---
section: Library
booktitle: "Nirvana now or never"
booktype: "Diaries"
bookcode: "NEVER"
dategiven: "09 February 1980 pm"
place: " in Chuang Tzu Auditorium"
chapternum: "Chapter #9"
chaptertitle: "None"
acode: "8002095"
shorttitle: "NEVER09"
audio: "No"
video: "No"
esttime: ""
displaytitle: "Nirvana now or never: Chapter #9"
---

```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[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been copy-typed.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 name: Ma Anand Andrea.
Anand means bliss. Andrea means courageous.


Man has lived in misery for centuries. It has become his way of life; hence great courage is needed to be blissful because the whole crowd that surrounds you is miserable. It is dangerous to be blissful, because it is going against the mob mind. They cannot forgive a blissful person, they have never done such a thing in the whole history. They are very sympathetic if you are miserable. If you create misery for yourself they even respect you, if you torture yourself, if you are a masochist, they worship you like a saint. But  to be blissful is risky! THen the whole crowd is against you, they want to destroy you, because your very existence is a question mark on their way of life. Somehow they have accepted that to be miserable is natural, that that's what life is all about.


Now suddenly there comes a person who is blissful: he creates confusion, he disturbs their settledness, he stirs their minds. Questions start arising, doubts about their own life and the philosophies of life they have created start becoming bigger and bigger. Their philosophies start crumbling. A simple blissful man is enough to prove the whole crowd wrong, and nobody wants to be proved to be wrong. People would love to remain miserable but they would not like to be proved to be wrong, and the very presence of a blissful person is proof enough. He need not argue. He is his argument; hence the crucifixion of Jesus, the poisoning of Socrates' the murdering of Al Hillaj Mansoor -- and things have not changed even now. Hence I say it needs courage to be blissful, it needs guts to be blissful.


Bliss is very simple, but because you will be going against the accepted attitude and approach of people, against their very foundation; hence courage is needed, otherwise it is a very simple and natural phenomenon.


Misery is unnatural, bliss is natural, but people have accepted the unnatural as their nature. And it has become such a long, long conditioning. It is almost eternal. It has been there forever. Only very few people have been able to escape from this wheel of repetitive misery. But if one decides, one can get out of it. All that is needed is courage; the courage of a gambler, the courage of a person who leaves this shore for the further shore without any map, not even knowing wether the other shore exists or not. but it is really beautiful to go on such an adventure.


Only this adventure brings meaning to your life, significance to your being. Only this adventure starts a pilgrimage in your life towards the divine.
Bliss is divine!

This is your name: Swami Anand Kavyen.
Anand means bliss. Kavyen means a poet.


The experience of bliss makes everyone a poet. One may not compose poetry but one starts living poetry. One becomes poetry -- that's my definition of a poet. It is not confined to those people who compose songs. It is a far wider world with greater significance, with more implications, with more, many more dimensions that have ever been conceived about it. It is more a concern about your being; not what, with what you so, but what you are.


Bliss makes a poet. His whole life starts becoming a song, a melody, a celebration. To live without bliss is to live a very stupid life -- very grammatical, very mathematical, very calculative, but all these things are insignificant. They can make you a good businessman but they cannot give you anything more than money, power, prestige, and all those things are really just rubbish.


I am not against money, I am not against ANYthing. Use it, but don't be used by it. Live as richly as possible. I am not only for inner richness, I am also for outer richniess. There is no contradiction between the two. In fact both should go hand in hand, but don't just be a beggar, accumulating money, don't just be in a constant discontent for power, prestige, respectability. There are higher values. And only those higher values make life worth living, otherwise it is just burden: one can carry it as a duty, from the cradle to the grave, one can go on dragging oneself, somehow. Everybody is dragging, the whole crowd is dragging, so you can go on imitation others but there will be no dance in your life.


And the moment dance enters your life god enters. To me god is a dancer, a poet, a musician, a lover. The idea of god as a father -- the Christian idea or the Jewish idea -- is very childish. The very word "father" is a projection of an orphan, of a mind which is not grown-up, a mind which needs a father figure.


My sannyasins have to learn the art of growing up, becoming mature. then god has a totally different meaning. It is no more a person; it becomes more and more a quality; love, bliss. freedom, creativity. But all these things happen through bliss.


Unless you have abundant bliss in you -- so much that you have to share it -- there cannot be any poetry, there cannot be any flowers. Flowers are luxuries. A tree blooms only when it has too much juice, too much life, that it has to burst forth into colours, it has to sing and dance and sway, it has to share its joy with the whole universe. That's exactly what happens to a blissful person.


