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Part VII : Celebrations
For several years there have been special celebration days: Osho's
birthday (11th December), the anniversary of Osho's enlightenment
(21st March), and the traditional Indian festival to honour the
guru (Gurupurnima, July full moon). Celebrations include informal
singing, dancing, and charansparsh with Osho. In March 1976 over
2,000 people attend. As the number of visitors increases to 7,000
in 1978, the celebration changes to a darshan with Osho in Buddha
Hall, with singing, dancing and silent sitting. Osho encourages
sannyasins to come for celebrations days; he indicates that with
so many people present it is easy for him to raise the consciousness.
Osho speaks to a sannyasin who is leaving:
If you can manage to be here on the twentieth, (Guru Purnima festival)
it will be good. Mm, because sannyasins will be gathering from
all over the world and it will be beautiful to participate in
their joy and celebration. If it is possible and it doesn't make
much trouble for you…. If it is easily possible, otherwise
don't bother, mm? Just for one day, the twentieth, be here from
the morning to the night and then you can go back. leap08
I teach to you: Be the celebrators, celebrate! Already there
is too much: the flowers have bloomed, the birds are singing,
the sun is there in the sky—celebrate it! You are breathing
and you are alive, and you have consciousness—celebrate
it! Then suddenly you relax, then there is no tension, then there
is no anguish. The whole energy that becomes anguish becomes gratitude;
your whole heart goes on beating with a deep thankfulness—that
is prayer. That's all prayer is about: a heart beating with a
deep thankfulness. suprem04
Take hold of your own life. See that the whole existence is
celebrating. These trees are not serious, these birds are not
serious. The rivers and the oceans are wild, and everywhere there
is fun, everywhere there is joy and delight. Watch existence,
listen to the existence and become part of it. Then you become
a Baul, then you become a lover—because love can exist only
with a deep respect for fun, with a deep respect for delight.
Love cannot exist with a serious mind. With a serious mind, logic
is in tune. be non-serious. I'm not saying not to be sincere.
Be sincere, but be non-serious. Sincerity is something else; seriousness
is totally different. Be sincere with existence, then you will
be true; you will become part of this cosmic leela, this cosmic
play. belov109
You say: I have heard that Your sannyasins celebrate death.
You have heard rightly! My sannyasins celebrate everything. Celebration
is the foundation of my sannyas—not renunciation but rejoicing;
rejoicing in all the beauties, all the joys, all that life offers,
because this whole life is a gift of God.
The old religions have taught you to renounce life. They are
all life negative; their whole approach is pessimistic. They are
all against life and its joys. To me, life and God are synonymous.
In fact, life is a far better word than God itself, because God
is only a philosophical term, while life is real, existential.
The word "God" exists only in scriptures; it is a word,
a mere word. Life is within you and without you—in the trees,
in the clouds, in the stars. This whole existence is a dance of
life.
I teach love for life.
I teach the art of living your life totally, of being drunk with
the divine through life. I am not an escapist….
I am in tremendous love with life, hence I teach celebration.
Everything has to be celebrated, everything has to be lived, loved.
To me nothing is mundane and nothing is sacred. To me all is sacred,
from the lowest rung of the ladder to the highest rung. It is
the same ladder: from the body to the soul, from the physical
to the spiritual, from sex to samadhi—everything is divine!…
Celebration has to be total, only then can you be multidimensionally
rich. And to be multidimensionally rich is the only thing we can
offer to God.
If there is a God, and someday you have to face him, he will ask
you only one question: "Have you lived your life totally
or not?"—because this opportunity is given to you to
live, not to renounce.
My sannyasins celebrate death too, because to me death is not
the end of life but the very crescendo of life, the very climax.
It is the ultimate of life. If you have lived rightly, if you
have lived moment to moment totally, if you have squeezed out
the whole juice of life, your death will be the ultimate orgasm.
The sexual orgasm is nothing compared to the orgasm that death
brings, but it brings it only to the person who knows the art
of being total. The sexual orgasm is a very faint thing compared
to the orgasm that death brings. What happens in sexual orgasm?
For a moment you forget that you are a body, for a moment two
lovers become merged into one unity, into one organic union. For
a moment they are not separate entities; they have melted into
each other like two clouds which have become one.
But it is only for a single moment, then they are again separate.
Hence all sexual orgasms bring in their wake a kind of depression,
because you fall from the height. You reached a crescendo, and
for only a fragment of a moment you remained on the peak and then
the peak disappeared. And when you fall from that height, you
fall into the depth of depression.
This is one of the contradictions of sex: it gives you the greatest
pleasure and also the greatest agony. It gives you ecstasy and
agony—both. And each time you reach an orgasmic state, you
know that soon it will disappear. Then there is disillusionment,
disappointment.
Death gives you the ultimate in orgasmic joy: the body is left
behind forever and your being becomes one with the whole. It is
immeasurable. If to become one with a single person gives you
so much joy, just think how much joy will happen in becoming one
with the infinite! But it does not happen to everybody who dies,
because the people who have not lived rightly cannot die rightly
either. The people who have lived in deep unconsciousness will
die in deep unconsciousness. Death will give you only that which
you have lived all your life; it is the essence of your whole
life.
If your life was of meditativeness, awareness, witnessing, then
you will be able to witness death too. If your whole life you
remained cool, centered in different situations, death will give
you the ultimate challenge, the ultimate test. And if you can
remain centered, calm and cool and watching, then you will not
die an unconscious death, your death will bring you to the ultimate
peak of consciousness. And then, certainly, it has to be celebrated.
So whenever one of my sannyasins dies, we celebrate, we dance,
we sing. We give him a good farewell….
Yes, my sannyasins celebrate death because they celebrate life.
And death is not against life; it does not end life, it only brings
life to a beautiful peak. Life continues even after death. It
was there before birth, it is going to continue after death. Life
is not confined to the small space that exists between birth and
death; on the contrary, births and deaths are small episodes in
the eternity of life.
We celebrate everything. Celebration is our way to receive all
the gifts from God. Life is his gift, death is his gift; the body
is his gift, the soul is his gift. We celebrate everything. We
love the body, we love the soul. We are materialist spiritualists.
Nothing like this has ever happened in the world. This is a new
experiment, a new beginning, and it has a great future. come02
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