Chapter #9

[!info] Note

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been copy-typed on to the computer. It is for reference purposes only.]

Love is the way. The only requirement on the way is That your love should be unconditional That your love should be non-possessive That your love should be For the sheer joy of sharing. It should not ba a bargain and a business. Then love comes the way to god.

All these things are not different things They are aspects of the same phenomenon. In short it can be said That your love should not be ego-rooted. Your love should be ego-free Then love is the surest way to god. Nothing succeeds like love In finding god, in finding bliss In finding freedom, in finding truth.

Gautam the Buddha has called his religion The noble religion, the religion of the Aryans. By Aryans he does not mean any race By Aryans he means the people Who have attained enlightenment.

Adolf Hitler also used the word ‘Arya’ But with a totally different meaning, He used it as the most noble race: The Nordics are the Aryans The purest Aryans, the noblest.

No race is great in itself And no race has any hierarchy over others. Blood cannot be decisive, only inner intelligence. And that can happen to anybody. To anybody who is ready to work for it To prepare for it, to strive for it To anybody who is ready to work for it To prepare for it, to strive for it To anybody who is ready to accept the challenge It can happen.

The challenge is great Because the world does not like intelligent people. It likes mediocre people because the mediocre are Very easily enslaved, very easily dominated Very easily manipulated. They are good people but they are pure cow dung! They don’t have any soul. You can call them holy cow dung That doesn’t make much difference.

Intelligence is rebellious. Intelligence tries to live According to its own light And the crowd does not like it. The crowd wants you to be a part of the crowd. It does not like individuals. That is the challenge.

And if one really wants to be noble One has to get rid of the crowd psychology One has to free oneself from all mob attitudes Rotten traditions, the ugly past, Stupid institutions, all kinds of superstitions. And this whole garbage is being forced upon you From the very childhood. The day one decides to from it all One feels so light, one can almost fly. One feels so weightless, as if wings have grown. Then you are becoming noble.

My sannyasins have to be noble Noble in the sense of being Intelligent, rebellious, non-conformists Individuals, free in every sense. Freedom has to be your god If you really want to become noble. Worship freedom And sacrifice everything for freedom And then nobility is born. We have to pay that price for it. But the treasure is so immense That it is cheap at any cost. Even if the whole life is lost for it It is far more valuable than life itself. It is better to die a noble death Than to live an ignoble life.

One is not born noble, one has to become noble. It needs great intelligence Great meditativeness, great love To become noble. It has nothing to do with birth. It is one of the rarer achievements in life.

Jesus is noble. Of course he cannot claim a noble birth. He is not an aristocrat He is the son of a poor carpenter. If he had not been born to a poor carpenter Nobody would have ever heard about Joseph and Mary. Of course later on people tried to connect His lineage with King David. But that is sheer nonsense, it is simply fiction. To avoid the fact That he was a poor carpenter’s son They invented the theory of virgin birth.

People can go to extreme lengths For some stupid ideas. A simple thing needed to be accepted: That nobility has nothing to do with birth. But that would have gone against All the aristocrats of the world And they are powerful people. Those who wield power manage everything. They manage history, what should be written And what should not be written. They distort history, they invent history They change history. Hence history becomes almost fictitious. It becomes all bunk. It is more hysteria than history.

Remember it By becoming a sannyasin you CAn become noble A door opens up for you. Meditation creates that right milieu That right climate, that perspective In which one can find bliss Because meditation Makes you more and more conscious. Ultimately you become pure consciousness. At that very moment you are bliss too. Then consciousness and bliss Are not separate any more They are one phenomenon.

Whether the gift is god’s or not will be decided Only by your own experience. But one thing is certain: That gift is of tremendous significance, of immense value, Immeasurable value, inestimable value.

What can be more precious than life? What can be more precious than love? What can be more precious than The experience of bliss or silence Or poetry or music? There cannot be anything more precious Than these things. And life is full of So many beautiful experiences, one cannot count them. The whole path of life is studded With diamonds and emeralds and pearls. Eighty-four thousand poems every day… In fact every moment poems are showering on you From every direction, every dimension. But we are so utterly insensitive That we are not aware of anything. We go on living in our dark misery In our dark holes.

There are very few men in the world. There are millions of mice but not men Because everybody is living In his small, dark hole. And if you tell them to come out They ask: How? How can one come out? The dark hole is so comfortable, so cosy And they have decorated it And they have done great work. And not only they but their parents And their parent’s parents, they have all lived there; And they have prepared it for their children. How can they leave such great work To which for centuries they have devoted Their time and energy to create? And what is the outcome? – just misery. And outside there is the whole sky Available for them. And the stars are waiting for them But they will not come out. And even if they come They will come with closed eyes Because they have become so accustomed to darkness That when they come into the light Their eyes go blind. They are so dazzled by the light That they close their eyes.

