The Times of India, 11 December 2011

The first thing is that love can be known only by loving. It is not something that can be made comprehensible by intellectual discussion about it. Love is not a theory. If you try to make a theory out of it, it remains incomprehensible. That is the first Baul standpoint: there are things which you can know only by doing them, by being them.

If you don’t know swimming you don’t know what it is, and there is no way to know about it. You may go and hear a thousand and one swimmers talking about it, but still you will never know it. It is incomprehensible in every other way; you will have to learn swimming. You will have to go down to the river; you will have to take the risk.

Swimming is known only by swimming; love is known only by loving; prayer is known only by praying.

OSHOSPEAK

1 To know love, like swimming, you have to take the plunge; no amount of theory can help you

2 Love is known only by loving just as prayer is known by prayer. Theory can’t convey its meaning

3 Any knowledge that has to be acquired by reading something is not knowledge

 There is no other way.

There are things which can be known without moving into them – those are the futile things, those are intellectual things:  philosophies, dogmas, creeds. But all that is real has to be lived, and all that is existential has to be penetrated, and the risk has to be taken.

Courageous And Daring

One has to be courageous; one has to be daring because when you love somebody you start losing yourself. To love somebody is to lose the ego; to love somebody is to be lost; to love somebody is to give power to somebody over you; to love somebody is to be possessed.

To love somebody means surrendering, because to the Baul, love is the only knowledge there is. You can read the Vedas, the Bible or any other dogma or scripture: there is no need to submit, there is no need to surrender. The Baul criterion is this: when something demands surrender, only then is there a possibility of real knowledge. The existential things can be known only through existential ways. Love can beknown only by loving.

Movies, pornographic literature, novels and poetry, others’ love letters – all these can be best give you a glimpse of love. But to know love, you have to love. In fact, the more you know about love, the less will be the possibility to know love. You will be lost in your knowledge. You will start thinking that you know.

Learn To Move In The Dark

Love can be known only by loving. It means you have to move into love without knowing anything about it. That’s why it needs courage. You have to move in the dark, with no map, nobody to guide, not even a torch. You have to move in the dark not knowing where you are moving, not knowing whether you are on the right track or not, not knowing whether you will find the path or you will fall in a ditch and be lost forever.

Love has many flavours…dimensions, many nuances. Love is not one single thing. It is tremendously rich. It has many aspects to it; it is multifaceted. It is like a diamond: it has many facets and every facet gives it richness.

Only a connoisseur – the one who has loved in many ways, lived courageously, dangerously, one who knows all the flavours of love, would have true knowledge of it…

If you watch, you will find many nuances of love. The single word ‘love’ has many words hidden in it. And one has to know all about love by moving in all the dimensions. If you have not known any facet of love, your understanding about love will lack that much. One has to know all the aspects and all the subtle differences. That’s what the Bauls mean when they say,

“Only a connoisseur of the flavours of

love can / Comprehend the language of a

 lover’s heart, / Others have no clue.”

A Special Language

Yes, it is a language. A single word will not do; it is a complete language. And once you know, you will be simply surprised. You can touch somebody’s hand like a friend, and the touch has a different flavour. And you can touch somebody’s hand like a lover, and the touch has a different flavour.

A connoisseur, with closed eyes, can just feel your hand and see…and understand the language.

The Times of India, 10 December 2011

Tung-men Wu did not grieve when his son died.

It is difficult not to grieve when somebody you loved so much has died. It is possible only if you have known something of the essential. It is possible only if you have tasted something of the deathless, if you have transcended the accidental. He did not grieve, he was not sad. He was not weeping or crying; he was not broken. He remained just the same as he was before.

The wife was disturbed. She said: “No one in the world loved his son as much as you did, why do you not grieve now that he is dead?”

Ordinarily, this is our logic, that if you love a person too much you will grieve too much when he is gone. The logic is fallacious; the logic has a deep flaw in it. In fact, if you have loved a person really when he is gone he is gone; you will not grieve much. If you have not loved the person deeply, then you will grieve very much.

Your father dies, or your mother dies. If you have loved him totally while he was alive, you will be able to say goodbye to him without any grief – because you loved him. That experience of love was total and fulfilling; nothing is left undone; nothing is hanging over your head. Whatsoever was possible has happened; now you can accept it. What more was possible? Even if he had been alive, what more would have been possible? The experience is complete.

Whenever an experience is complete, you are ready to say goodbye easily. But if you have not loved your father as you always wanted to, you have not been respectful towards him as you always wanted to, you will feel guilty. Now the father is gone; now there is no way to fulfill your desire – now there is no way to show your respect, your love. Now there is no way, you will feel yourself hanging in the middle, in limbo. You will not be at ease; you cannot say goodbye. You will cry and weep and you will be broken, and you will say that you are broken because your father is dead, but the real thing is something else.

Once an experience is complete, you can get out of it very easily – you can just slip out of it as the snake slips out of his old skin. If you love a woman and you have been constantly quarrelling with her, and it never became a deep satisfaction, and she dies…now she will haunt you, her ghost will haunt you for your whole life.

While you are loving a person, if you love him totally there is going to be no misery. Of course, one feels a little sad but it is not grief; one misses a little but one is capable of remaining centered, one is not distracted.

