---
section: Library
booktitle: "Is the Grass Really Greener...?"
booktype: "Diaries"
bookcode: "GREENR"
dategiven: "30 December 1980 pm"
place: " in Chuang Tzu Auditorium"
chapternum: "Chapter #30"
chaptertitle: "None"
acode: "8012295"
shorttitle: "GREENR30"
audio: "No"
video: "No"
esttime: ""
displaytitle: "Is the Grass Really Greener...?: Chapter #30"
---

```style
.sutra {
  font-style: italic;
  white-space: pre-wrap !important;
}
```
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[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up.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.]

Prem Visarjan. Prem means love. Visarjan means dissolution.


Love consists in dissolving the ego, hence love is the only phenomenon which cannot be converted into an ego trip. They cannot exist together. It is just like light and darkness is it is light, darkness disappears; if darkness is there then light is not there -- they are never together. The same is true about love and ego.


And love fails because we try to do the impossible we want them both! We don't want to dissolve the ego, we protect it. We want ego to follow our love and our love to follow our ego. Because of this absurd desire love becomes impossible. And whenever there is a conflict between love and ego then ego is going to win, for the simple reason that it is gross and love is delicate, as delicate as a rose flower and ego is as gross and as stupid as a rock: the rock can crush the rose very easily. So one has to be very watchful and alert. Unless the rose is saved life is lost.


My whole message is of love. And the first and the most fundamental law of love is: be ready to drop the ego. And it never brings anything except misery, so there is not much to dropping it. It is sheer foolishness to go on clinging to it. A little bit of intelligence and one can see the point, that ego brings misery, anger, hatred, jealousy, possessiveness. All kinds of poisons grow out of it and it makes your life a mess.


Love brings harmony, great joy, music, poetry, dance, and life becomes a celebration. Initiation into sannyas is initiation into a life of celebration and that is possible only through love. But one has to pay the price; and the price is dropping the ego.

Prem Arpito. Prem means love. Arpito means dedicated to.


Sannyas is dedication to love. It is a love affair. It is not religion in the ordinary sense. It is not a cult, a creed, a dogma; it is purely a love affair, a love affair with existence itself.


The religions that have existed on the earth have proved not bridges but walls. They have prevented people from merging into existence. They have condemned existence, they have all been life-negative, and when you are life-negative you cannot be love-affirmative because life and love are synonymous. To be dedicated to love also means to be dedicated to life. There is no difference; they are different names for the same phenomenon.


I teach affirmation of life, no escape, no condemnation but rejoicing in all that is -- from the smallest to the biggest, from a blade of grass to the greatest star -- enjoying life moment to moment, merging into life moment to moment more and more, not holding back anything. The day you are one hundred per cent in tune with life you have arrived. You have arrived at the goal of love.
And Jesus is right when he says god is love.

Prem Kusum. Prem means love. Kusum means a flower.


Love is the most delicate phenomenon. There is nothing more delicate than love in existence, hence it is the most precious thing. It is the flowering of your heart, the opening of your heart. And the moment the heart opens like a flower the whole existence becomes available to it. Then it can dance and sway with the wind, with the rain, with the sun. Suddenly all barriers disappear; as you open up, barriers evaporate. Opening up to existence like a flower means coming out of an imprisonment, otherwise we are living in encapsulated ways, closed to everything, hiding, rationalising.


The whole life of a closed person is fear-oriented. He is afraid to open; he is afraid because, who knows? -- if you are open and vulnerable, you may be cheated and deceived. Some enemy may enter. You may open the door for the wind but who knows? -- instead of the wind some disease may enter, some enemy may come in; instead of the sun-rays some murderer may come in. It is better, safer, to keep the doors and windows closed.


Yes, it is safer, but then your life is enclosed in a grave, you are already dead. And millions of people are living posthumous lives. They have died long ago; now they are simply dragging within a grave. They just somehow manage, the grave surrounds them. Then it is not any wonder that they are miserable misery is their own creation. A closed being is bound to be miserable because he is living death, not life.


Open up! Just as the closed life is fear-oriented, the open life is love-oriented. Trust existence. And what have we got to lose? Death is going to take everything away anyway so in fact all fear is stupid. When death is the only certainty in life then only fools can be afraid, otherwise what is there to lose? And anyway, death is going to come and take everything away -- then why not live and why not dance and why not sing and why not be vulnerable? If you are cheated, so what? If you are deceived, so what? At least you lived and through all those experiences you will learn, you will grow, you will become mature.


Mistakes are not necessarily bad. One should not commit the same mistakes again and again -- that's all. If you can invent a new mistake every moment, that's just far out! (laughter) Then Buddhahood is not very far away because each mistake is a lesson, it gives you a maturity, it gives you ripeness -- and ripeness is all.

Prem Samarpito. Prem means love. Samarpito means surrender.


There are two kinds of surrender. One is when you are forced to surrender -- that is ugly. Never allow that to happen. It is better to die than to surrender because you are forced to surrender. But there is a totally different kind of surrender: you are not forced to surrender, you simply feel like surrendering. That is love when on your own you feel like merging, melting, becoming one with somebody or with the whole of existence.


Of course it always begins as a relationship -- that is natural. The first step of love is relationship, the second state of love is relating -- and there is a vast difference between the two. In relationship you exclude everybody, you focus on one person. It is a kind of concentration of the heart. But all concentration becomes a concentration camp! (laughter) Basically it is fascist. To begin with it is okay but one should not start living there, in a concentration camp.


But there are people who like concentration camps. Just today I was reading a news item: in London they have made a Nazi concentration camp. A group of people has created all the conditions of a Nazi concentration camp and those who want to become prisoners there for seven days, have to pay thirty pounds (much laughter)... and people are doing that for lodging and boarding. They are beaten and tortured. Every kind of thing is done to them -- all that was done in the concentration camps in Germany. It is an exact replica except that it is small, it is on a smaller scale. Nobody is killed or burned -- except for that everything is being done. And it is booked far ahead! (laughter) And the people who have participated in it have almost all escaped within two or three days. Nobody has yet been able to complete the whole seven day period.


But all those who have participated say it was really an adventure, thrilling.


Life has become so dull, life has become so boring, that even a concentration camp seems to be an adventure. It brings a thrill. You are beaten, you are tortured. People are awakened in the middle of the night. They have to be naked and to run around in the cold and be whipped -- and they call it adventure! But I can understand what exactly the case is: people's lives are so dull and dead, so loveless, so juiceless, that they are ready to try anything new. They are in such a desperate state.


That's why thousands of people are committing suicide around the world, because that seems to be the only thrill. Jumping from a fifty-storey-building is certainly a thrill. And it is better than working for fifty years in an office as a clerk, far better; at least for a moment you will feel alive. While falling down to the ground (much laughter)... you will feel 'So far, so good!' And as the end approaches nearer, the thrill becomes more and more of a crescendo. And when you crash, that is the climax! (much laughter) This shows what we have made out of life.


So love also starts as a concentration camp -- a one-to-one affair, exclusive. Both are prisoners and both are the gaolers; they function in both ways. Each is imprisoned by the other and each is a gaoler in his own right. It is a beautiful game! But one should not remain there, otherwise life is wasted. One should learn the lesson, the beauty of it, the ugliness of it -- both have to be learned. And the ugliness is to be dropped and the beauty has to be preserved.


That's what relating is: you drop all that is ugly in love -- possessiveness, exclusiveness, domination, suspicion, doubt, every effort to curtail the other's freedom. When all these are dropped and your love becomes just a relating, not a relationship, closer to friendship.... You can have many friends, you can also have many lovers -- and one should start growing from one to many, but that too is not the goal.


The third state is when love is just a quality. You are not attached to one or to many: love is just like breathing -- it is your nature -- so to whosoever come in contact with you are loving. This is the third stage: very few have attained to the third. And there is a fourth state which only so few people have attained that they can be counted on fingers.


The fourth is when your very being is love -- it is not a quality, your very existence is love. You have forgotten all about love. Because you yourself are love there is no need to remember it; now you act out of it, simply, naturally, spontaneously. At that fourth point one is surrendered to existence.


At the first you are surrendered to a person, but there is a condition -- he should be surrendered to you -- so the surrender is not total, it is conditional. In the second you are surrendered to many people. It is better than the first because now surrender is not focussed; it has more freedom, it has grown a few new dimensions, it has grown wings. In the third you are simply surrendered to existence, to the trees, to the mountains, to the stars, to all that is. And in the fourth you become the surrender itself. In the fourth love means surrender it is equivalent to it, synonymous with it. And this is the state of being a Buddha or a Christ.


Nothing is higher than that. One who achieves that has achieved all. His life is fulfilled, he has come home!


How long will you be here?
-- Nine months (then she corrects herself)... nine weeks.
-- Let it be months! (laughter) Otherwise come back but nine months is the right time to be in the womb of the master! (more laughter) Nine weeks is a little bit too early!

Prem Pujari. Prem means love. Pujari means a worshipper.


Love is worship. There is no need to go in any temple or church or any synagogue to worship. That is a pseudo, false kind of worship; cheap, but not real. It is like plastic flowers, there will be no fragrance; in a way they are very permanent but that permanency has no value.


If love can exist even for a single moment that is far more valuable than a person's whole life of worshipping, of going through all kinds of rituals in temples and churches. A single moment of love will give you more insight into reality than a whole life's worship can give. In fact the more you worship, the more dull and stupid you become.


You can go and watch the people who go to the churches, to the synagogues, to the temples, to the mosque -- you can see their stupidity. Humanity has suffered much from these stupid people. And because they are hiding their stupidity behind a very beautiful facade, a religious facade, they have been able to do all kinds of nuisance -- and with good intentions. They kill you for your own sake, they murder people, they burn people alive for their own sake.


Christians have done that, Mohammedans have done that, Hindus have done that -- everybody has done that. The hands of all the priests of all the religions are full of blood. More blood has been shed in the name of religion than in the name of anything else. This cannot be true religion; something is basically wrong.


Hence I say, create a temple in your heart. And in fact the temple is already there, you only have to discover it. And be loving, loving to all that is.


Share your joy, share your creativity, share whatsoever you can. Let that be your only worship and your life will have the flavour of real religiousness. You will not be a Christian, certainly, neither a Hindu nor a Mohammedan; you will be simply religious. And to be religious is beautiful; to be Christian or Hindu is ugly. every dogma creates a limitation, it gives you a confinement; it imprisons you and makes a slave of you.


My sannyasins have to be absolutely free beings -- free of all kinds of slaveries, howsoever old, ancient, howsoever respectable, it doesn't matter, even if the chains are made of gold and studded with diamonds, they have to be thrown they are chains all the same.


There is no got other than love and there is no other worship either. So just be loving and in that you will find both the worshippers and the worshipped, the devotee and the deity -- both will be discovered through love. They are aspects of the same coin.

Prem Viraga. Prem means love. Viraga means non-attachment.


Ordinarily love is found with deep attachment, but attachment functions like cancer to love: it kills it. Attachment is a disease of love, it is poison to love. But there is a great misunderstanding people think attachment is love, and once you think that the illness is health, then it is very difficult to get rid of it. You will not go to the physician, you will not take any medicine, you will not go through any surgery; in fact you will protect it by all means. It is a treasure to be protected.


So the first thing my sannyasins have to be very clear about is that attachment is not love, it is anti -- love. And we have to drop attachment if we want to grow in love. And I am using the word 'cancer' for attachment for a special reason if you leave it as it is, it will go on growing. It has to be immediately removed. Whenever it is found that one has cancer, then giving it any time is dangerous. It is to be removed as quickly as possible, because it is growing every moment. Those cancer cells go on multiplying themselves. They are like Indians (laughter): they go on reproducing children and children and children -- they don't believe in birth control.


The same is true about attachment, and it is far more dangerous than cancer because cancer can only destroy your body; attachment can destroy your very soul because love belongs to the soul, love is your soul.


So never be attached and never Force anybody to be attached to you -- remain unattached. And unattachment does not mean detachment. Detachment is cold; one is indifferent, one doesn't care. Care, care as much as possible, remain warm, but don't cling and don't allow the other to cling to you. All clinging has to be dropped. And the energy that goes into clinging has to be used in making your love warmer. The same energy can be used in making love more intense, more passionate, more total, more healthy, more sane.
Only a love free from attachment brings health and wholeness.

Prem Abhinava. Prem means love. Abhinava means eternally new.


Love is always new, it never becomes old. It cannot become old. If it becomes old it is no more there, it has already died. One can go on carrying the corpses -- that's another matter. But love as such has an intrinsic quality of newness. The newness of the flowers, the newness of the stars, the newness of children, the newness of dewdrops, the newness of the early morning sun -- all those newnesses are part of love. But love can remain new only if you remain new. It is not possible for love to remain new if you go on becoming old.


Mind is always old. It is the accumulation of the past, it is just a record of the past; it goes on keeping the past filed. So whenever you need to use it you can use it. It has no idea of the new; hence love is not of the mind, it cannot be of the mind. It arises from a different center in your being; it arises from the heart. And the heart is always new as the mind is always old. That's why heart and mind never met. They cannot understand each other, there is no communication between the mind and the heart. Their languages are different; the mind speaks the language of logic, the heart is very illogical. And existence is illogical, hence the heart is closer to existence than the mind.


The mind speaks the language of arithmetic and calculation; love is a gambler, the heart is a gambler -- it knows no calculation. It moves into the uncharted without any worry, it risks, but in risking is adventure, in risking, life becomes an ecstasy. If you can go into a new adventure each moment, then your life becomes a dance, then it is not a drag.


The mind speaks the language of prose and the heart speaks the language of poetry. It is untranslatable. By the time it is translated into the language of the mind it loses its real meaning, its significance, its flavor. So one has to put the mind aside if one wants to understand love. And the only way to understand love is to be in it, to be drowned in it. And then this freshness is always with you. Then life becomes full of flowers, then each moment is so new that there is always wonder, surprise, awe. And to live a life of wonder and awe is to live a spiritual life. Others talk about spirituality; only lovers know what it is! Lovers have encountered the divine. Logicians have only been thinking about it, philosophizing about it, but they have not tasted anything of it.


Love is a wine; you have to taste it, you have to drink it, you have to become drunk with it, only then do you know what it is.

Prem Artho. Prem means love. Artho means meaning, significance.


One of the greatest problems facing humanity today is that of meaning. Almost everybody who is a little bit intelligent is feeling that life is meaningless, and to feel that life is meaningless is a very dangerous situation. Then the question naturally and inevitably arises: why go on living, for what?


Marcel says that the only real philosophical problem worth considering is that of suicide -- and I agree with him. It is moreso in the contemporary context. Men in the past have never felt this way, for the simple reason... It is not that it was something great, that people were more spiritual and more religious, as the phony spiritualists go on saying, it is not that people were better in the past so they never felt meaninglessness. The only thins is that people were so occupied with their very survival, they were continuously working to somehow exist, that there was no possibility for them to think about the meaning of life.


It is a higher question, it belongs to a higher plane. Still, in the poor countries, nobody bothers about the meaning of life. The question is not of the meaning of life, the question is of bread, of butter, of shelter, of clothes. People are dying, starving, people are naked; they are without any roofs. They are sleeping on the streets. How can they think about the meaning of life? -- there is no time. That's why in the past it was not a problem at all.


Man for the first time has become a little affluent, a little rich, particularly in the western hemisphere, and the problem has suddenly erupted. Now people have enough to eat, their necessary needs are fulfilled, hence they have time to think about significant matters. And this is the first thing: what is the meaning of life? Why are we here at all, why do we go on existing?


Now, unless love becomes our experience life will remain meaningless. No philosophy can give it meaning. Hence the future depends on releasing love energies, otherwise man is bound to commit suicide -- global suicide. He is preparing for it every day. mountains of atomic weapons are in existence. We can destroy seven hundred earths like this -- we have already made that much atomic preparation. In other words each man can be killed seven hundred times. And we are piling up our arms and discovering new methods of killing. It seems we are determined to commit a global suicide sooner or later. And I don't think anybody will object to it; in fact everybody will feel relieved, relieved of an empty life.


But if love happens life becomes so full, so overflowingly full, that one would like to live and one would like others to live. Only love is the hope for the future.


Hence I have decided that love has to become the basic message of my sannyasins. Their whole life has to be grounded in love. If you can feel the meaning of life through love you can trigger the same process in others.


I am preparing sannyasins so that they can go around the world with flames of love within their heart and can share their light and their fire with others who are in immense need. If we can fill the world with a few million meditators, lovers, rejoicing and dancing and celebrating, humanity can yet be saved. There is still a chance, all hope is not lost.
			

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