---
section: Library
booktitle: "Dance Til the Stars Come Down From the Rafters"
booktype: "Diaries"
bookcode: "RAFTER"
dategiven: "19 January 1980 pm"
place: " in Chuang Tzu Auditorium"
chapternum: "Chapter #19"
chaptertitle: "None"
acode: "8001195"
shorttitle: "RAFTER19"
audio: "No"
video: "No"
esttime: ""
displaytitle: "Dance Til the Stars Come Down From the Rafters: Chapter #19"
---

```style
.sutra {
  font-style: italic;
  white-space: pre-wrap !important;
}
```
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> [!info]
> Note
>
[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been copy-typed. It is for reference purposes only.]


This is your new name: Ma Deva Beate. Deva means divine, beate means bringer of joy.


Sannyas is absolutely meaningless if it is not grounded in bliss. The very fragrance of sannyas has to be bliss, joy. It is not a serious phenomenon. Religious people have looked at life too seriously and they have made the whole thing very sad. We have to change the whole gestalt. Instead of sadness, instead of seriousness, religious-consciousness has to become overflowing with joy, cheerfulness, playfulness. It has to be more fun.


Humanity can only be religious if religion becomes more playful, otherwise a sad religion attracts only sad people, psychologically ill people. Insane people, either sadists or masochists are attracted towards sadness. A really healthy person takes life in a very joyous way. That is the sign for health. He is bubbling with joy and he shares his joy, he overflows with joy.


This is your name: Swami Deva Tom. Deva means divine, tom means a seeker of truth -- a seeker of divine truth.


Truth can only be divine. Anything less than that is only guesswork. The human mind can only guess, it cannot know truth, it cannot come to any conclusion about truth. Truth has to be experienced in a place far more deep than in the mind.


Mind is the superficial layer of your being, it is the circumference, and truth has to be experienced at the very center of your being. At the very center of your being there is silence, no thought, eternal silence, virgin silence. No thought has ever penetrated there, no thought can ever penetrate there.


Thoughts can only exist on the surface, just like waves can exist only on the surface, not in the depth of the sea, because only on the surface do they come in close contact with the winds. Your mind is on the surface, it comes in close contact with all kinds of winds. The society, the people, situations, problems. They are all winds stirring your surface. But at the deepest core you are utterly silent.


Only in that silence is truth discovered. Hence a seeker of truth has to go within himself. If he is only curious about truth then he will think about it: he may become a great thinker like Kant of Hegel, he may become a great philosopher like Aristotle or Plato, but he will not come to know what truth is.


To know truth one has to go beyond thoughts. Thoughts have to be left far behind, not even their echoes reach you. Only then in that silence do you discover truth. Truth is your nature -- just silence is needed. And silence is also there but you go on swimming on the surface, you never dive deep.
Sannyas means diving deep into your own being.


This is your name: Ma Deva Urte. Deva means divine, Urte means the earth -- the divine earth.


Almost all the organized religions in the past have condemned the earth. They have denied the earth, they have negated it, they have condemned it. The idea was that if you condemn the earth you can praise heaven, if you condemn the earthly life you can praise the spiritual life. Their spiritual life was very partial, in fact, very impotent. It was not capable of absorbing the earthly into it. And whenever something is unearthly it becomes ghostly, spooky. It looses reality.


My effort here is to create a new quality of religiousness: earth and heaven have to meet in my sannyasins. My sannyasins have to be as earthly as possible and as spiritual as possible, and both have to be simultaneous. There is no need to create any division between your body and soul; they are existing in perfect harmony. There is no need to create any division between the earth and god; they are in perfect harmony.


And a religious person also should be capable of living in this harmony. It is only the weaker ones who escape from the earthly life, because they are afraid: they may not be able to face the challenges. They are afraid they may get lost. They are afraid of their own desires, of their own bodies. They are afraid of themselves and they are escaping from themselves which is utterly foolish. Where can you go?


How can you escape from yourself? There is no possible way. Wherever you go, you will be there and you will be the same. No escape is of any help. Transformation is needed, not escape.


And this is the fundamental of transformation: the fundamental meeting of the polar opposites brings richness. When silence and sound meet, music is created. Music is not only sound; if it is only sound it is noise. It is not only silence either. If it is only silence it is dead. It is both; it is silence and sound together, hand in hand, dancing. Only then there is richness. The higher the harmony between sound and silence, the greater the music. And so is the secret of life.


