Chapter #19

all power is divine we are only vehicles, passages we are like a hollow bamboo flute our function is to allow god to flow through us the song is divine the song does not belong to the flute all that the flute can do is not to disturb it not to block it, not to hinder it, but to allow it the function of the flute is in a way negative just not to obstruct

and then the song goes on flowing that’s where our ego creates trouble the ego is a block it fills the hollow bamboo flute and stops the song from flowing through it then life becomes obviously a misery, an anguish it misses the song – that song is our very life

god is our very life god is not some person somewhere but our very heartbeat, our very existence and the ego is our enemy but very cunning it pretends to be our friend, our greatest friend

sannyas simply means seeing the destructiveness of the ego and dropping it… in a single blow, not gradually it cannot be dropped gradually either one sees the point and drops it or one goes on carrying it hoping some day to drop it but that very hope is illusory

when your house is on fire you don’t wait for tomorrow you rush out of it you don’t even think to get out in a proper way from the main gate, from the main door you even jump out of a window and if you are taking a bath naked

you jump naked out of the window you don’t even wait to wrap around a towel when the house is on fire one cannot postpone even for a single moment

and the house is on fire everybody is suffering, everybody is burning in hell everybody is living in such misery, anguish there is no joy, no song, no dance for the simple reason because these things belong to god, not to us

they can belong to us only if we disappear if we are not in the way, if we allow god to flow through us in that absolute let-go in that surrender is sannyas

sannyas is not surrender to me it is not surrender to anybody in particular it is simply surrender to the whole to this vast, infinite existence and the moment you dissolve yourself in it life becomes a sheer joy

man without the experience of the divine is nothing but a darkness, an unending darkness

a dark night of the soul and all hope for the dawn is futile it is not going to come unless we invite the divine the dawn cannot come we have to become hosts to the divine that’s what meditation is all about creating a receptivity for the divine to come in and the divine certainly comes like a flame

the moment the flame enters you you become aflame your whole life is transformed into light

the sun does not rise on the outside, it rises within and once there is light within your whole life has a luminosity each act has a tremendous beauty to it, a grace a totality, a passionate intensity each moment becomes so tremendously deep and profound that it starts containing the whole eternity in it all that is needed on our part is to be totally vulnerable, available, open the guest is always knocking on the door but our doors are closed the flame wants to enter in but we don’t allow it we live in fear and for thousands of years religions have been teaching people to live in fear in fact they call a religious person a god-fearing person

that is sheer nonsense god is nothing to be afraid of

a religious person is a god-loving person not god-fearing why should he fear? and if you are even afraid of god whom are you going to love? – because god is all

my sannyasins have to change the whole gestalt that has been implanted within you by the society i teach love not fear and only love can be open only love can be inviting, only love can trust and the moment you trust you can open the doors of your heart and immediately, instantly, the miracle happens

the word ecstasy is of immense significance literally it means to stand outside yourself that’s the actual meaning of ecstasy standing outside of yourself, standing out of the ego and the moment you are out of the ego you are in god to be in the ego is to be millions of miles away from god and to be out of the ego is to be at the very heart of the divine

and if one understands, if one tries to see the point it is not difficult because the ego has never brought any joy to anybody it only brings agony it brings more and more pain more and more suffering ego is like a wound that continuously hurts and is very touchy to come out of the ego is to be healed is to be whole, is to be holy and to come out of the ego nothing else is needed only one thing a deep insight into the very phenomenon of the ego what it has brought it promises much but it never delivers the goods n the whole history of humanity not a single person has been able to say ego has given me bliss and all the persons who have lived blissfully have said, without any exception that bliss has happened only when they dropped the ego

the mathematics is very simple it is one of the most absolute laws of life without any exception it is the very science of religion get out of the ego and suddenly the spring comes and thousands of flowers start blossoming in you

sannyas is a divine revolution it is not a modification, a reformation it is revolution it is dropping the past absolutely and entering into a totally new dimension only then one can taste what godliness is

if you carry your past with you, you remain old and every day you go on becoming older because the past becomes bigger and bigger and heavier and heavier if you drop the whole past and start afresh you are again young and only the young consciousness can have a contact with the divine because there is nothing in between if you are carrying the past then the past functions as a barrier, as a wall it is a china wall, very thick and it goes on growing thicker every moment because every moment the past is becoming bigger something is added to the past

sannyas begins when you drop the past and suddenly you feel a weightlessness, as if you can fly and then one has to remember not to accumulate the past again then one has to die every moment to the past so that one is reborn every moment to the present

that’s the only true way to live dying to the past living in the present that contains my whole religion

