God Is Not For Sale
Talks given from 12/10/76 to 7/11/76
Darshan Diary
26 Chapters
Year published: 1978
God Is Not For Sale
Chapter #1
Chapter title: None
12 October 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
Archive code: 7610125
ShortTitle: SALE01
Audio: No
Video: No
Prem means love, and tyagi means renunciation. Tyagi means one who has renounced -- love and renunciation. I make a special condition for renunciation -- and that is love. A man can renounce out of anger, a man can renounce out of hatred, a man can renounce out of frustration... but then it is meaningless. Unless you renounce out of love, renunciation is of no use. If you renounce, and there is no love in your renunciation, it is a struggle. If there is love, it is a surrender.
The old renunciation used to be out of hatred for the world. The old renunciation was anti-life, negative. I teach a positive renunciation, a life-affirmative renunciation, a life-enhancing renunciation. So your renunciation is going to be a profound yes to life. Certainly when you say yes to life or yes to God, many things start dropping on their own accord. Not that you really renounce them; they simply become irrelevant So never renounce a thing unless it has become irrelevant. What I am saying is, never renounce a thing as an effort, as a struggle; don't use your will to renounce anything. Just be in a let-go.
The old renunciation was a sort of a price that one had to pay for God. It was a bargain. You had to renounce the world if you wanted to enter the kingdom of God. It was a price to be paid. But to me, God is not for sale, and there is no price to be paid. God is not a commodity. There is no way to achieve God or to purchase God. Neither knowledge nor austerities nor renunciation is going to be of any help. Anything that you can do is not going to help. You have to be just passive and receptive. You have to be feminine, then God penetrates you. It is a gift, a grace.
Remember, God is not for sale, so there is no way to purchase Him. You cannot do anything on your own that will be of any help to attain to God. All that you can do is not to stand in the way, not to resist -- that's all that man can do... to be absolutely relaxed, deeply non-resistant
And this is what, to me, is prayer -- a state of let-go.
Prem means love and sagara means ocean -- ocean of love. And this is also going to be your continuous work -- to become more and more loving. Go on sending love messages all around: to people, to animals, to trees, to rocks. Even if you are sitting in an empty room -- to things, to furniture, to the door, the wall. To the very emptiness, just go on sending vibrations of love... as if one is in love with existence itself, as if the existence is your beloved -- and much will happen out of it.
In the beginning it will be a little difficult because ordinarily we think of love only in terms of a relationship. I am talking about a totally different kind of love which has nothing to do with relationships. It is a state of energy, a loving state of energy.
If a few people are sitting silently, you can watch. Somebody is in anger; his energy has the quality of anger. Somebody is simply compassionate; his energy has the quality of compassion. If you watch people you will be able to see what kind of quality their energy has. You come across somebody and suddenly you feel a tremendous attraction. That man has a loving energy around him, so whomsoever comes into his sphere of vibration will feel attracted. Somebody else -- and you suddenly feel repelled; you simply don't want to see him. You simply don't want to come too close to him. There is a certain repulsion; his energy is repelling. It does not want to communicate, it doesn't want to share. The person is insensitive, dull, unrelating, almost dead. So watch people and you will see that it is not a question of relationship -- that when you insult somebody, he becomes angry. There are people who are simply angry. There are people who are simply loving. There are people who are simply indifferent.
I am talking about that kind of quality. So simply from this moment, start feeling loving for no reason at all but because the very feeling is such a beatitude. It is its own value, its own result. The result is intrinsic to it. The more loving you feel, the more happy you will feel. One day suddenly you will see that people are unhappy because they have no loving state of energy, that's all. A happy person is one who has a loving energy. An unhappy person is one who has a non-loving energy. It has nothing to do with circumstances; it has nothing to do with what people do to you. It has nothing to do with that. In fact you invite people to do whatsoever they do to you. That depends on your energy and its quality.
An indifferent person forces people to be indifferent towards him. An angry person forces other people to be angry towards him. A loving person simply persuades others to be loving towards him. Your energy is your life. So if you feel miserable, that means that you have created a wrong type of energy in you. If you feel happy, energy is flowing, streaming. So just start being in tremendous love, as if you have fallen in love, with existence for the first time. Touch the trees, hug the trees Even open the door with loving care. Love your own body. Love everything! And by and by it becomes ingrained so that even if you touch the chair, you touch with love. It is not something that you do. It simply becomes your way of life.
