---
section: Library
booktitle: "Just the Tip of the Iceberg"
booktype: "Diaries"
bookcode: "ICEBRG"
dategiven: "01 September 1980 pm"
place: " in Chuang Tzu Auditorium"
chapternum: "Chapter #1"
chaptertitle: "None"
acode: "8009015"
shorttitle: "ICEBRG01"
audio: "No"
video: "No"
esttime: ""
displaytitle: "Just the Tip of the Iceberg: Chapter #1"
---

```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[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]


Misery pollutes, bliss purifies. This is one of the fundamentals of life which has not been told to people; on the contrary, people have been misled, because what has been told to them is impossible. They have been told to become pure first and then bliss will be the reward. That is utterly absurd because without bliss there is no possibility of purity.


Bliss is not a reward, it is an understanding. It is looking around and seeing the beauty of existence, the benediction of existence. It is simply feeling the joy of just being alive. Then each breath becomes something ecstatic.


Life is a miracle. In fact there is no explanation for it, for why it should be. Neither the philosopher nor the theologian, nor even the scientist, has been able to explain why life should exist at all. And I don't think it is ever going to be explained; the mystery will remain. The mystery cannot be de-mystified, because it is not a question of knowing more; in fact life is something like a miracle. It should not exist but it does.


What is the need of roses and lotuses and thousands of flowers? There seems to be no intrinsic necessity. If they were not there nothing would be missed. If we were not here the earth would go round and round the sun without missing us at all. Existence would continue the same way. The stars would be there and the moon would rise and the trees would grow and everything would be as it is. But life has happened -- not only life but consciousness, love. These are all miracles upon miracles.


To see this is to be blissful. Just seeing is blissful And the moment you start feeling and living this bliss you are purified, purified of all kinds of nonsense, superstitions, all kinds of ideas -- purified of the mind itself.


As one becomes blissful mind starts disappearing. To live in the mind is to know nothing or just to know the superficial, the non-essential. The moment you enter the world of bliss (Osho's hands, held together, fluttered and separated) mind has no function there; mind becomes utterly useless. When you are miserable the mind is needed, hence the mind clings to misery because they can exist only with each other. The moment misery is not there mind is also not there.


In a blissful state one lives in the moment, there is no past and no future; hence there is no possibility of having a mind. Mind means past and the projections for the future; and bliss means to be in the present, to be as utterly herenow as if you have never existed before, as if there is going to be no other moment again -- this is all. And then one comes to know that which is.


Once it is known)you are purified of all darkness. (His fingers interlocked and covered his heart.) Once it is known your life becomes virtuous. Then virtue is not to be cultivated, it is simply the fragrance arising out of blissfulness, the fragrance of purity.


One can know it but one cannot express it, words are not adequate, words are very inadequate. Hence the need of disciplehood, the need for sannyas: it is simply a way to hear ordinary words with a new vision, with sympathy, with love. Sannyas means falling in tune with the master, becoming harmonious with the master, then that which is lacking in words can also be transmitted.


The Zen people call it transmission of truth beyond words, beyond scriptures. Even when it is transmitted between the master and the disciple, the disciple comes to know of just the tip of the iceberg. But that is more than enough to transform one. Then one can move on one's own journey. The master has triggered the process; then it is a chain phenomenon.


Two sailors were sitting on the beach. One was an old man and the other was a very young man. The young man had come for the first time to join up as a sailor. He told the old man "This is the most water that I have ever seen in my life." The old man said "You ain't seen nothin' yet. That's just the top of it!"


The master can only show you just the top of it. But to see the top of it is enough. Then you can dive deep, then you can go into the infinite depths of existence.


My sannyas begins in bliss and ends in wisdom. Purity is just a small consequence of being blissful. So don't strive to be pure. Try to understand what has happened, what is happening every moment, and feel the bliss of it. And then you are in for a great surprise: purity, meditativeness, love, compassion, wisdom, enlightenment -- they all go on following slowly slowly. Just create one essential quality, blissfulness, then everything comes of its own accord.


One can be loyal out of fear but that is not true loyalty. That's what happens in the life of a soldier. He is loyal out of fear because if he is loyal he is rewarded; if he is not, he is punished, tortured. That's what people have known in the name of loyalty.


The sannyasin has a totally different quality of loyalty. It is nothing imposed on you, it is something that you are longing for. And it is not out of any fear and not for any reward; there is no motivation in it.


