---
section: Library
booktitle: "Going All the Way"
booktype: "Diaries"
bookcode: "ALLWAY"
dategiven: "13 November 1980 pm"
place: " in Chuang Tzu Auditorium"
chapternum: "Chapter #13"
chaptertitle: "None"
acode: "8011135"
shorttitle: "ALLWAY13"
audio: "No"
video: "No"
esttime: ""
displaytitle: "Going All the Way: Chapter #13"
---

```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[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up.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.]
<p class="sutra">SANNYAS: PARADISE REGAINED</p>


(And paradise is freedom -- a value even higher than god.)


The most divine act in life is to live in freedom. We are born free but we are not left free by society. The moment we are born society starts creating bondages around us -- gross, subtle and very subtle. So everybody is born in freedom but everybody lives as a prisoner and dies as a prisoner.


Sannyas means regaining your freedom, destroying all the barriers that have been created by the establishment, the state, the church. They have their vested interests. They want you to be slaves; they don't want anybody to live in freedom because a free person cannot be manipulated, cannot be dominated, cannot be possessed, cannot be reduced to a thing, to a commodity. And this society believes in commodities; it believes in machines not in man. The less of a man you are, the better, because machines cannot revolt, they cannot be disobedient.


Man can revolt, he can go against the vested interests, hence up to now it has been always that each child is chained in such a complex way that only very few people have been able to live a life of freedom. One has to be very alert, watchful, adventurous, courageous, to go into freedom.


Sannyas means all those things. It is a declaration of absolute freedom. Our search is not for god, our search is for freedom. Of course when you are totally free you know god -- that's a by-product.
<p class="sutra">MEDITATION: A WHETSTONE FOR YOUR WITS</p>


A man without meditation is bound to be mediocre, he cannot be bright, because meditation is the art of sharpening your intelligence; without meditation intelligence gathers rust. Then it is like a sword which has not been used. It is only a sword in name; it is absolutely useless.


The same is true about intelligence, it has to be continuously sharpened; and the only way to sharpen it is to accept the challenges of life meditatively. And by meditation I mean in deep silence, in calmness, quietness. Whenever a challenge is accepted in a calm and quiet way it sharpens your intelligence. It is not a disturbance, it is not a curse, it is a blessing.


Meditation only teaches you the simple art of remaining centred in the turmoil of life. It teaches you to be a centre, always a centre in all kinds of cyclones. If you become disturbed you lose the opportunity, you become confused, unfamiliar, clouded; and that's how dust gathers. If you remain calm and quiet, as if nothing is happening to you -- you are only watching something on the TV screen -- then it gives sharpness, brightness. A moment comes when your inner brightness is so much that it becomes almost an explosion of light. Hence the word 'enlightenment'; that is the ultimate peak to which meditation can bring you.
Meditation is climbing the mountain towards the sunlit peak.
<p class="sutra">JUST GOOD FRIENDS</p>


The man of meditation inevitably becomes a friend to existence, a friend to all. He loses enmity in him, so much so that even where there is a need he can at the most pretend, but deep inside he cannot feel enmity. He can act if there is a need -- and that's my understanding about many things which Christians are incapable of explaining about Jesus.


He taught about love, he taught about compassion, still he threw the moneychangers out of the temple violently. He said to his disciples if somebody hits you on one of your cheeks give him the other too. The same man took a whip in his hand and became so enraged with the moneychangers that single-handedly he threw them all out of the temple, turned their boards upside down and threw their money. He must have been really angry. Christians cannot explain how such a man like Jesus could have done it.


My own experience is he could pretend, he was pretending. He was not doing it, he was acting it -- it was needed. But he was not an enemy to anybody; he could not be.


One of the famous Sufi mystics, Rabiya el Adawiya, changed a few sentences in the Koran; wherever it said hate the enemy, the devil, Satan, she changed it, she removed it Another mystic, Hasan, was looking into Rabiya's copy of the Koran -- he could not believe his eyes, because this was sacrilegious. You cannot correct the Koran, no Mohammedan can think of it, because it is god's word -- who are you to correct it?


He asked Rabiya 'Who has destroyed your copy? Do you ever look into your copy or not? In many places I see a few words have been cut out.'


Rabiya said 'Nobody else has done it but myself. I had to do it because since I have known silence, since I have known god, I cannot hate. And this is my copy, it is nobody else's business. I have to change it according to my deepening consciousness. It may have been right when I knew nothing of meditation but now it is no more right. Even if the devil appears before me I can only love, I can only be friendly. I would welcome him the same way I have welcomed you, Hasan,' she said. 'I would ask him to rest, to relax, I would ask him to be my honourable guest; I would serve him. I cannot hate.'


Meditation makes you a friend to the whole existence. And that is the most beautiful experience -- when there is no hatred left in you. Thousands of flowers bloom in your being, all thorns start opening lie flowers. This is the transformation that sannyas is aiming at, this is the goal.
<p class="sutra">LOONEY AS A LOVER</p>


(Sannyas is marriage to the unknown and the unknowable; it is falling in love with existence, Osho tells Deva Parinita.)
It is not a logical phenomenon, but a love affair -- a mad mad love affair.