Your name will remind you that the earth is divine, that the earth is godly, that the body is divine, that there is no need to create any division of lower and higher, that darkness is as divine as light and death is as divine as life.


When this vision opens up, you are transported into another world -- the world of harmony, accord.


And that's really the meaning of entering into god: entering into total harmony with existence.


This is your name: Swami Prem Matthias. Prem means love, Matthias means a gift of the lord.


Love is something that we cannot create, we cannot manufacture. It is always a gift of the god. We can become available to it, we can be open to it, receptive to it, but we cannot create it. It is beyond human creativity. It always comes from the beyond, so it happens only to people who allow it to happen, who are ready to be in a state of let-go, who are relaxed enough for it to happen.


In the modern world love has almost disappeared. Much talk about love is there, much poetry, many films, many stories, novels -- they are there just to cover up the lack of love. We are talking too much about love in the world for the simple reason that we are missing it. But by talking about it, you cannot get it. It is like hungry people talking about food and they go on talking about food and they read novels about food and they make films about food... and they can have pornographic magazines about food, nude food! And they can see the colorful pictures, but it is not going to nourish them. It is just trying to avoid the real problem: they are hungry, they need love.


No other time, no other century, has talked so much about love as we are talking about it. And the constant talk about it gives an illusion, as if we know what love is. We are deceiving others and we are deceiving ourselves too. Man is dying without love because as the body needs food, the soul needs love. It is a must. But food you can manufacture, you can create, you can cultivate. About love you have to learn a totally new technique -- the technique of being relaxed, open, available.


It is risky, it is dangerous to be open, to be vulnerable, because one never knows what is going to happen. And so people keep themselves closed; in closedness they feel secure. Security is there, but life disappears -- they are dead even when they are alive. They are almost in their graves -- secure, safe, everything guaranteed, no fear -- but if there is no life what is the point of all these guarantees?


A real life is always adventurous and love is the greatest adventure. It is going into the unknown, it is allowing existence to take possession of you. And existence can take possession of you only if you are ready to dissolve into it. In that dissolution love grows. When you are not, love is and that's how god happens.


Love is the beginning of god, love is the harbinger of god; the first ray of the sun.


This is your name: Ma Anand Aukje. Anand means bliss, aukje means precious one.


Bliss is the most precious experience in life. People may say that they are searching for god but they are really searching for bliss. They may think that they are searching for truth but deep down they are searching for bliss.  Even when they are searching for love they are searching for bliss.


Every search can be reduced to the fundamental search, and that is for bliss. If love gives no bliss nobody will seek it. If truth brings no bliss, who will bother about truth? If god and the experience of him brings hell and misery, then nobody is going to be interested in him except a few suicidal people.


So behind all our search, seeking, there is only one goal -- that is bliss. Bliss is our source and bliss is our goal. We are searching for bliss because we have come from the land of bliss and we are missing it very much. It is a kind of homesickness.

This is your new name: Swami Satyaprem. Satyaprem means love for truth.


Curiosity is not enough. Curiosity is very superficial. Truth can be discovered only when it is a love affair. Only when you cannot live without it, only when you are willing to sacrifice all, only when it is a constant fire within you, when you are aflame with the desire for truth.


Curiosity means just something in the head. It is with all kinds of ifs and buts. It is childish. It has no intensity. At the most it can make you a thinker, but not a mystic.
And it is only by being a mystic that one come to know.


The thinker only thinks about it; he goes about an about. The word 'about' means around. He moves around and around in the same circle . He spins many words. He can make many systems out of those words but those systems are like houses made with playing cards, they are of no use. Yes, once in a while you can become intrigued, utterly interested in it, but that is going to be only a momentary phenomenon. With a little breeze the hole house collapses and you start laughing at your won stupidity. What were you doing?


Truth needs devotion, commitment, a kind of total intensity. And that's what I mean by love. A sannyasin has to be a lover of truth, not only curious but devoted to the search. When truth becomes a higher value than life itself, only then can you find it.


This is your name: Swami Hariprem. Hariprem means love for god. God can never be just a belief. If it is, it is a false god.