Become aware of all this that surrounds you. And by becoming aware of it You will become aware of the great giver. Call it nature, call it god. They mean the same thing.

Man is like a dewdrop Existence is like the ocean And we are trying to keep ourselves Separate from it. That is the root cause of our misery.

Only one thing is needed: A jump into the ocean so the dewdrop disappears. It does not really disappear It only loses its small boundaries. It becomes oceanic, it becomes the ocean itself. But in a sense it disappears. You cannot find it any more. It loses its old identity Its old nameplate and its old address. It has become part of such vastness That there is no way to find it. It cannot stand out, that is the fear. That’s why we go on keeping ourselves Away from the ocean.

Sannyas means an effort to gather courage To disappear into the ocean. And that day is the greatest day in life When you die into the ultimate Because then you become the ultimate. It is not death, it is resurrection. Time dies, eternity is born. Finitude dies but infinity is born. Smallness dies but greatness is born. It is worth truing!

Purity comes through dropping the ego. The ego is the course of all inner impurity; It is the cancer of the soul. By becoming a sannyasin you are moving Into a totally different way of life – The life of egolessness. From this moment onwards be alert Not to feed your old ego, starve it. Don’t co-operate with it Because it lives with your co-operation. If you stop co-operating with it It dies of its own accord. Sooner or later it loses its strength Its power, its grip over you, Because in itself it has no substance It is a shadow. You pour substance into it. So once you stop pouring… Yes, it will go on for a few days Out of the old momentum. But soon that old momentum is finished And then arises a pure paradise within your heart. Its beauty is indescribable. Its joy inexpressible. So remember, this is the sutra for you. You have to from the ego and then purity will happen.

I am ton saying anything about moral purity; That is an egoistic effort. It is ego decorating itself With morality, character, and all that nonsense. I am simply saying drop the ego Cut the tree from the very root And then comes a tremendous emptiness in you And that emptiness is pure. And out of that purity arises The experience of god.

Prayer has been very much misunderstood In the past. It has become part of the belief in a god Hence those who don’t believe in god can’t pray. That has deprived millions of people of prayer. Prayer has to be freed from the belief in god. In fact prayer comes first, god comes later on. God is not a prerequisite to praying It is a consequence of prayer. If you are in prayer You will become aware of the existence of god. Then there will be no need to believe in god. All beliefs are false. You may believe for your whole life But you cannot make a belief true Through meditation, awareness, love, intelligence You can be twice born, you can be born anew Only then will you be noble. And everybody should achieve nobility. Without achieving it if one lives and dies One has lived in vain and died in vain.

Bliss is the fundamental principle of life. Animals, birds, trees Wherever life exists, in whatsoever form, It is seeking and searching for bliss. Bliss is the regulating principle. But it is the privilege of man To seek bliss consciously. Otherwise one seeks bliss and finds misery.

Everybody seeks bliss and everybody finds misery. The reason is not that there is no bliss in life The reason is that we start in a wrong direction. And we cannot do otherwise Unless we become more conscious.

Sannyas means bringing consciousness To your fundamental search Making your search a conscious, deliberate effort. Then bliss is found. It is not very far away All that is needed is a conscious seeker Not one who is just groping in darkness. Just by believing in it. You can hypnotise yourself You can think it is the truth but it remains a lie.

God should not be made a prerequisite for prayer. Prayer is a totally different phenomenon. It has nothing to do with god. there is no need to believe in god. Prayer means thankfulness, gratitude. What is the need of believing in god To feel grateful? Can’t you feel grateful for your life Grateful to existence? Can’t you feel grateful for all these flowers And the stars and the people and the birds And this mysterious existence?

It does not matter to whom; that is irrelevant. The question is not to whom to feel grateful The question is to feel grateful To xyz, it doesn’t matter. Call it god, call it existence, call it nature. Or if you don’t want to give it any name There is no need. But feel grateful Because so much has been given to us. Who has given, we don’t know. Why he has given, we don’t know. Wether there is somebody as a person Who is giving us all this, we don’t know. But one thing is certain That there are beautiful sunsets. Whether anybody paints them or not Is beside the point; they are beautiful They are immensely beautiful That not to feel grateful is to show insensitivity.

Prayer has nothing to do with religion Prayer is basically the approach of an artist. Prayer is an aesthetic phenomenon Not o religious phenomenon. But if you start feeling grateful And thankful towards existence Slowly slowly you are surprised That a presence starts surrounding you Which you had never felt before. It is only a thankful heart That starts feeling a new vibe. That vibe is god. God only comes at a later stage But then it comes as an experience, Then god is liberation, then god is nirvana.