My whole teaching is for bliss. And it is everybody's choice. If one wants to be blissful nobody can prevent, if one is miserable it is one's own decision to be so.


This is the first principle of sannyas, then whatsoever you are is your responsibility. Don't shirk it and don't throw it upon other people's shoulders. It is your and only your responsibility. To accept it as your responsibility totally brings tremendous freedom, because then you can change, you can choose a different way of life. There is no need to be miserable. We create it hence we are miserable. Don't create misery and bliss erupts in you like a volcano!


This is your name: Ma Anand Sudhi. Anand means bliss. Sudhi means remembrance.


Bliss is not something new that we have to achieve. It is a forgotten language; we have only to remember. Each child has known it in the mother's womb. Each child has experienced it but then the moment he enters into the world, he starts losing contact with it. We start changing him into an extrovert, we start forcing him not to be an introvert. In the mother's womb he was an introvert; he was just living within himself. There was nobody else. He was in total aloneness, in tremendous silence, in profound peace. There was no anxiety, no thought, no desire, no mind as such -- not even dreams, so no question of nightmares. He was just in a deep meditative state.


But the moment he is born, he opens his eyes and he finds a big world around himself, and naturally, he himself becomes interested in the big world. And the whole society wants him to come out of himself. So slowly slowly we lead him out of his inner being into all kinds of relationships. We teach him extroversion.


This extroversion makes him forget his bliss, and the purpose of sannyas is again to help you to reach to your innermost core, again to have that experience that you had once, again to be in that space which was once yours. In fact that's why there is such a search for bliss, because we have known it. One can search only for that which one has experienced in some way, somewhere. It haunts, it follows you, in the deep unconscious somewhere it is still intact, still calling you to come in.


Meditation is only a simple process of turning inwards, a one hundred and eighty degree turn.


I am not against the outside world, but first one should become centered inside one's being and then you can live outside. That centering should not be forgotten, because that is our real life, our kingdom. We should remain centered in it, grounded in it, and then we can live in the outside world. There is no problem in it.


So I don't teach my sannyasins to escape from the world; I only teach them how to remain centered and yet in the world, how to remain blissful and yet in the marketplace. And the true bliss is not disturbed by the marketplace. That which is disturbed by the marketplace is not true; it is phony, cultivated, it is something believed, something that you have created through auto-hypnosis; only then it can be destroyed and you can be directed from it.


Remember, that bliss is not an ambition, it is not an achievement, it is not something to be found, created. It is something that is already the case in the deepest part of your being; we have just to step back to find it. It is ours. Even though we have forgotten it, it is there. It cannot be lost, only forgotten. Hence sannyas is only a remembrance, not a discovery but a rediscovery.

This is your name: Swami Anand Bijen.
Anand means bliss. Bijen means a seed, a potentiality.


Bliss is a seed with all potentiality, with millions of flowers hidden in it. One has just to find a right climate, right soil for it, and it starts growing. Sannyas is a climate, a soil.


To be a sannyasin simply means to fall in the soil like a seed, and to die in the soil like a seed. Unless the seed dies it cannot grow, it cannot attain its potential, it cannot become actual; hence the death of the seed is not really a death, but a birth. A seed as a seed is dead. When the seed dies it starts living -- that's the meaning of Jesus crucifixion and resurrection. I don't think it is a historical fact, it cannot be.


Only superstitious people can believe in such stupid things, but it is a beautiful metaphor. And because Christians have insisted that this is a historical fact they have missed the whole point, they have missed the metaphor, which is its real essence. The metaphor is Jesus dies on the cross and then there is a resurrection, after three days.


Those three days are significant, that number is significant. In the East he must lave learned the idea, because he has been in the East, for eighteen years. There is no record in the Bible, it is a big gap -- where he has been? But there are records available in eastern scriptures. He has been to Egypt, he has been to Kashmir, he has been to Ladakh. In an ancient library of Ladakh, still, there are records.


These eighteen years from the age twelve up to the age thirty he lived with great masters, and he learned many secrets. He must have carried the idea of the number three, because in the East we say you have to die three deaths. Each day represents one death. First, the death of the body, the outer shell of the seed; second, the death of the mind, the inner shell of the seed; and third, the death of the heart, the innermost layer of the seed. When these three have died the fourth is born -- that is resurrection, the fourth. We have called it in the East, Turiya. Exactly it means, the fourth -- it is just a number. We have not given it a name knowingly, because all names are bound to be misinterpreted sooner or later; hence a number has been given. You cannot so anything with a number, the fourth.