man is capable of melting and merging into his own innermost core and that is the space where absolute silence reigns where no noise has ever penetrated it is against nature and the law of nature no noise can ever enter into your innermost shrine the silence is virgin but it is not a dead silence it is very alive, it is full of music it has a song of its own

the Sound of one hand Clapping

it has a dance of its own but it is impossible to express it in language

language is made to express the noise of the mind beyond the mind is your silence hence there is no way to express it but it can be experienced and that’s the only thing that matters: experience

and its experience transforms you then your whole life becomes a celebration a subtle undercurrent of joy permeates you pervades you you live in the world you live in the whole noise of the world but now it doesn’t matter because now it cannot distract you from your inner centre

to know that inner space is to know the centre of the cyclone and then the cyclone too is beautiful you remain centred in all kinds of situations success or failure, poverty or richness, life or death the inner centering remains the same

to attain it is the goal of sannyas

the knowledgeable person has no way to know the divine because his knowledgeability gives him great ego knowledge is the most ego-nourishing phenomenon far more than money, political power, etcetera because political power can be taken away money can be lost, your bank can go bankrupt it is easy to lose it but knowledge is something which nobody can take away from you hence it gives the ego the most stable ground

the knowledgeable person has never known god hence jesus says be like a small child again and again he repeats it unless you are like a small child you will not enter into my kingdom of god to nicodemus he says unless you are born again

it is not possible to experience the divine the whole insistence is on innocence the same innocence as the child has

drop all your knowledge it is rubbish, it has no inner value in fact it is a disvalue it is not a qualification for the inner world but a disqualification unburden yourself from knowledge and then innocence will be discovered and that is really treasure

once you have tasted your own innocence you have tasted god – it is the same call it innocence, call it godliness these are different names for the same experience

silence has three gates to pass one is the most peripheral: speaking speak only telegraphically speak the essential and you will be surprised that almost ninety per cent of your talking is useless only ten per cent will do and you will also be surprised that ten per cent will become more effective because that ninety per cent that unnecessary burden is no more there

words become more pregnant when you don’t go round-about when you go directly and if one has to be telegraphic one has to go directly that’s why you can write a long letter but it doesn’t have that effect a small telegram is more effective

in india this is a common practice people will write long letters and in the end they will write think of it as a telegram but how to think after such a long letter? a telegram has to be telegraphic

all the great scriptures of the world are telegraphic that is the meaning of the sanskrit word sutra just a hint has been given but very pregnant this is the first step be telegraphic, speak the essential and drop the non-essential and then the second step think only the essential and you will be surprised ninety-nine per cent is unessential only one percent maybe is essential that too i say maybe, perhaps otherwise it is all holy cow dung

so drop thinking unnecessarily about unnecessary things

and people are thinking about all kinds of things relevant, irrelevant i receive such questions why do dogs bark at the moon? now the person who is thinking this question is really a great thinker he is neither a dog, nor is he a moon what is his concern about it? Let the dogs bark it is something between the dog and the moon you are unnecessarily poking your nose in it but just curiosity and people go on thinking about useless things

so drop useless thinking and you will be saving so much energy that the third step can be taken the third step is the most subtle feel only the essential and if you come to the essential then there is only love anger, greed, lust all these things are non-essential they are parasites, they are exploiting you when you come to the essential only love remains and when your heart is only full of love you can enter into the very centre of silence

these three things have to be passed the outer part of the mind – talking the inner part of the mind – thinking and the innermost part of the mind – feeling and when you have passed all these three then there is silence and that silence is the door to the divine

freedom is one of the most fundamental things and we are living in all kinds of bondages the bondage of a certain church the bondage of a certain race the bondage of a certain nationality and so on and so forth these are all imprisonments, prisons within prisons and if one really wants to know the truth one has to get out of all this stupidity that humanity has been carrying for thousands of years one has just to be a consciousness a pure consciousness that is freedom neither hindu nor mohammedan nor christian neither atheist nor theist, neither black nor white these are non-essential things one should not get lost in the jungle of the non-essential

the essential thing is your consciousness and consciousness is neither hindu nor mohammedan nor christian nor jew it is not even masculine or feminine it is neither black nor white it is neither young nor old no category is applicable to it it is beyond all categories hence it has immense freedom

freedom is divine because it allows you to know the truth freedom means freedom from all prejudices from all a priori conclusions

a child met the priest of the town in the garden he said good morning, father the priest looked at the child, a beautiful child and the way he greeted him he asked him, but i never see you in the church the child said, that’s true because i don’t belong to your abomination