The ultimate secrets are open only to lovers, not to logicians. And if one wants to get the deepest into existence then a certain quality of madness is a must. In fact the person who is perfectly sane is insane; to be absolutely sane means to be just shallow, empty, meaningless, because the perfectly sane person will not have any poetry in his life, will not have any love in his life, will not have any celebration in his life. It is not possible for him. For that you need a little touch of madness. Just a little touch of madness and closed doors start opening!


I teach the madness called love, the madness called meditation. These are all mad things, that's why only a very few chosen people have ever tried them; the majority never bothers about these things. They are calculators, business people, mathematicians. They cannot understand what you are doing. A businessman looking at Buddha meditating under his tree with closed eyes sitting for hours will think he is a fool. In fact in the Hindi language the word 'fool' comes from 'Buddha'. 'Buddha' means the awakened one and from the same root comes 'buddhu' -- Buddhu means the fool.


There were two types of people: a few thought Buddha was awakened and a few thought he was just a fool, hence from the same root both words have arisen. But the majority agreed that he was a fool. His father thought he was a fool, his wife thought he was a fool. In fact anybody would have thought him a fool -- escaping from a beautiful wife, child, kingdom, palace, all the luxuries and then just sitting under a tree like a beggar. What kind of sanity was that?


One of the most beautiful women India has given birth to was Meera. She was a queen and she left the palace and danced over streets and villages singing songs of god. She sang the most beautiful songs -- I have never come across anything more poetic. And she was not a poet, she knew nothing of language, nothing of grammar -- it was just an outpouring of her madness. But she was so madly in love with god that that very love made the great poetry, the great singing, the great dancing. Everybody thought that she had gone mad. Even her family tried to kill her because she was becoming notorious: a queen dancing on the streets, mixing with beggars, sleeping in caravanserais, moving with ordinary people. It was unbearable for the family and they tried to kill her.


And the story is that they sent poison with a message that just for their sake to drink it and be finished. Meera sang a song and drank the poison. And the story is that the poison did not affect her. It is possible, it may not have affected her. Mad people don't follow simple laws. Her love was so great that the poison may not have been able to destroy it. Her love was so great, her trust was so total that even poison became nectar.


That is the meaning of your name: a little touch of madness, a little touch of love, a little insanity so that you can have a communion with the whole.


My sannyasins have to learn to be both sane as far as the world is concerned and insane as far as their real interiority is concerned; logical with the world but very illogical with the ultimate.


(Then Osho addresses Prem Satyo. His name means love is truth.)


If one is capable of love one is capable of knowing the truth. There is no other way, there is no other approach. Truth comes second, love comes first. Love prepares your heart to receive the guest. Love makes you the host. And the moment the host is ready the guest comes. It has never been otherwise.


Buddha used to say 'ais dhammo sanantano' -- this is the law, the ultimate law of life, the moment the guest is ready the guest is bound to come. You need not go anywhere; just be ready to receive. Love makes you receptive, open, vulnerable, trusting.


(Love is dangerous -- love for the ultimate truth is the ultimate risk.)


It is dangerous because we have been brought up with so many prejudices, a priori conclusions, conditionings, beliefs, that if one really loves truth one will have to renounce all this. One will have to renounce one's whole past. That is really hard work, an uphill task, because we have become so identified with our past. Those beliefs are no more separate like clothes that we can take off any moment. Those beliefs have become almost like our skin, and to peel the skin off hurts.


Bertrand Russell, one of the greatest philosophers of this age, says he is not a Christian, he dropped all that nonsense long ago. But if somebody says something against Christ, still, something in him hurts. He himself has written a book 'WHY I AM NOT A CHRISTIAN'. And he has said many things against Christ and Christianity, but if somebody else says the same things it hurts.


Beliefs slowly sink so deep in you that even if you consciously drop them they go on lingering in your unconsciousness. And a true seeker, a true lover of truth, has to renounce them root and all. One has to be completely clean of all beliefs because all belief, are lies. Truth is never a belief, it is an experience, and before that experience can happen you have to pay this price of dropping all beliefs. That's why I say love for truth is the most adventurous thing in life. But the risk is worth taking.


Lies can at the most be comfortable, but they cannot give you bliss, they cannot give you freedom, they cannot give you god. And without these values life is empty. One can drag but one cannot dance, and unless your life becomes a dance you have missed the whole opportunity.
My sannyasins have to be dancers, celebrants.
<p class="sutra">THE PRESENTS OF HIS PRESENCE</p>


(Anugraho means gratitude. It's the foundation of religion. Osho is talking to a New Zealand sannyasin.)


Gratitude is the most essential core -- because it is out of gratitude that prayer arises.


People are very ungrateful; they don't feel any gratitude for existence at all. The whole sky is full of stars and no thankyou arises in their hearts. It is as if their hearts are non-functioning. The sun rises with such tremendous beauty, the birds sing, the flowers open, only man remains closed, without any song, as if love has died in him.


