---
section: Library
booktitle: "The Golden Wind"
booktype: "Diaries"
bookcode: "GWIND"
dategiven: "07 July 1980 pm"
place: " in Chuang Tzu Auditorium"
chapternum: "Chapter #7"
chaptertitle: "None"
acode: "8007075"
shorttitle: "GWIND07"
audio: "No"
video: "No"
esttime: ""
displaytitle: "The Golden Wind: Chapter #7"
---

```style
.sutra {
  font-style: italic;
  white-space: pre-wrap !important;
}
```
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[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up.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.]


Sannyas is the beginning of becoming part of existence. Ego keeps one outside of it. Ego keeps one a stranger, an outsider, a foreigner. The moment we drop the ego then nothing is foreign; then we are rooted in existence. There is no separation anywhere. We breathe god in and out every moment. It is god that beats in our hearts, it is god that circulates in our blood -- the same god that flows in the rivers, rises in the sun, shines in the moon. It is all one.


But the contemporary man feels very much of a stranger. Never before has it happened on such a vast scale. People, a few people, have always felt strangers, outsiders, but now it has gone to epidemic proportions; almost everybody who is intelligent feels alienated, uprooted, feels that he is just an accident. And if one feels 'I am just an accident,' life cannot be a joy, life cannot become a contentment, a fulfilment.


Life is fulfilled only when we start feeling at home with existence. That's what sannyas is all about: helping you to feel at home with existence, with the trees, with the earth, with the sky, with people, with animals. It is our universe and we are not foreigners to it.
Only this experience makes one religious.


It is only through meditation that one starts feeling exalted, crowned; one becomes an emperor. A man who has not known the taste of meditation remains a beggar, because desires are nothing but a continuous begging, asking for more. Even the so-called kings and emperors are beggars -- maybe bigger beggars than the small ones whom you meet begging on the streets but their minds function in the same way; there is the same desire for more. There is no qualitative difference between a beggar and a king.


But meditation brings a revolution. As you go deeper into silence, desires disappear. They exist only on the circumference, like waves existing on the surface; if you dive deep into the ocean there are no waves. So desires are just on the circumference of consciousness. If you dive deep... the deeper you go, the farther away are the desires. At the very centre of your being you completely forget that desires ever existed; they look like dreams, fantasies.


That moment is the most exalted moment, the entry into oneself. Then you can come back to the surface but you cannot lose contact with the centre. Then you remain centred even though you are on the circumference. Then all those waves are just games. One can act and play, and beautifully and gracefully, but without any disturbance, without any tension, without any strain. One can remain in the marketplace and yet in tremendous silence. One can be in the crowd and yet be absolutely alone.


That's the most fundamental thing in sannyas: to be in the world and yet to not be of it; to be in the world but not to allow the world to be in you. Then the whole world becomes just a big stage, and all relationships are just a great drama. Act as beautifully as you can, but remember it is all acting. Neither anything is gained nor anything is lost, hence one remains undisturbed, unperturbed.
A sannyasin becomes the centre of the cyclone.


There are two kinds of fame in the world. One comes through outer riches. The people who have political power are famous, the wealthy, the rich, like Alexander the Great... But there is another kind of fame also which is real fame. That happens to people who attain to inner richness: Jesus Christ, Gautam Buddha, Tao Tzu. These people are famous for a totally different reason. They are not emperors, conquerors, but in a sense they are: they have conquered themselves, they have attained to the inner kingdom. of god.


The first kind of fame is ugly, it is violent: Alexander the Great has to kill thousands of people; Joseph Stalin kills millions of people; Adolf Hitler is one of the greatest murderers history has ever known. These people are mad! They become famous but they are unhealthy, pathological; they bring misery into the world. They themselves are miserable and they create great misery in others. If they had not been, the world would have been far better -- they are calamities.


But Buddha, Christ, Tao Tzu -- these people arc blessings to the world. Without them humanity would not have progressed at all; they are the salt of the earth. Life has some meaning because of them, some poetry, some music because of them. They made themselves blissful and they spread the secrets of being blissful into the world.


So choose the right kind of fame. Don't choose the wrong kind of fame. Become blissful, peaceful, serene, because you can give to others only that which you have got already in the first place. Become a source of bliss and blessing to others.


Religion is the science of bliss. True religion is not based on beliefs; it is only the untrue religion that is based on beliefs. True religion is rooted in experience; hence I don't want my sannyasins to believe in anything, not even in the existence of god, because all kinds of belief are barriers in experiencing the truth.


If you already believe you stop enquiring. Once the belief is there you start thinking that you already know. Belief simply means you have repressed all your doubts -- and enquiry can begin only if your doubts are alive, fresh, young.