One simply enjoys trusting existence because doubting creates conflict, doubting creates darkness, doubting keeps your life split. Doubting never allows you to go with the flow of existence. You keep yourself aloof, you go on withholding yourself. You only go so far, and that too with great suspicion in your heart. Then you will miss everything because life is only for those who can be totally in it, who can live intensely and passionately.


It is possible only through trust. The untrusting one remains afraid, suspicious, on guard; the trusting one simply starts flowing with the river of life. And the river of life is going towards the ocean. There is no need to push it, it is already going there. We have to learn the art of let-go, then it will take you to the ocean, to the ultimate.


Meditation is the most precious gift of God. It is so, because it is only through being meditative that one has the capacity, the sensitivity, to appreciate all the other gifts that one is given.


Life is there, but you will never understand it as a gift without meditation. Love is there, beauty is there, joy is there, but they will all remain not understood without meditation. Hence meditation is the gift of gifts.


And I teach only one thing: how to become meditative, because it is my experience that nothing else is needed for the inner transformation. No religious ritual, no more character, no outer discipline is going to help. In fact they all hinder because when you become focused on the outside you forget all about the inside.


Meditation means a one-hundred-and-eighty degree turn. Ordinarily we are focused on the outside; in meditation we change the focus. We are focused on ourselves. Meditation means the experience of your own interiority; it is an inward journey.


And once you have tasted even a single drop of the nectar then the misery, the anguish, the whole problematic life dissolves. Now you know the right direction in which to go; now you know the right door at which to knock....


Jesus says, "Knock and the door shall be opened unto you." But the question is on what  door, where to knock? Knocking on just any door is not going to help. Unless you start knocking on the inner door nothing is going to happen.


Jesus says, "Ask and it shall be given." But whom to ask? People have been asking the sky, the heavens, God the Father, somewhere above there in the clouds. For centuries they have been asking and nothing has been answered. One has to ask one's own inner core.


Jesus says, "Seek and ye shall find." But where  to seek? People have been seeking in every sacred place; they are going to Jerusalem or to Mecca or to Kashi or to Tibet. That is not going to help. Wherever you go, you are wasting your time. One has to go within. The kingdom  of God is within you.


Meditation is the whole art of transforming the gestalt; the consciousness that goes outwards starts turning in. And then one becomes aware of millions of gifts; then small things, very small and ordinary things, have tremendous significance. Just a dewdrop slipping from the lotus leaf into the lake is enough to fill one with wonder and awe. It is poetry, pure poetry! It is music, it is dance, it is a finger pointing to the moon.


This is how you have to slip into the lake of consciousness, just like a dewdrop. It can become the moment of sudden enlightenment.

(Osho explained why he had retained Yoh Hiroshi's name.)


It is very pregnant with meaning. Yoh means yin-yang. That is the whole philosophy of tao.


Existence is made of two energies. On the surface they are polar opposites; deep down they are not opposites but complementaries. One can call them yin-yang or negative-positive or Shiva and Shakti or male and female. In fact yin and yang imply all possible opposites, with the underlying meaning that opposites are not opposites but complementaries.


The moment it happens that the opposites meet within you, that yin becomes yang, yang becomes yin, that the male and female inside you meet and merge into one -- or in modern psychological jargon the conscious and unconscious meet and merge into one -- for the first time you experience your organic wholeness. And that is the meaning of Hiroshi; Hiroshi means vastness, oceanic vastness.


Yin and yang divided, we are very small; yin and yang together and we contain the whole universe. The art of meditation is to help the man and the woman within you meet and merge and become one.


When man meets even with his outer woman, for a single moment a different quality comes to his being. Just for a split moment when you are at the climax of your orgasmic joy, when you are not separate from the woman and the woman is not separate from you, then you are not there, she is not there; suddenly a duality has disappeared and in that disappearance of duality you have the first glimpse of what unity can be.


The ultimate secrets of meditation have been discovered through this orgasmic joy. The whole tradition of Tantra is a proof of it. But the meeting with the outer woman or outer man can only be momentary. The same can happen inside you.


One of the greatest contributions of Carl Gustav Jung to modern psychology is that he accepted this ancient taoist idea that inside man has both the male part and the female part. And the same is the case with the woman, she has both. But they are separate; a very subtle wall keeps them separate inside you. The wall is really subtle. It is just like a Japanese paper curtain, it can easily be removed. And once it is removed the whole is experienced.


To remain clinging to the part is misery, to allow the whole to happen is bliss.


True religion has nothing to do with Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism. It certainly has something to do with Christ, Krishna and Buddha. True religion has been experienced only by very few people in the world; others have simply followed borrowed knowledge.


My effort here is not to make a Buddhist out of you but a Buddha. Less than that is meaningless. One should not settle for anything less. If you can be a Buddha, why be a Buddhist? If you can be a Christ, why be a Christian? Leave it for the cowards to be Christians and Buddhists and Hindus and Mohammedans. The brave one, the courageous one, would like to know the truth on his own.
(Osho's eyes were wide open, his eyebrows arched for emphasis.)


He would not like to know the truth through others, he would like to experience it himself -- because unless you drink the water your thirst is not going to be quenched. Buddha may have drunk the whole Ganges -- that is not going to make any difference to you. Just a glass of water will do for you but you have to drink it.


But people are so foolish that they go on worshipping Buddha and Krishna and Christ, and hoping that their thirst will be quenched they go on worshipping scriptures -- Dhammapada, Koran, Bible. It is like a thirsty man worshipping a book of chemistry which explain that water is H2O. You can go on worshipping the book; you will remain thirsty. You are simply proving yourself silly and nothing else.


Or you can go on repeating the mantra "H2O, H2O, H2O...", "buddham sharanam gachchhami, buddham sharanam gachchhami, buddham sharanam gachchami". It is not going to help, it is just H2O -- you have to drink it yourself.


That is the whole significance of sannyas, I am not creating any religion, I am simply imparting to you a glimpse into true religion and helping you to know it on your own.


Truth liberates but it has to be your own experience, only then does it liberate, otherwise it creates a great bondage.


(Osho cautioned the Japanese woman who followed, that not all that goes under the name of meditation is really meditation; in fact some so-called meditation methods are positive hindrances.)


All methods of concentration are against meditativeness. All that is known as contemplation is not meditation at all.


These three words (Osho marked them off on his fingers) have to be understood well: concentration, contemplation and meditation.


Concentration means focussing the mind on one subject, on one object, not allowing the mind to roam here and there, forcing it, excluding everything else except the object on which you want to concentrate.


Of course many distractions will arise and many times you will go on missing the thread because you are doing something unnatural.


Mind's very nature is movement and you are trying to force it to remain still, at one point. It cannot do it, and if you manage to do it after long, long practice, then it will be very tiring and exhausting. It won't make you blissful, it will make you very mad. It will give you a long saintlike face. It will make you a saint but not a meditator; it will make you dead but not alive.


Going against nature never helps. One can be victorious only with nature and through nature. There is no victory against nature; maybe there are momentary victories, but one should not rejoice in those momentary victories. They are insignificant and the price that we have to pay for them is immense. Time is wasted, energy is wasted and the ultimate result is zero.


Contemplation is a little more liquid, a little more fluid than concentration. In concentration you have to remain fixed on one word or one object -- for example, the word "love". In concentration you have to remain fixed on these four letters of love; in contemplation you can roam around, going into many meanings of love, you can go deep or high, you can bring in many other ideas concerning love. Of course there is a limit but you have a longer rope than in concentration.


So in contemplation one feels a little bit more free but one is still tethered. You cannot go out of the subject of love. Everything else is excluded. You cannot think about freedom or truth, you cannot think about anything else except love. But one can think much about love, one can ponder over it for hours or for days because love itself is an oceanic experience. It is less tiring than concentration, more fulfilling than concentration, but it is still not the real thing.


The real thing is meditation. In meditation you are neither concentrating on anything nor contemplating anything; you are simply open and available to all that is. The distant call of the cuckoo, a dog starts barking, a child starts crying -- all is included. The train passes by, the traffic noise . somebody is playing on a flute, the horn of the car . the neighbours start shouting, fighting -- everything is included. You are just a witness, watching everything without any judgement, neither condemning nor appreciating.


This non-judgemental awareness is what I mean by meditation. It is inclusive of all, it excludes nothing. It is pure openness, vulnerability. All the windows, all the doors are open; everything is welcome, everything is just a guest and you are a host. Many guests come and many guests go but the host remains and abides.


Slowly slowly one becomes aware that everything comes and goes but one is always herenow. This experience, that you are always herenow, gives you the first feel of eternity, of the deathless, of the immortal truth.
			

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