It is the unlived experiences that go on piling up and they become heavy burdens. The problem is that now there is no way. You cannot complete them because the person has disappeared. Whenever an experience is complete, it is a ripe fruit – it drops of its own accord. It leaves no scar behind, there is no wound.
OSHO
A Sudden Clash of Thunder

The Indian Express, 8 December 2011

WITH Osho’s 80th birthday on December 11, Sanyasis across India, who subscribe to the spiritual teacher’s vision, are gathering together to host a five-day meditation camp, organized by Delhi based Osho World Foundation. The camp will be held from today till December 11 at Maulana Abdul Kalam Azd Hall, Koregaon Park. The camp will be open for all to learn the art of various types of meditaion and to get a glimpse of the life of the modern sanyasi.

“Meditation and taking sanyas have nothing to do with religion. Meditation is a way of self-growing and sanyas is a commitment that one makes to oneself to lead a better and happier life,” explains Swami Satya Vedant, a facilitator at the meditation camp. “The facilitators at the centres around the world are not religious leaders but are just there to guide you through the process of meditation. One is allowed to make small mistakes while meditating,” he adds.

A variety of meditation technique will be taught during these five days, which include white-rob brotherhood meetings, Osho’s discourse, celebration, dancing and silent meditation. “We will begin the day with dynamic meditation, which is a four-step process. It involves bringing out one’s pent-up emotions by shouting, screaming, throwing air punches, laughing, crying, jumping and doing anything without touching any other person. We end with silent meditation,” describes Maa Prem Noori, a facilitator, who has come for the camp from Himachal Pradesh.

Sanyasis from across the country have gathered here for a five-day meditation camp organized to celebrate their spiritual teacher Osho’s 80th birth anniversary

Osho’s discourse on various themes will also be shared along with an informal chit-chat between the participants of the camp. There will also be an initiation ceremony followed by celebration and feasting to welcome the new sanyasis. “Sanyas is not necessarily a sacrifice of One’s worldly pleasures. It is not about living a life of solitude. Instead, it points to a life of happiness and peace and the desire to impart this joy to the society at large,” says Swami Vedant. “It is a sincere act of devoting one hour everyday to the method of meditation chosen by you to nourish your soul.” he adds

The annual magazine of the Osho sanyasis has also been revived after a gap of five years. Titled ‘Abhi aur Yahi’, it will contain information about Osho’s work, vision and meditation techniques. The camp will be inaugurated today with the screening of a documentary titled ‘Now or Never’ made by the sanyasis who work independently in different parts of the world.

Afternoon Despatch & Courier, 8 December 2011

Prayers done without meditation are formal, foolish. Prayers done without meditation are meaningless – a sheer wastage of time and energy and life. I teach you meditation. And prayer cannot be taught. When meditation has happened, one day you stumble upon prayer. Prayer is grace. Meditation can be of effort, but prayer happens effortlessly. Forget about prayer and forget about God; you have first to do great work upon yourself. Be absolutely concerned with only one thing: how to drop the mind. In the dropping of the mind is all prayer will arise. Prayer is a reward to a meditator;  it is a consequence.

About this, the Eastern mystics are very clear - from Patanjali to Krishnamurti, they all teach meditation. And the reason is that the work has to be with the human mind. Prayer means a dialogue with the universal mind. Wait, be patient, first be capable of that dialogue. And then you need not go anywhere – when you are silent you hear that still small voice within your heart. In fact the dialogue is always started by God from the other side. You cannot start the dialogue, you can only be receptive; on your end a great receptivity is needed. And the moment you are ready, suddenly something is connected and the bell starts ringing. But the call comes from the other side. It is God who calls Adam Where are you? Where are you hiding?’

When Adam committed his sin, his mistake – when he ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge – he became very much afraid of God. God had prohibited it; now he had betrayed, he had been disobedient. He started feeling guilty. And God started searching for him – and he was hiding behind this bush and that, and God was shouting all over the Garden of Eden’ Adam, where are you?’

Since that day, God had been calling and you are hiding behind this bush or that.  You need not have any prayer. You only need a silent heart which can hear the shouting God, the call of God. He is calling you, you need not call Him. Just be receptive. That’s what meditation is all about, it makes you receptive. In that receptivity you start hearing God taking to you. Real prayer is when God talks to you, unreal prayer is when you talk to God.

-Osho

Pioneer, 8 December 2011

Mayor Dinesh Sharma on Wednesday said that Osho Rajneesh was an enlightened person and his teachings were pertinent even today. Sharma released a special issue of ‘Osho World’, a monthly magazine being published by Osho’s disciples from Delhi. The mayor said very few people attained enlightenment at such an early age.

“Osho is said to have attained enlightenment on March 21, 1953, when he was just 21 years of age. Since then, he has given so much to the Indian society for which we should be grateful to him. Be it politics, education, human psyche, women issues, socialism or capitalism, he has spoken a lot on each subject. He had warned that AIDS would prove to be a killer disease much ahead the threat began to take its toll,” Sharma said, adding that Osho’s teachings were relevant even today. Editor-in-chief of ‘Osho World’ Swami Chaitanya Kirti from Delhi, said the 80th birthday of Osho was being celebrated on December 11, 2011 all over the country.

“To pay tribute to the seer, his disciples have prepared special issue of ‘Osho World’. Several facts of his life have been unfurled in this issue,” said Kirti.