[A sannyasin describes an experience: I seemed to start getting a migraine just before the lecture... After the lecture finished I found I couldn't hear anything -- I couldn't hear myself talking -- and I felt I was going off into some kind of space. I couldn't remember anything... couldn't even remember your name!]
(chuckling) Very good -- I have no name! You came to know me for the first time. It was something beautiful, but when for the first time it happens, one is really in shock and one cannot figure out what it is. You have a tendency towards migraine but people who have no tendency towards migraine, even they have migraine when it happens; even they have a great headache.
Krishnamurti has suffered for forty years with this migraine. It started with his first satori and has not left. But whenever he has it, immediately after it he enters into a different world. So it was really beautiful. A mini-satori you had! I call it mini so you don't get too high about it! It was good.
So just take it very positively, because this is the possibility -- that sometimes when things like this happen you can become so afraid that you take the negative part as very important... that the body became numb and there was headache; then the eyes could not see, then you could not remember. Everything went topsy-turvy -- you cracked up. But if you look into this too much you will forget exactly what was happening. It was an impact of great energy on you.
And I was aware that something was going to happen from the very beginning; you were in a certain space. It is almost an LSD trip without any acid.
And it is very shocking. When you take LSD you know what you have done; you wait for it. This comes so unexpectedly... it comes without any warning. You were not expecting it and then suddenly it is there. It disturbs the whole body, because a distance arises between you and your body so that the old contact is lost. That's why you could not get up; you could not talk -- or even if you were talking, you could not hear yourself talk. Your memory was not functioning. Everything went abnormal because something new penetrated, and the impact was so much that the body could not tolerate it and the mind could not bear it But this is how it happens for the first time.
By and by, when it comes next time, you will be able to cope with it more easily and you will be able to look at the positive aspect of it. It is as if I throw a knife at you, and the knife hits you hard and you feel pain. You miss the knife completely. You feel the pain and you don't see the knife because the pain comes to you first. It is like a knife -- and you have missed that completely. You simply felt the pain of it, the impact of it, and it was so destructive. It has to be destructive. All creation is preceded by destruction.
So it was very very good. You entered a new space. It will be coming. There is no need to expect it, there is no need to long for it, and when it comes there is no need to feel afraid about it. Good, Maneesha... everything is good! You can go and rest now.
God Is Not For Sale
Chapter #2
Chapter title: None
13 October 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
Archive code: 7610135
ShortTitle: SALE02
Audio: No
Video: No
Prem means love and pradeepam means flame -- a flame of love, a light of love or lamp of love. And sannyas is nothing but coming closer to me so that your unlit flame can be lit. Just coming closer to a flame is enough. In a certain moment the flame jumps from one flame to another. Suddenly there are two flames. Nothing is lost in the original flame. Out of one flame, out of a small candle, you can light a thousand candles. Nothing is lost in the original. That's the beauty of love -- you go on sharing and nothing is lost. In fact the more you share, the more you have. So first be courageous enough to come closer to me so that your flame takes its own life, so that you are lighted again. And then help others... share your light with others.
Much is going to happen... a great potentiality is there in you. Never think that the actual is the end of life; the actual is a very tiny part of the possible. The possible is vast -- the actual is very small. The actual has a definition. The possible is infinite; it has no definition. So live with the actual but always remain open for the possible. And there is no end to it. One can simply go on growing and growing from one perfection to another perfection, from one door of mystery to another door of mystery. The journey is eternal.
So remain alert about the possible. That's what has happened to the modern mind. The modern mind has lost track of the possible; it has become too involved with the actual. The vision is lost, the hope is lost. And if the modern man feels so hopeless, so meaningless, nobody else is responsible for it. The modern mind goes on looking only at the actual. The actual is very small. One gets fed up with it It is boring because it is repetitive. Once you raise your eyes to the possible, you are facing the infinite horizon. Then vast is the sky and infinite is the possibility. Then you are never in a fed-up mood, and you are never in a state of hopelessness.