these denominations are really abominations these churches, these temples, these mosques are nothing but beautiful ways of creating prisoners

be free so that you can be yourself

initiation into sannyas is initiation into freedom into being yourself i don’t give you any creed, any dogma any abomination i simply want you to be utterly yourself and then god is not far away he is just by the corner

we have not lost anything, we have just forgotten

god is still there, truth is still there love is still there, bliss is still there nothing has been lost but we have forgotten it

we are living in a kind of sleep we need a certain awakening and that’s the function of a master to hit the disciple in such a way that he has to wake up and certainly the master has to be merciless out of compassion he has to be merciless he has to hit hard on the head just a good hit on the head and one wakes up

all the methods of meditation are nothing but certain ways of hitting the very source of your sleepiness once you start awakening, just a little wakefulness is enough to remind you of what you have forgotten and then there is no problem then you can start working on your own searching inside, where you have put things and how you forgot

sati is a beautiful word it contains the essential core of all spiritual methods remembering so one need not be worried because nothing is lost one should rejoice that even if we have forgotten it is still there so just a little effort is needed to wake up

just a little effort to come out of your dreams and anything can be of help sometimes even accidents can help just for a moment you lose your sleepiness and suddenly all is remembered this remembrance happens always in a sudden way hence my way is the way of sudden enlightenment

one goes on hitting one’s head against many things because one never knows which hit from what source, is going to help it may be the same pillow that you hit or the same pillar again and again one never knows it may be the ninety-ninth number or the hundredth but there comes a point when remembrance happens sometimes it can happen even in the first hit it depends how thick is the sleepiness, how dense people have different layers it depends on their conditioning how they have been conditioned

every child has been conditioned so every child will need a certain hit

to be with a master is possible only if you love immensely because the master is going to hit you unless you trust you won’t allow anybody to hit you

it is going to be a surgical operation you have to trust the surgeon because you will be on the table, under chloroform and who knows what the surgeon is going to do?

i have heard about a jew who was going to be operated upon he said wait he took out his purse and started counting his money the doctor said there is no need to pay right now you can pay later on he said who is going to pay? i am simply counting my money because when i am under chloroform, who knows? i don’t trust you he is trusting him for the operation but he cannot trust for the money money seems to be more valuable to people than their life itself

but to be with a master one has to understand it that love is more valuable than life itself the relationship between a master and a disciple is a love affair it is the highest peak of trust because it is the greatest operation there is no other operation bigger than this your whole life has to be transformed

it is possible – one just has to allow it

one has to open one’s heart so that one is always ready to welcome the unknown, the unknowable

we live in the known and we are afraid of the unknown so we keep our doors closed to the unknown what to say about the unknowable? to allow the unknown to enter we are not even ready but to live in the known means to live in a rut it is boring that’s why the whole humanity seems so bored utterly bored, bored with everything unless one opens doors to the unknown life never becomes a joy, a deep adventure the moment you open the doors for the unknown the moment you welcome the unknown you are allowing new, fresh winds to come in the rain, the sun, the stars the fragrance of the flowers and with all these, slowly slowly comes the divine first you have to be open to the unknown and when you have started enjoying then you can risk one step more you can go a little deeper you can become open to the unknowable

the world of the unknown is the world of poetry, music, dance the world of aesthetics and the world of the unknowable is the world of religion and the world of the known is the world of business marketplace, ordinary existence day-to-day existence

a sannyasin first has to be open to the unknown and then finally to the unknowable that is the meaning of swagat: a welcoming heart and then the impossible becomes possible

there are two ways to approach the divine one is of meditation, awareness the other is of love both are valid ways, their starting point is different

but their ultimate goal is the same they meet when you have reached and not only that they meet at one point in the end if you have followed the way of meditation then love comes as a shadow to it, as a by-product if you have followed the way of love then meditation comes as a shadow of it as a consequence of it they happen together finally but the starting point can be different

for you my suggestion is love will be the best way to follow love the whole existence, love as much as you can because the more you love the more capable of love you will become this is the law of love the more vou love the more love vou have the less you love the less love you have when you love infinitely you start having an inexhaustible love within you some sources that have remained always hidden suddenly open up some springs which have never been flowing start flowing but one has to be unconditional: love but don’t ask anything in return love for the sheer joy of love and then wait for the miracle it happens, it happens inevitably just one has to love and wait sow the seeds of love and wait and the moment certainly comes when those seeds start sprouting they start becoming plants, leaves start growing foliage comes, then buds then flowers and the fragrance that fragrance is godliness

love is the beginning, godliness is the end

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