God can be misrepresented, soul can be given meaning, self can become just an ego -- maybe a holy ego, a holy ghost -- but what you will so with the fourth? There seems to be nothing to do with the fourth. It is simply a number. It simply represents you have passed the three layers and reached the fourth.
Those three days represent three deaths, and fourth is the resurrection.


Bliss is a resurrection. Misery is living like a seed and bliss is like blossoming. When a man becomes actualised, realised, when all his potential becomes a reality, then only there is bliss, then only there is contentment. That's exactly the meaning of paradise. The word "paradise" comes from a Persian word, "firdaus". Firdaus means a beautiful garden.


A man becomes a beautiful garden. A seed is just ugly, but it contains tremendous beauty. You cannot find it by dissecting the seed. The seed has to find a right way to die. You can cut it by knife, but that is a wrong way to die.


Millions of people die but they die wrongly, hence they don't become Buddhas or Christs; very few people have died articulately, artfully, scientifically.
Sannyas is both; a process of right-dying and a process of resurrection.

This is your name: Ma Anand Mani.
Anand means bliss. Mani means a diamond.


The greatest diamond in the world is Kohinoor. It is in the possession of the British queen. It was found in a small village in India, Golconda. The person who had found it was a farmer. he had found it in his own farm; a small stream used to flow, and by the side of the stream he found the beautiful stone. He thought it will be good for the children, they will play with it, so he brought it home. And for three years it was lying around; children sometimes were playing, throwing it here and there. It was just by a chance that a sannyasin -- a wanderer sannyasin -- stayed in the poor man's hut one night.


He used to be a jeweller when he was not a sannyasin. He could not believe his eyes: he had seen thousand of diamonds but never such a big diamond. he must have lost a beat (laughter)... he remained in a shock! And children were throwing that precious thing here and there, and he asked the farmer "Are you mad or what? This must be the greatest diamond in the world. I cannot believe there can be a greater diamond than this. You can become the richest man."


The man said "It has been lying here for three years." Then the diamond was given to the king. Now Kohinoor that exists is only one-third of his original weight, but millions of times more precious because much had been cut, polished; in cutting and polishing it had remained only one-third of its original weight, but as it has been cut and polished more and more, it has become more and more precious.


Each man is a raw diamond, and each man is in the hands of those who don't know that what a precious phenomenon life is. It is just lying around, people are wasting it. It needs a jeweller to recognise, to see, the beauty, the possibility, the future. It needs a visionary, a great poet to see what it can become. That's the function of a master, to help each disciple to recognise the preciousness of life, its infinite treasures, its hidden kingdom.


Every man is a Kohinoor and every man is in wrong hands. Every man needs to be reminded, every man needs to be awakened so that one can recognise what life can be! Of course then much cutting and polishing will needed, but once you have recognised the preciousness of your being then one can do everything for it.


The whole process that happens between a master and a disciple is exactly that of a jeweller and the diamond: the master has to cut in many ways, because much is unnecessary, non-essential, much is ugly, much is not needed -- it has to be eliminated.


The ego has to be eliminated, the anger has to be eliminated, the violence has to be eliminated, the hatred, the possessiveness, the jealousy, the greed. And when all these are eliminated then there is bliss, love, awareness, freedom, godliness. They are there but hidden behind layers of the non-essential and the ugly. But all these layers can be removed. Yes, sometimes it hurts, because sometimes one things this is very essential and it should not be eliminated.


This phenomenon of the master and the disciple is one of the greatest contributions of the East to humanity. In the West there have been only teachers and students. Even a man like Socrates is thought only as a great teacher, and Plato and others are his students. In the East we have a great distinction between a teacher and a master.


A teacher is only to give you information. A master has to give you transformation -- it is a totally different process. Information is not difficult: you can go on memorising it. That's what schools, colleges, universities are doing: they go on feeding your biocomputer, they go on putting more and more information in you. The master has to transform you; hence deep surrender is needed, because the master will start working on you and it hurts -- it is surgical. And the moment he takes his sword and starts cutting you, if there is not surrender and love, you will escape! And remember, it is very dangerous to escape from the surgeon's table! (laughter) He may have already (laughter).... but few things, opened few places, and if you escape...