Doubts are not to be repressed. They have to be used as stepping stones. They are not bad, nothing is wrong in them, but one should not live in doubts forever. One should use the doubts to find out the truth.


There are two kinds of believers in the world: the believers in beliefs and the believers in doubt. Both are believers, The believers in belief are called theists. There are different kind of theists, they come in all sizes and shapes: Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans. And there are believers in doubt, they are called atheists. They also have different shapes, different colours: there are anarchists and there are communists and there are fascists. But they both agree on one point -- that there is no need to enquire.


One believes in god, one believes god is not, but both have come to a conclusion. And how have they come to a conclusion? They have not explored, they have not gone within themselves, they have not searched far. They have not even remained open to truth, they have become closed. Every conclusion without your Own experience closes you.


My sannyasins have to learn to remain open. I don't teach you belief or disbelief; I teach you enquiry, and enquiry is always scientific. And I trust in enquiry because I know: if you really enquire you will find god; there is no need to believe.


When I know that the sky is full of stars, why should I tell you to believe? I invite you to come out of your room and see for yourself -- I trust my experience, hence I can trust your enquiry.


It is the priests who have not known god, who have not known the starry night outside, who have never gone outside their minds, who are afraid of enquiry. They are afraid because they themselves are suspicious, they themselves are suspicious, they themselves have doubts -- repressed but lurking somewhere. They're repressed, but in moments of weakness they start surfacing. Hence they want everybody else to believe. They are afraid of questioning, they are afraid of asking anything.


Asking seems to them to be disobedience, questions seem to them to be irreligious: you should simply believe whatsoever they say... because they themselves have not experienced.


God is, truth is, tao is -- there is no need to believe at all. Just open the doors and the windows and let the wind and the rain and the sun come in, and they will give you a glimpse of the outside world, of the tremendously beautiful existence. They will become invitations from the ultimate. Then go and explore with joy, with thrill.


My sannyasins have to be adventurers, explorers. One day they are bound to find. And when you yourself find, it has a totally different significance, it has a totally different quality to it. It is not impotent belief, it is living truth, it is your truth -- you can risk your life for it.


Jesus could die so easily for the simple reason that the knew. If he had been just a believer he would have wavered, he would have escaped. There was every possibility to escape. He need not have gone to the capital city. Rumours were coming that he would be caught; he knew everything. It was almost certain that he was going to be caught -- he could have escaped...


Socrates would not have died so willingly. The court even offered him the opportunity to escape: 'If you leave Athens we won't punish you, but then you cannot come back to Athens. Simply leave the town.' If he had been just a believer hc would have escaped from the town; life is far more important. He could have lived somewhere else. Athens was not the whole world, just a city -- the whole world was there. But he said 'I know whatsoever I am saying is true and I am ready to risk all for it.' The court could feel the sincerity of the man; he was ready to sacrifice his life -- they gave him another opportunity.


They said, 'Then do one thing: live in Athens if you insist, but stop talking about your philosophy.' He said, 'That I cannot do. That is my business. That I cannot stop. For that you will have to kill me. While I am alive I am going to spread the truth because that is the whole purpose of my being alive. Otherwise what is the point of being alive? -- then death is far better.'


He refused both opportunities. This would not have been possible if he had been only a man of belief. He trusted his enquiry, he trusted his own experience.
One's own experience is so valuable, one can sacrifice everything for it.


Bliss is the greatest blessing in life. Without knowing bliss one lives in vain; in fact one does not live but only vegetates, one only dies. What we ordinarily call life is nothing but a gradual process of death. From the moment of birth we start dying. Every day, one day less; time goes on slipping out of one's fingers like water. This is not life because it ends only in the graveyard.


You may go in any direction, you may do any kind of work, but every road leads to the grave. The proverb is that every road leads to Rome -- I don't know why, unless Rome is another name for the graveyard! Every road leads to the graveyard... and in fact, Rome is a graveyard, particularly the Vatican City. It is where Christ has really been crucified, it is where he is buried.


Our life is not worth calling life. Life starts only when you start moving in the dimension beyond death. That's what meditation is for: a strategy, a device, a ladder, to go beyond death. And just a glimpse of the beyond is enough. Then you know only the body is going to die, not you, and only the body is born, not you. You were here before your birth and you will be here after your death. You are part of eternity.


When one experiences this, life becomes blissful, and in that blissfulness one feels that god has blessed one. Then naturally, spontaneously, gratitude arises. I call that gratitude prayer. All other prayers are pseudo. The real prayer arises only when you have experienced bliss and the blessing of it. Then naturally you have to be thankful, you have to bow down to existence. You feel what a gift has been given to you -- and you had not asked for it, you don't even deserve it. Nobody deserves it, nobody is worthy of it, but god gives out of his abundance.
			

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