The hopelessness arises if you are obsessed too much with the actual -- and the modern mind is obsessed with the actual. That's the difference between a religious man and a non-religious man. I don't call the non-religious, irreligious, because the word irreligious has a condemnation in it. Non-religious is a neutral word -- no evaluation, just factual. The non-religious is one who has not yet become aware of the possible. The religious is one who has become aware of the possible. And that's what meditation is -- a door into the actual towards the possible... a projection of a bridge from the actual to the possible. It is a great dream, but the dream can be fulfilled.
So dream with me now! Hence forward, dream with me, and come closer and closer and closer.
[A sannyasin who has trained in psychotherapy, was unsure as to whether she should study medicine or not. Osho suggested it would be better not to undertake the extensive training medicine required, but said that he could do much as a psychotherapist.]
It will be good for your own growth also. Just remember two things. One is: psychotherapy is not yet complete, so don't depend on it totally. It takes people to a certain point -- so help your patients to reach that point through psychotherapy, but whenever you feel that things have got stuck, then introduce meditation immediately. No need to introduce meditation in the early stage; it may not be of much help. First try to work through psychotherapeutic methods and give as much help as possible through that, but then you will always come to a point where you will feel that nothing much can be done through psychotherapy. ThaYs the right point to introduce meditation.
So don't go on repeating the same thing whether something is happening or not. Otherwise psychoanalysis goes on for years and then people simply get so stuck that they change the psychotherapist, that' s all.
In a different garb, different terminology, again the same game starts. And there are many people in the West whose whole lives are being wasted in therapy. Therapy can be very helpful but one needs to know its limits. If you know the limits you can be very helpful. If you forget the limits you can be very de'structive.
Then psychotherapy itself becomes like an occupation for the patient he starts depending on it. It becomes an escape so he can avoid life, because he says that he is under therapy and he is not yet healed and there are a thousand and one problems yet to be solved. Unless they are solved, how can he participate in life? And that can become a disease in itself.
Sometimes medicines can create a greater disease than what they were meant to cure. Psychotherapy itself can become an illness, can become a neurosis. There are many people who are suffering from it. So the first thing to remember is that it is incomplete. And a scientific mind always remembers where there are limits. A scientific mind is never a fanatic mind. A scientific mind never claims more than that which is feasible.
Ordinarily the mind tends to claim absolute things -- that yes, psychotherapy can do everything! Then not only is the patient in -- the therapist is also in. So know the limits... and you will always come to experience them. When therapy stops and you feel that now nothing is happening, immediately introduce meditation, and suddenly there will be an upsurge of energy in the patient.
Deep down every person needs religion. Without religion no person can really be healthy. The unhealthiness comes into life because we don't know how to be religious. That dimension is completely lost. We have forgotten the very language of being religious. Religion is now only a formal thing.
So when a person is psychologically ill, he is also religiously ill. On the surface it is a psychological illness; in the depth it is a religious illness. He is in a state of turmoil and he cannot figure out why he is, why this existence is, what the meaning of life is. These problems are so big that he cannot even raise them, so he raises small problems which he hopes will be solved. His basic problem is that he has not been able to feel the significance of life. He starts thinking, 'Maybe I am living with a wrong woman.' Now this is a problem that can be solved. But he is living with a wrong lifestyle; that is a big problem and it will be very difficult to solve. Even to recognise it needs courage. So people go on finding small problems. They are substitute problems; they are not real problems.
You can change the woman, and nothing will change. Another woman, and after a few days, the same problem. A person thinks that maybe it is the wrong job he is doing and that is why he is not happy; he should change the job. Or maybe it is the wrong car and the wrong house and the wrong neighbourhood; he should change all these things. The whole basic problem is that he is wrong.
So give a person psychological help to a point and then immediately introduce meditation to him. Suddenly you will see that his psychological problems are just pseudo problems. His real problem has arisen, and that real problem is that he was seeking some meaning in his life -- sometimes in the form of money, sometimes in power, prestige, love, rebtionships, this and that. The basic search is for meaning: how to make life meaningful, how to live so that you can feel that existence needs you. That's what meaning is -- so that you can feel that you are needed.
There is a great need to be needed, and that cannot be fulfilled. There may be a man who needs you, but that cannot be very satisfying. You can have children -- they need you -- but you know that soon they will grow up and will be gone, and then? So women almost always become psychologically ill when the children have all left and gone to the university or to their own lives. Now meaning is lost. They were living for these children; there was a certain sort of meaning. Now that is no more there.