---
section: Library
booktitle: "The Shadow of the Bamboo"
booktype: "Diaries"
bookcode: "BAMBOO"
dategiven: "12 April 1979 pm"
place: " in Chuang Tzu Auditorium"
chapternum: "Chapter #12"
chaptertitle: "None"
acode: "7904125"
shorttitle: "BAMBOO12"
audio: "No"
video: "No"
esttime: ""
displaytitle: "The Shadow of the Bamboo: Chapter #12"
---

```style
.sutra {
  font-style: italic;
  white-space: pre-wrap !important;
}
```
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Anand Christopher. Anand means bliss, christopher means Christ-bearer. Each human being is a christopher, because each human being is a bearer of Christ-consciousness. Everybody is carrying the Christ within his soul; it has only to be uncovered. It is a hidden treasure: a little digging in the interiority of one's being is needed.


Once you have found your Christ within you, you have found God, because Christ is the bridge between man and God. Remember, Christ has nothing to do with Jesus Christ as such. A Buddha is a Christ, a Krishna is a Christ. Christ is not a personal name; it symbolizes the awakened soul. It means exactly what Buddha means: Buddha means the awakened one and Christ means the crowned one. Once you are awakened, you are crowned. Asleep you are a beggar; awakened you are the emperor.


Prem Gerhard. Prem means love, gerhard means a spear -- a love spear. Love pierces like a spear in the heart. In fact it kills you as you are. It gives you a new birth, but the new birth is possible only if the old dies. The birth has to be preceded by death, resurrection has to be preceded by crucifixion; and love is that miracle that kills and resurrects. It is poison and nectar both.


Love is the greatest paradox of life, the most mysterious phenomenon. It contains the opposites in it. It is the meeting of the contraries. Darkness and light become one in it, because life and death become one in it.


Anand Janne. Anand means bliss. Janne is a form of john, the feminine form of john; john is Hebrew and means the gracious gift of God. Your full name will mean bliss, the gracious gift of God.


Man is capable of creating pleasure, but is not capable of creating bliss. Pleasure is man-made, hence it is momentary. Whatsoever man makes is momentary. Man himself is momentary; he cannot make anything eternal. And the momentary never satisfies; on the contrary it leaves you more dissatisfied than you were ever before. It gives you a taste and then it is gone; and then you feel more miserable. Had one never tasted it, one would have never known the misery.


Man can create pleasure, and in the wake of pleasure comes misery; both are man-made. If there is no pleasure there will be no misery, hence poor people are less miserable. It looks very illogical, but poor people are less miserable than the rich people, because the rich know the taste of pleasure and also know that it goes; it comes and it is gone. It is just there as a glimpse, but after the glimpse, after the lightning, the darkness becomes darker.


The poor man has no taste of pleasure, hence he cannot be miserable. People coming from the West to the East are surprised that people are not tremendously unhappy. They should be: they have nothing to be happy about. In fact because they have nothing to be happy about, they cannot be unhappy -- for what?


They have no taste of happiness, hence they accept life as it is; this is the only life they know. They have relaxed with it, they have accepted it. For centuries they have lived in misery and starvation and illness and they know how it is; there is no point in complaining. But the person who has tasted a little bit of pleasure feels very miserable. Both are man-made.


Bliss is not man-made, hence bliss has nothing opposite to it. Pleasure is opposed by misery, success by failure, silence by noise, life by death, but bliss has no opposite to it. It is not man-made. Whatsoever man makes remains dual. It comes as a gift, and one has to learn how to receive it.


Sannyas is a way of becoming a host to God, of becoming a receptivity, opening up to the unknown. Once you open up to the unknown, fearlessly -- you are ready to go with the unknown, in insecurity, in the uncharted sea, with no maps -- bliss becomes possible. But it always comes from the beyond. It is a gift, it is the grace of God.


Prem Stephen. Prem means love, stephen means the crowned one. I am crowning you. Sannyas makes you a king.


The old idea of sannyas was that of a beggar. Actually, the Buddhist sannyasins were called "bhikkus", beggars; but that idea did not work. It is against your reality. Nobody is a beggar; everybody is a born king. We may have forgotten it, we may have forgotten the way to it, but the reality remains the same. The way can be found and we can remember the forgotten truth. Once you remember who you are, you become the crowned one.


My sannyasin has to be a king, not a beggar. He has to live abundantly, he has to live totally. He is not to renounce anything. He has to rejoice in everything. He has to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary. He has to live in a new way so that everything becomes a celebration. And the secret is love! It is love that makes everything a celebration.


Anand Michiyo. Anand means bliss, michi means the way, yo means the positive. Your full name will mean: bliss, the positive way. I teach the positive. Man has suffered from the negative too long. All the old religions were basically negative. They taught people to deny life; they taught people to repress themselves and their natural desires. They taught people self-condemnation. They destroyed people and reduced them to sinners. They destroyed all human glory. They created a very sad and serious earth. They brought death, not life, to the world.


Hence five thousand years of religious teachings and people are not religious yet -- because it is impossible to live with the negative. Only a few pathological people can maintain it. Only somebody who is psychologically ill can live in a no. The healthy person needs a yes to live with. He needs the space of yes to bloom. That's what I mean by the positive way: say yes to life, say yes to yourself; say yes to your body, say yes to your natural instincts, desires.


Live fearlessly, live without any idea of sin, and you will start growing and you will start flowering. And one day you will know what God is. It is only to those who can say an ultimate yes to existence that God becomes available. Yes is the door to his temple. Become a blissful yes!


[A sannyasin says: In the Hypnotherapy group I began to communicate with the unconsciousness. It is very afraid of coming back and staying forever.]


It is a good sign. People should be afraid of me, if they understand a little bit they will be afraid; and you have started understanding me a little bit. But if you understand me a little more the fear will disappear, and love will arise. It is the same energy: it becomes fear, it becomes love. Fear is the beginning of love.


So don't be worried about it; accept it and go more and more deeply into your understanding. And that's what has happened in the Hypnotherapy group: you have come in contact with your unconscious. The unconscious is vast and the conscious is very tiny, and facing the unconscious, trembling arises. The conscious is only the tip of the iceberg and the unconscious is huge. The mind feels simply impotent seeing the vastness of the unconscious; one wants to run away.


And to be with me you have to encounter yourself. If you want to be with me, you have to risk knowing yourself. But ultimately, that's what makes one free of all bondage, free of all misery, free of all anguish; that's what ultimately makes one blissful. But the way is arduous, and there are many agonies to be faced, many fears to be faced. But they can all be faced; not only faced: they can be transformed and used for your ultimate growth.
Finish things and come!
			

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