But start by prayer, never start by god Because that god will be false. And if you are believing in a false god Your prayer is false. First make your prayer as deep as possible As heartfelt as possible And then god comes of his own accord. I am not worried about god But I am certainly worried about prayer. If people miss prayer Then there is no possibility, no hope. If god is dead that is not our business. But if prayer is dead Then it is certainly a question of great concern Because without prayer all will be lost- All that is beautiful, all that is great.

So learn to be prayerful.

A sannyasin has to go beyond all hardness He has to surpass hardness. The quality of being hard Has been much praised in the past Because it was the quality That made a man a soldier. And the soldiers were the most important people. They still are, unfortunately.

A sannyasin is just the opposite of a soldier. So whatsoever are the qualities of a soldier Are DISqualifications for a sannyasin. The soldier has to be hard like a rock And the sannyasin has to be soft like a rose. The soldier has to kill, hence he has to be hard. His whole profession is that of murder He is a professional murderer. Destruction is his way of life.

The sannyasin is not destructive, he is creative He is non-violent. He is love. Not violence, not hatred, not anger. How can he be hard?

The soldier has to live constantly in fear Hence he has to protect himself In thousands of ways Because if you are going to murder people Then you can be murdered

The sannyasin is vulnerable. Even if he is murdered, and many sannyasins Have been murdered down the ages, He dies joyously, with a dance in his heart. But he does not become hard. He dies with a song in his being. His death also is a poem.

So remember that. Hardness has to be dropped. Become a little more soft, tender, Vulnerable, open Because we are not going to conquer anybody. In fact we are inviting god to conquer us.

The bee does not cling to any flower. It gathers from all kinds of flowers But it remains unattached. It will go to the rose It will go to the marigold It will go to the lotus It will move from flower to flower gathering honey But it is not attached, it does not cling. And that’s how a sannyasin has to be.

In fact Buddha told his sannyasins Never to beg from only one house… Because his sannyasins were renunciates, They had renounced life. They lived like beggars Hence they are known as bhikkhus. Bhikkhu means a beggar. He had told them never to beg from one house But to beg from many houses: A little bit from here, a little bit from there So you are not a burden to anybody.

Because of that the Buddhist monks’ begging Is called madhukari. Madhukari means begging like a bee. Literally it means begging like a bee.

The second thing to be remembered is that Although the bee gathers honey from many flowers It never destroys any flower. It is very artful, very gracious, it does not hurt In fact the flower feels tremendously joyous When a bee comes to it. It is really a compliment. And the bee is never destructive. It collects whatsoever it needs But in such an artful way, with such skill That the flower remains absolutely the same.

That’s how a sannyasin has to be. Live in such a way that nobody is harmed by you. Live in a creative way, with skill and art Live in a sensitive way. And never become attached. Enjoy all kinds of experiences, all kinds of flowers But remain moving, don’t get caught anywhere And then you are bound to reach god.

In ancient mythology The wolf represents two things. First, it represents courage And secondly, it represents grace. The walk of the wolf is a graceful phenomenon. To watch it is to watch something beautiful. In fact animals have a certain grace Which man has lost. Because animals still live spontaneously Moment to moment. They don’t carry the past They don’t have a burden on their head Hence their walk is light Hence their walk has the quality of dance.

Man drags, he does not walk. It is very rare to find a man Whose walk has the quality of dance. But that’s what a sannyasin is supposed to find. He has to become again spontaneous He has to live in the same innocence as animals With only one difference: he has to be conscious. Animals are unconscious.

And the same is true about courage: Animals are courageous The wolf is courageous But his courage is instinctive. Man has to be courageous consciously.

Instinctive courage can’t help much. It is better than being a coward It is far better But it will land you in many difficulties. It will make your life more and more difficult Because it will be unconscious.

If your courage becomes conscious Then you start moving Towards the ultimate peaks of life. And slowly slowly Your life becomes an integrated phenomenon. It has grace, it has beauty, It has courage, it has joy. It is no more mundane It is holy, it is sacred.

Life is music, mind is noise. And because of the noisy mind we are unable to hear The music of life. Unless we stop the mind and its noise We will never come to know The beautiful music of life.

So the whole effort here Is to help you in two things. First is the negative part: How to stop the noisy mind. And the second is the positive part: How to train your ears so that you can hear Your own inner music. If these two things are fulfilled Nothing else remains. Life achieves its ultimate peak Its bliss and its benediction.

[!info] Copyright 1964-1990 Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh)