---
section: Library
booktitle: "The Old Pond ... Plop"
booktype: "Diaries"
bookcode: "POND"
dategiven: "31 January 1981 pm"
place: " in Chuang Tzu Auditorium"
chapternum: "Chapter #31"
chaptertitle: "None"
acode: "8101315"
shorttitle: "POND31"
audio: "No"
video: "No"
esttime: ""
displaytitle: "The Old Pond ... Plop: Chapter #31"
---

```style
.sutra {
  font-style: italic;
  white-space: pre-wrap !important;
}
```
<!--This file is automatically generated. Do not edit!-->
> [!info]
> Note
>
[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up.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.]


(To Monika) This is your name: Ma Anand Yogo. Anand means bliss. Yogo means ultimate union.


The misery of man is in his separation from his own source. Man has become like a tree which is uprooted from the earth. Naturally, the tree cannot be blissful; the tree cannot remain alive for long either. The tree has lost its connection with the whole, it is existing in separation, alienation. And man is also a tree; his roots are invisible but they are there. One is continuously breathing in and out -- our breath is our root. And we are not only breathing through the nose; we are breathing through every pore of the skin. Through millions of pores in the skin we are continuously breathing in and out.


One experiment has shown that if the nose is left open and the whole body is deeply painted so that all the pores become closed, a person cannot exist for more than three hours, even though he is breathing through the nose. Breathing through the nose may be our main root, but there are millions of roots surrounding us, invisible.


We are in existence as a part of the whole. The moment that is realised, the moment one becomes aware of this unity, great bliss arises, for no reason at all. Suddenly one has found one's home. One is no more a homeless wanderer, one has arrived!


Ordinarily everybody is searching, seeking, desiring; people are seeking money, power, prestige, love, and a thousand and one things, but deep down if you analyse all their desires you will find one single desire: they want to be reunited with existence. Howsoever camouflaged the desire is, a penetrating awareness can find it. Through power man thinks that he will be able to reconnect, he will be capable; powerless what can he do? With money he thinks maybe he can purchase bliss. In love also the deepest desire is to find a certain union with the other. Perhaps the other can become a window to the whole. That's why every love affair fails sooner or later. If one is intelligent enough, sooner. If one is stupid then it depends on how stupid one is. Then it takes a longer time. The really idiotic people can love permanently!


But love fails for the simple reason that what we are expecting out of it is not possible through it. It is not love's fault! It is our expectation that gets frustrated. Love is perfectly beautiful. If we stop expecting something which is beyond love then there is no failure; then love is a beautiful phenomenon, a great sharing, a friendship. But unconsciously we are searching.


The man is searching through the woman, the woman is searching through the man, for a door, a window into the whole. And because it is not found... Where can you find a woman who can become a window to the ultimate? Yes, once in a while such women have existed -- a Meera, a Sahajo -- rare women, but they will not fall in love with any man! (laughter) They have no need to.


There have been men who are windows to the infinite -- a Buddha, a Jesus, a Zarathustra -- but they will not fall in love with any woman. They can shower all their bliss and joy but you cannot reduce them into ordinary lovers; that is impossible.


So the person, man or woman, who can be found will not be a window, and the person who is a window is not available. The person who is available is going to be a wall! (laughter) And sooner or later you will find that you are hitting your head against it, (laughter) One can make it a little comfortable, one can pad the wall, one can put pillows (laughter) against the wall. That's what all lovers all over the world are doing: padding; putting pillows making it somehow a little bit convenient, comfortable so it does not hurt so much. The reason for this is that our deep desire is to find some way to get out of our imprisoned state, to get out of this situation in which we are caught, to get rooted again so that we can blossom, flower, grow.


Because it is frustrated, because it is not fulfilled by the so-called love, millions of people have gone against love. They have renounced love, renounced life, escaped to the monasteries, escaped to the mountains, to the deserts; but that does not help either. Only understanding helps. And the most important thing for a sannyasin to understand is that we have to drop all our barriers against the whole. And the basic barrier is the ego; when we think in terms of I, naturally he became divided, separate. Then existence is there as an object and we are the subject, we are separate. If we lose our ego, if we allow it to melt and merge into the whole just like a dewdrop slipping into the ocean, losing its boundaries, suddenly life starts moving in a new dimension -- it is total, it is whole, it is holy.


And then there is bliss. Bliss is a by-product of becoming united with the whole. Misery is separation, bliss is union.


How long will you be here?
-- Two days.
-- Then come back again...
-- I will
-- ... for a longer period -- really long! (laughter)


(To Dod) This is your name: Swami Anand Omkar. Anand means bliss. Omkar is untranslatable (laughter) ... but, a few indications can be given so that you can feel the meaning of it. It is not a word, it is a symbol -- that's why it is untranslatable. It simply symbolises the ultimate harmony of existence.


Existence is an unbelievable, incredible orchestra. Everything is moving in tremendous rhythm. Except for man, everything is part of the cosmos, part of a great festival that goes on and on. It is an eternal festival with no beginning, no end.


Man goes astray. That too is natural, because man is the only being which has the freedom to choose, and the freedom to choose implies that you can choose going against the whole. You can choose to be with the whole, you can choose not to be with the whole. You can choose to go against the current, you can push the river, you can fight the river, or you can choose to relax and let go and be with the river, with no fight, in deep surrender, moving with it wherever it goes.


It is man's prerogative that he has the choice, but out of one hundred people, ninety-nine misuse the freedom. They use it in a negative way. There is a reason why this happens: only when you use your freedom in a negative way do you feel that you have it. When you say no you feel you are free; when you say yes you don't feel that you are free; hence it is part of life's growth that everybody has to say no, has to fight, has to go astray. But this should not become one's whole lifestyle -- then it is stupid!


Once you have learned that you are free -- and saying no is a good way to learn that you are free -- you have to use that freedom to say yes. That yes is sannyas; and the moment you say yes to the whole you become part of the orchestra. You are no longer existing separately, on your own. You are in accord; and then a certain music is felt, a humming sound -- that music is omkar.


Omkar represents the ultimate experience of universal music, of celestial music. The symbol is really significant. In fact no symbol has come so close to the truth. Even tao, which is one of the most significant symbols, has not the beauty of om. Omkar comes out of the sound om.


If you go into an empty temple or if you go into the mountains where a few echo points exist, where valleys and mountains echo your sound, then just start humming the sound om, loudly -- om, om, om -- for a few minutes, and then suddenly stop and listen. The valleys, the mountains, are echoing, your own sound is coming back and showering on you like flowers. That echoing sound of om is omkar; something very approximate to it happens in deep surrender.


Your whole being starts dancing in a rhythm, your whole being, each cell and fibre, is humming. There is an indescribable joy, a bliss which is like a fragrance surrounding you, like an aura surrounding you. And at the deepest core of your being there is pure music. The Zen people call it the sound of one hand clapping.


So there are two ways of life: a life rooted in saying no and a life rooted in saying yes. But I don't think they are opposites. One has to learn to say no in order to say yes one day. If you don't learn to say no your yes will be impotent. If you say yes directly without ever going astray your yes will not have anything in it; it will be contentless. Or if you go on saying no your whole life then too you will have missed the point.


No and yes have to be used as stepping stones. No has to be the first stone and yes the second; and with those two steps the whole journey is complete.


This is your name: Swami Anand Purnesh. Anand means bliss. Purnesh means perfect.


Pleasure is always imperfect. Something is always missing in it; that is inevitable for many reasons. One reason is that pleasure is very momentary, fleeting; you have not even tasted it and it is gone - how can it be perfect? It always leaves you in a deeper misery than you were in before. The darkness now feels deeper, darker, because for a moment there was a flash of light. Before it was there you were accustomed to your darkness. There was no comparison - all that you knew was darkness. But now you know something totally different is possible; hence the misery. Each pleasure is followed by deep misery, despair.


And then a great hankering arises to find the same pleasure again and again. Then a second problem arises: Whenever you experience something for the first time it has a totally different flavor; when you repeat it the second time it is no longer the same thing - the novelty is gone, the newness is missing. It looks a little stale. The surprise is no more there, the wonder is no more there, and when you repeat something again and again it becomes mechanical, flat. That's why husbands and wives look so flat, just like flat tires! Both resting by the side of a muddy Indian road, nowhere to go, telling each other "I love you," and knowing perfectly well that whatever they are saying is nonsense. But what else to do? - one has to say something. And this happens with every pleasure: every pleasure turns into pain because of repetition.


You may like a certain food very much today, but tomorrow it will not be the same, and the day after tomorrow you will start getting fed up with it.


The word 'fed up' is really good: on the first day you were nourished and by the third day you are fed up. Within only three days such a revolution!


Every pleasure leaves behind its darkness; and then you hanker for it, but when you find it again it is never the same. But there is nothing else so you go on repeating it, the same vicious circle; every time you find it with great hope, and every time you are standing there looking silly. Hence you feel empty, all hopes gone, and slowly slowly the pleasure turns into pain. This is the nature of pleasure. I am not blaming it, I am simply describing it. I am not a condemnor at all. If somebody enjoys it, perfectly good, but nobody really can enjoy it.


Bliss is always perfect, for the simple reason that it comes but never goes. There is a beginning to it but there is no end to it.


Secondly, it is always fresh, because it is part of eternity, not part of time. It is non-temporal. Thirdly, it does not depend on others; it arises in your own being, it is your own flowering, and because it goes on growing, it goes on and on flowing, you are never tired of it. There is always a surprise waiting for you. Each moment you are in for a great surprise. The wonder goes on deepening, the mystery becomes more mysterious.


Pleasure can be explained and can be explained away too. For example, sexual pleasure can be explained by chemistry, hormones, biology, physiology; and now brain experts say that it is a very simple phenomenon: a certain center in the brain just has to be triggered and you will get what you call sexual pleasure, orgasmic pleasure. And there is no need for any sexual activity for it; just a small electrode can be inserted into the head and you can keep a small remote control device in your pocket with an electronic battery and that will do. You just push the button and the electrode starts playing with your sex center in the brain and you go berserk! You will have great orgasmic spasm, far greater then you can ever have through sex, because sex is a very primitive method, far more ancient than the bullock cart! It is nothing new, even animals know it. And it is a very long route. It has to pass through many hurdles by the time it reaches to the brain. Sometimes it never reaches to the brain - then it is just local, a futile effort.


For thousands of years women have never thought of orgasmic pleasure because they were not having it. In fact the woman who used to have it was afraid to tell because that was a certain sign that something was wrong with her. Ninety-six per cent of all women throughout human history have not had any orgasm. Even today, in countries like India, it is very rare to find a woman who has ever experienced orgasm. The chemistry and physiology of men and women are different; the woman takes a little longer to achieve orgasm and the man is in a hurry. The woman is eastern and the man is western. He goes at such a speed, he has so many other things to do... he is just on the run! It is a hit-and-run affair! And the woman takes a little longer, because her sexuality is spread all over the body, it is not local.


Unless her whole body becomes involved, excited, she will not be able to trigger her brain center. Man's sex is local. These things can be explained very easily and better methods can be found.


Now thousands of women in the West are using electric devices for stimulation. It is ugly in a way it shows how humanity is falling into fragments. Man is losing integrity. And once a woman has used some electronic device or some electronic vibrator to have sexual orgasm, then no man can ever satisfy her, because no man is an electric vibrator! And men are not far behind....


I was thinking that reports are always coming about women, again and again - but what about men? And just the other day, a report came from England that many cases have turned up in the hospitals, of men who have been trying to sexually stimulate themselves with vacuum cleaners. It looks stupid, but then they end up in the hospital because their skin was caught in that vacuum cleaner and they could not get out of it! But once a man knows how to use a vacuum cleaner then the days of Sophia Loren are over... then who cares about her?


Pleasure can be easily obtained. It has its sources in the body, but bliss has no source in the body, not even in the mind. It is a spiritual phenomenon. It happens in your deep meditation when you are no more the body, no more the mind, when you are just a pure awareness, just a deep silence, a pool of silence. In that cool silence some lotuses bloom, and they are eternal lotuses. They cannot be explained away by anything and they cannot be replaced by anything.


But only very few people have known bliss. My effort here is to help you to know it on such a wide scale that millions of people around the earth will taste something of it, because that will be the only possibility for humanity to survive - as  humanity - otherwise mans whole life is going to be dominated by machines. People will be marrying machines, people will be carrying machines, people will be living with machines - and machines are efficient, replaceable, with no problem of divorce, no problems of relationship - but what kind of humanity will that be? It will really be an insane world; but we are exactly on the verge of it.


Unless some deeper sources of bliss are released, man is bound to go insane because all pleasures fail sooner or later, and all pleasures become frustrating and all pleasures turn into their very opposite, pain. If pleasure is the only thing in life then suicide is going to be the dominating philosophy, because when all pleasures have failed and you have seen all pleasures turning into pain, what else is there to live for? Hence humanity is living under a dark cloud of a global suicide. Man can decide to commit suicide. It has always been individuals who have committed suicide, but man as a species  can decide to commit suicide.


The only way to save humanity is to release some new dimensions of bliss - and they are  available, they have always been available although they have never been made available to the larger part of humanity. They were never able to understand, never ready to listen - even today they are not ready. But I think that this is the time to take the risk,.whether people listen or not, whether they understand or not. Even if a small portion of humanity can be transformed into a state of bliss that will be enough to create a small possibility for a future human being, a new human being.


This is your name: Ma Anand Shivano. Anand means bliss. Shivano means goddess of good.


The experience of bliss is the source of all that is good in life, not vice versa as has been taught for centuries to all human beings. The priests have said again and again to the people, "If you are good, if you are moral, virtuous, you will be rewarded with bliss." That is simply not right. It is putting things upside-down.


The real thing is totally different: if you are blissful then whatsoever you do will be right, good, moral, virtuous, because a blissful person cannot harm anybody - it is impossible. A blissful person can only give to people what he has got. One can always give only that which one has got. The miserable person cannot give bliss to others. In the first place, he himself has not got it. He may intend to do good, but whatsoever he will do will be wrong.


Even Adolf Hitler's intentions were not bad. They thought they were trying to do good for the people. Adolf Hitler killed millions of Jews, with good intentions, because his idea was that the Jews are the real  problem; if they are removed from the earth there will be no misery on the earth. His logic was wrong but his intention was not wrong.


And he used to think that the German Aryans, the Nordics, were the purest people on the earth, were made by god to rule over the world; so everybody else has to be subjugated, enslaved. The logic seems to be perfect: of course, the higher should rule the lower. And he was trying hard to bring the higher into power. His intention was not bad. He may be mad, he was  mad, and he was miserable; deeply miserable, but whatsoever he was doing was of great service to humanity - according to himself.


He was wrong - that is another thing. And all the people who have done thousands of wrongs in the past have done them with good intentions. Christians have killed Mohammedans, Mohammedans have killed Christians, Mohammedans have killed Hindus, Hindus have killed Mohammedans, Hindus have killed Buddhists, and this has gone on and on. The whole earth has been a continuous war, murdering each other - and using beautiful names: Holy War, Crusade, Jehad - in order to bring god onto the earth - "Of course the evil people have to be destroyed, removed."


That whole nonsense happened because of one thing: we told people to do right without first being blissful. According to me blissfulness should be the first thing; then no wrong can ever happen.


A blissful person becomes absolutely incapable of doing wrong. He cannot harm, he cannot hurt; he is always a soothing influence, his very presence is a nourishment. Whatsoever he does comes out of his bliss, it carries something of his fragrance.


My sannyasins have to behave according to this new order of things: bliss has to be their first goal, and then virtue follows like a shadow. Hence I don't teach morality, I only teach meditation, because meditation helps you to discover your blissfulness.


Jesus says, "First ye seek the kingdom of god and all else shall be added unto you." The word 'god' is a little old fashioned, but it is natural; Jesus was speaking two thousand years before me. I will say, "First ye seek the kingdom of bliss then all else shall be added unto you." Just a slight change; replace the word 'god' with 'bliss', and then it becomes the latest sermon on the mount! Then it becomes the latest message from god himself. Even god himself won't like to use the word god' any more because the priests have exploited it so much.
		

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