For example, in India, Buddha was not killed, Mahavira was not killed, Patanjali was not killed, but people tried to explain them away... and in beautiful ways.
The Hindus have a story about Buddha... It is a far better way than the Jews chose, because to crucify Jesus proved dangerous; that's how Christianity was born. But from India Buddhism completely disappeared, absolutely disappeared; for centuries there has not been a single Buddhist. The Hindus proved to be more cunning and clever than the Jews; at least in this matter they defeated the Jews.
They invented a story. The story is that when God made the world he made hell and heaven too -- to punish people and to reward people. Then millions of years passed but nobody committed any sin so nobody was sent to hell and the devil became tired -- just sitting there, doing nothing.
He approached God and he said, "This is ridiculous -- why have you created hell? The whole place is empty and we are unnecessarily sitting there with the whole staff doing nothing because not a single person has entered.
So God said "Wait. Now I will come into the world as Gautam the Buddha and I will destroy people's religion, their virtue, their morality."
A very cunning story! So God himself comes in the form of Gautam the Buddha -- so they accept that Buddha is a god -- but the purpose of his coming is to fill hell, so beware of this god.
And the story ends: since then hell is overfull. Now if you commit a sin and you go to hell you will have to wait in the queue for thousands of years because the people who reached before you are still outside, at the gate.
The Hindus tried a more cunning way: they did not crucify Buddha but they crucified him philosophically. And of course people became afraid; if this man is so dangerous -- first he is a god so he has infinite power, secondly he has come to fill hell -- beware, escape from him, don't get trapped by him.
If people were primitive they killed, if people were a little philosophical, then they killed in subtle ways. But one thing has always been done: these strangers have been avoided. And my effort here is to create strangers, blissful strangers.
My sannyasins have to be aware of the fact that wherever they go they will be strangers -- in their own country, in their own home they will be strangers. They have to gather enough courage to live as strangers.
If you want to live as part of the larger humanity you have to be miserable because that is the way of ordinary mankind. Misery is their style of life. To be blissful here means to be a stranger.
Become a stranger, because bliss is the goal of life.
The goal of life is not to conform with the masses and with the collective mind.
The goal is to attain individuality, to become your own true self. That's what sannyas is all about.
[Johan means god's gracious gift, Osho told the psychotherapist from Holland. And meditation is the most gracious gift god could possibly give you.]
Without it life is not life, love is not love, creativity is not creativity. You see yet you don't see, you hear yet you don't hear. Without meditation you may have everything and still you will remain utterly empty, you will never know the feeling of fullness, the feeling of overflowing joy.
Life is a great gift but nothing compared to meditation. In fact, life becomes life only when meditation becomes its center, otherwise people only exist, they don't live. To just exist is one thing, to live is totally another. To just exist is nothing of any worth -- animals exist, trees exist, rocks exist. Only man has the privilege of being totally alive, fully aware and alive.
Without meditation love is not love. Everybody loves and still love brings only misery and hell. What kind of love is this? Something essential is missing. It is not love, it is possessiveness, it is sexuality. It is not love, it is an ego trip. Each lover is trying to reduce the lover to a thing. That is the conflict between the lovers, the continuous conflict: who is the master, who is the boss? Said or not said, direct or indirect, gross or subtle, but there is a continuous fight -- who is the master?
I have heard, a salesman knocked on a door and exactly at the same time as he knocked, somebody threw a man out of the window. The man fell on the ground by the side of the salesman and the salesman said, "You can knock on the door -- it has just been decided who the master of the house is!"
It is a continuous fight...
A woman was chasing her husband and he went under the bed and sat there. The woman was big and fat and she could not...(the rest of the sentence is absorbed in laughter).
Just then a few visitors knocked on the door.
The woman said..."Come out, come out -- somebody has come!"
The man said, "Let them come and see who the master of the house is. I am the master of the house; wherever I want to sit I will sit!"
In every possible way people are trying to prove who the master of the house is. Now, the woman is on her knees begging, "Come out. Okay, you are the master, but please come out. What will they think?"