The believer goes on deceiving himself. By believing for long periods of time he starts thinking that he knows, but he knows nothing. Belief simply means that you don't know but you are not even courageous enough to accept your ignorance, you are not even sincere enough to say 'I don't know.' Belief gives you an illusion of knowing. There are believers and believers all over the world -- Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian. There are three hundred religions on the earth, that means three hundred belief systems. You can choose whichever appeals to you. But they are all false. Belief as such is false so it doesn't matter whether it is Hindu or Christian or Mohammedan or Communist.


Knowing is a totally different matter. My interest here is not in convincing you about certain dogmas, in converting you to a belief system. My effort is to shatter all belief systems, to destroy all dogmas so that you are free to know, to experience. Belief is not needed but love will be needed.


Belief is just a head thing, love is of the heart. When one starts searching through the heart, one finds. When one goes on playing with the head, one only deceives oneself. Beware of the head. Your head can play so many tricks upon you, it is so cunning and so clever, because it has been in existence for centuries and it has learned many tricks down the ages.


The first step of a sannyasin is to be aware of one's own head, and to be aware of one's own head, one has to be constantly watchful of its cunningnesses, its strategies, its diplomatics, its political games. Then slowly slowly your energy starts moving towards the heart. That day is of a great rejoicing, when you energy finds your heart and your heart starts pulsating for the first time. When the heart pulsates with your energy a window opens; you are in tune with the cosmos. That experience is the experience of god.


This is your new name: Swami Prembindu. Prembindu means a drop of love, but a drop contains all the oceans. The drop is not just a drop, it has all the secrets of all the oceans. If you can understand a single drop of water, you have understood the whole mystery of water. If you can find out the secret of a single drop of water, that is H2O, you have understood all the water wherever it is, on the earth, on the moon, on some other planet, on some other star. Wherever water exists, the secret is going to be the same, it will be H2O. And so is the case with love. Just a drop of love is enough to give you the secret key to god.


So don't hanker for much, there is no need for much. Just become a dewdrop of love: fresh, humble, ready to disappear, evaporate, into the sun, ready to die in the cosmos, ready to create space for god to come i,.


That readiness is love, and one who is ready to die into existence is resurrected, is resurrected on a higher plane, in a new dimension, into eternity. He disappears from time and is born into eternity, and we are capable of it. Although we are just dewdrops, we contain oceans.


This is your new name: Ma Paritosh. Paritosh means total contentment, absolute contentment.


Mind is basically discontented. It is always hankering for more.  There is no way to satisfy it. Whatsoever you give to it, it will always ask for more. To ask for more is its nature. It is incapable of feeling contented, it can only complain. It is a beggar. It can only desire.


The moment you become a little distant from the mind -- that's what meditation is, creating a distance between you and the mind -- you start feeling a new climate, the climate of contentment. Suddenly there is no hankering for anything. Suddenly the future is no more your interest, the past is no more your obsession. whatsoever you have seems to be so fulfilling; it may not be much but it seems so fulfilling. Even ordinary things of life can give such tremendous contentment that one could have never believed it before. Just sipping a cup of tea is more than one can ask for, or just breathing or just listening to the wind passing through the pine trees or just the moon reflected on the water. The whole world becomes a totally different kind of world when you are moving away from the mind. For the first time you start seeing with clear eyes. A clarity arises because there is no complaint, no grudge. And when there is no complaint, no grudge, no desire, the whole energy that was involved in all those activities is released and the same energy becomes gratitude. One feels gratitude for no reason at all. That is true prayer.


And when you are really distant from the mind -- that means when you have experienced the state of no-mind, the state in which there is no thought, none at all, and the mind has completely disappeared -- absolute contentment starts showering on you like a rain of flowers. That is Buddhahood, that is enlightenment.

This is your new name: Ma Paripurna. Paripurna means absolutely perfect.


Man is not imperfect. Nothing is imperfect, nothing can be imperfect, because all is made of god. And god is perfection.


So we are not to become perfect, we have simply to see that we are perfect. We have to recognize it, to remember it. We have forgotten it, that's all. It is not a question of becoming. It is a question of a long, long pilgrimage to some distant goal. It is only a question of awakening so that you can see who you are.


The moment you see yourself you know that all is perfect, nothing is missing. everything is as it should be. And that moment of knowing that everything is as it should be opens the doors of all the mysteries of existence for you. Then in this very moment one is transported into paradise. Then this very earth becomes paradise and this very body the Buddha.
			

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