And these same people who cannot see the beauty of a sunrise or a sunset, who cannot feel grateful to the stars, to the clouds, to the trees, to people, to animals -- these same people go to the churches and the temples and the mosques to pray. How can I believe that their prayer can have any meaning? If sometimes they have not felt like kneeling down on the earth, if sometimes they have not felt like dancing with joy under the stars, all their prayers are false, formal. They are just being hypocrites and nothing else.


So I don't teach you to go to any church or to any temple. I teach you gratitude. And then there is no need to go anywhere. Just sitting here silently, the sound of the silence of the night is enough, more than enough, in fact uncontainable. If one has a heart one will feel the presence of god in this silence. And that feeling of the presence of god is what transforms a man -- not a belief but the experience.


So let this be the keyword for you, Anugraho -- gratitude. And if you can feel gratitude then many things will come to you of their own accord. They come spontaneously, without any search on your part. And when things happen of their own accord they have a totally different fragrance to them. They are gifts from the beyond.
<p class="sutra">BLISS BALM</p>


One cannot achieve bliss on one's own. We can achieve misery but not bliss. We can do something to ourselves so that we fall sick. But healing does not happen through us, it happens through the whole, it comes from the beyond. Wounds we can create -- that is within our power -- but when the wound heals it is not you who is healing it It heals by some mysterious energy. That mysterious energy is called god. It is only a name for all that is mysterious, and by mysterious I mean all that which is not comprehensible to reason.


How a wound heals is a miracle, how the illness disappears and health comes back is a miracle. Even medical science accepts the fact that we can help the healing process but we cannot heal. We can remove the barriers, we can prepare the ground for the healing energy to function, but the healing energy does everything on its own.


Bliss is the ultimate healing when all your bones have been healed, then there is no more any wound, when your whole being is full of well-being. It happens through god, through the beyond.


The function for you is to remove all hindrances. That's the work of the sannyasin -- not to create barriers for the healing energy. For example, when the sun rises you can keep your eyes closed; you will remain in darkness, although the sun is there, available. But you have to open your eyes, and opening your eyes is just removing a small hindrance; the eyelid is just a small hindrance. You can keep your doors closed and then even in the full light of the day you will live in darkness. But you can open the door, you can open all the windows, and then the sun and the wind and the rain come in.


That's what we can do: we can open up to existence, we can become available to all the energies that are showering on us, and then healing happens on its own. It is always god who heals. And bliss is the ultimate experience when you are totally healed, when nothing is missing, when one has come home.
<p class="sutra">A DARLING OF THE COSMOS</p>


(... but a danger to the crowd -- that's the fate of the blissful man.)


Bliss needs a very strong spirit. Any coward can afford to be miserable. It needs no courage, no guts to be miserable; it is so easy and so cheap. That's why millions of people are miserable -- because it is so easily available. You don't have to do anything at all; you don't even have to search for it, it searches for you. You just have to be a coward and it will find you.


But to be blissful one really needs a strong spirit, for two reasons. One is: the whole of humanity is accustomed to living in misery and if you want to live in bliss you will have to go against it; in many ways you will have to leave the fold, the crowd, the mob.


There are many kinds of crowds: Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, Communist, Socialist, Fascist -- all are crowds. The miserable person cannot be alone; he is so cowardly he always wants to belong to a crowd.


The blissful person is like a lion. Gautam the Buddha has actually used the words 'lion's roar' for the person who attains to bliss. He roars like a lion, he is no more a sheep. Sheep are always afraid of being alone; they move in a crowd. It gives them a feeling that they are not in danger, it is a kind of security because so many sheep are around them, they are not alone.


The first thing for being blissful is to be ready to go on a lonely path. Sannyas is initiation into being an individual, dropping out of the mass mind. The mob is the ugliest phenomenon in the world, it is the lowest possibility of humanity, but whenever you want to be alone and you want to leave the mob, the mob will not allow it easily. Hence the second problem: the mob will create every hindrance. If there is a need, the mob may even kill you -- it has killed many people -- for the simple reason that even if one person escapes from the fold and becomes blissful then the whole foundation of the crowd is shaken. Then others may start thinking of the same too, then others may start dreaming about being individuals. It is because of this that Jesus is crucified, it is because of this that Socrates is killed, it is because of this that Al Hillaj Mansoor is murdered. Their very presence is dangerous to the establishment; they are so blissful, naturally their presence is a kind of spell. People can become hypnotised, people can start moving in the same direction in which they have moved, and the crowd becomes afraid. Its fold is lo s ing its hold, and no crowd ever wants to lose its hold because in the crowd there are politicians who are politically powerful leaders, then there are priests who are religiously, spiritually powerful, then there are rich people, respectable people, saints and so on and so forth -- and they all depend on the mob psychology.
The blissful person is a danger to all of them.


So these are the two things -- this is why a strong spirit is needed -- the first, to go against the crowd, then the second, to be ready to sacrifice whatsoever the crowd demands. One thing is certain, that there is nothing more valuable than bliss, so everything can be sacrificed for it, even life itself. It is far better to be crucified like Jesus than crowned like Alexander the Great. The crucifixion of Jesus is far more beautiful than the crowning of Alexander. Alexander is still a beggar, even though crowned; Jesus is still the emperor, though crucified.
			

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