But it is never proved conclusively, it cannot be proved because nobody is the master. The very idea of mastering the other is absurd. It is not the nature of things.
Everybody is a master of himself, herself, but nobody is a master of somebody else. But this is what we call love.
Unless meditation grows in you you will not know real love. Meditation takes away all poison, jealousy, possessiveness, ego. Then love is a pure perfume. Life is life then, love is love then and your eyes are so clear you can see what is right and what is wrong. And your ears are so silent, they can hear the still, small voice of god.
Hence I say meditation is the most gracious gift of god. There is nothing compared to it. And it is available -- one just has to be open to receive it.
[Osho talked about how one can know through love and through logic ; but while logic is useful to know about the objective world, it's not a valid way to know anything about the inner, about consciousness, being, love, truth, beauty, god. That's where love comes into its own.]
Religion, music, poetry, aesthetics -- all kinds of art, the whole world of creativity, is based on love.
Logic is good in its own sphere but the moment it starts interfering with the world of love it is an enemy. Love has its own way of knowing; it does not need any help from logic. Logic utterly fails. For example, logic cannot understand beauty. There is nothing like beauty as far as logic is concerned because beauty cannot be proved.
You can dissect a flower, you can find all the chemicals in it but you will not find any beauty. You can dissect a man, you will find all the chemicals in the man too, but you will not find his being. You will only find the circumference, you will not find his centre, you will not find his soul.
I Love is a higher way of knowing. All that is valuable is known through love. Science is mundane, love is sacred. And one should be capable of knowing the higher world of values, otherwise life remains very superficial, meaningless, insignificant. One can go on dragging but one cannot dance. And unless you dance out of the sheer joy of being here and now you will remain blind to the truth that existence is, to the truth of your own being and of the being of others.
And you will remain blind about your eternity; you will know only your birth and death.
In India, for centuries, we have only celebrated the birthdays of the Buddhas, and for very strange reasons -- because these were the people who knew that there is no birth and no death; hence we have celebrated their birth, we have celebrated their death. But as far as ordinary human beings are concerned, nobody in India even remembers his birthday.
The idea that everybody celebrates his birthday has come from the West. There is nothing worth celebrating because nothing has happened yet ! Unless you know that you were before your birth, your birthday is not of any value. Unless you know you will remain after your death, your death also has no value.
We celebrate Krishna's birthday and Buddha's birthday, and of course, the day they disappeared from the world, we have celebrated that too, but ordinarily nobody bothers to celebrate his birthday. The has come from the West. Now many rich Indians, educated Indians, have started celebrating their birthday. It is sheer stupidity!
Only when you come to know something beyond time do you have meaning -- and that happens through love.
[We sit here, the extra lucky ones evening, and still are bowled over by the beauty of his words. This is what Osho said last thing tonight:]
The greatest music in life is experienced when you surrender to the whole, when you drop your identity, when you forget that you are separate, when the union happens, union with the whole.
I Sannyas means surrender. It means a deep deep let-go. You are no more but the whole is. And when you are no more all your problems naturally disappear. They linger with you, they exist with you; without you they cannot exist, not even for a single moment. It would be impossible to have anxiety if you were not. Who would be anxious? It would be impossible to feel anguish if you were not. These are all branches of the ego.
Ego is the very root cause of our hell. The moment we drop the ego, the moment we feel "I am nobody, just a pure nothingness, a hollow bamboo," immediately the miracle happens, the miracle of miracles: the hollow bamboo is no more a hollow bamboo, a flute. Suddenly some unknown lips are felt: you are being kissed and music starts flowing through you.
It is not your music because you are no more. It is divine, it is god's. And to experience the music of god, the music of ultimate harmony with existence, is to experience all that is worth experiencing. After that life is a celebration, a constant celebration, a festival, a feast.
I don't teach fasting, I teach feasting. All the religions of the world have talked too much about fasting, I talk about feasting. They have taught how to renounce life; I teach how to live it totally and festively, because the moment you are utterly lost in life you have found god. To be utterly lost is samarpan, is let-go.
It looks paradoxical but that's how it is the moment you lose yourself you find yourself -- there is no other way.