I have heard it happened once! (much laughter) A politician's brain was being changed. His whole brain has been taken out and they were searching for another brain to be transplanted. Meanwhile a man came running to the politician and said "What are you doing here? -- you have been elected the prime minister," so the politician escaped. After seven years he turned, and the doctors said "And what you have been doing? It is a miracle, because your brain is here, and we have not been able to transplant another brain!"


The politician said "But I didn't need it -- I was the prime minister. Now I am no more the prime minister, so I have come back. Please fix some brain, because now I will need it!"


It is dangerous to escape from a surgeon's table -- unless you are going in politics, then it is okay (laughter).


A sannyasin has to be in a total surrender, in deep love. It is a love affair. Only then it is possible for him to allow to cut the unnecessary, the ugly, so that the essential can start shining in its immense beauty and splendour. Every man is an imprisoned splendour! -- but imprisoned and the walls have to be removed. And they can be removed; just a deep and total co-operation from the disciple is needed, a total yes is the need, and once you can say yes, transformation starts immediately, instantly. In the very saying of yes -- when your heart says yes you are already a new person, because ordinarily we are always saying no. Even if we say yes on the outside deep down there is no.


Sannyas is a song of saying yes, first to the master, then to community of the master, the commune of the master, and then to the law that has made one a master and that runs through the commune as a foundation. These are the three shelters the disciples of Buddha used to pray before their sannyas. These were the three prayers they had to assert: "Buddham sharanam gauchchami" -- that was the first step: I take refuge into the feet of the Buddha -- that is surrender to the master; "Sangham sharanam gauchchami" -- I take refuge in the commune of the Buddha -- that is the second surrender.


And remember the second is more difficult than the first, because to surrender to a man like Buddha or a Jesus is not difficult: they are so beautiful people -- one can surrender. But to surrender to the commune (laughter) is far more difficult, because then you are surrendering to people who are almost like you! (laughter) But that helps tremendously: if one can surrender to the commune, then really one's ego is destroyed.


And the third surrender is even more difficult: "Sangham sharanam gauchchami" is the second and "Dhammam sharanam gauchchami" is the third: I go, I take shelter, refuge, into the ultimate law. the realisation of which has made the master the master, the realisation of which has created the commune. The ultimate law runs like a thread in a garden of flowers. You can see the flowers, you cannot see the thread, but it is the thread that keeps them together -- it is invisible. Because it is invisible it is very difficult.


But once one has become able to do the first two surrenders, the third is also, becomes possible. And with these three surrenders one becomes a sannyasin, and then it is not very far away when the raw diamond can be transformed to reveal its true beauty, its true colour, its true glory, its splendour.

This is your name: Swami Anand Udghosh.
Anand means bliss. Udghosh means declaration.


Man can hide one's misery. Man cannot hide one's bliss: it has to be declared! If you don't declare it, it declares itself.


Misery is like a thief: it tries to hide, it does not want to show, it feels its ugliness, it remains behind beautiful facades, but bliss is so beautiful and so overflowing with energy, it wants to dance in the moon, in the sun, in the wind, in the rain. It wants to sing thousands of songs, it wants to share. It is a declaration.


But because we have lived in misery for long, when even bliss happens we try to hide it -- just out of old habit.


One should learn one very basic law: if you hide your bliss it dies; it has to be expressed, then it grows. The more you share, the more you have it. The less you share, the less you have it. If you don't share it at all it disappears. If you can share it with the whole existence without any conditions it becomes universal. Then you have inexhaustible sources, you can go on giving, and you cannot exhaust it.


So start sharing. Whatsoever small bliss comes to you, sing it, dance it, give it to somebody -- to anybody -- don't make any distinctions. And you will be surprised: as you start giving it, it goes on coming more and more to you! And once you have learned that it comes by giving, then one is never miserly about it.


My sannyasins have to shout it from the housetops, they have to sing and dance in the marketplaces, on the streets, in the crowds. They have to make the whole world aware that something tremendously significant is happening. They have to knock on each door -- who knows? The person who is behind the door may be the person who is searching and seeking exactly for what you have brought for him. He may have been searching and not finding it, and just seeing you, he may recognise his own original face: you may become the mirror!


So don't be miserly and don't follow the ordinary law of the economics, that if you share you will lose, so accumulate, be greedy, hide it, don't let anybody know about it -- somebody may steal it. This is not the law of inner world.


Leave all the doors and windows open and send the invitations to all the thieves that it its available -- don't miss the opportunity! You see I have gathered all kinds of thieves around me. These are all thieves!



			

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