| 
Part VII : World Expansion of Osho’s vision
Recently there has been a move to spread Osho's vision around
the world. The sale of books, audio and video tapes has moved
to USA. Sannyasins overseas are encouraged to support the meditation
centres and communes. There are programs to train new group leaders.
In March 1981 a one-day event is held in London: therapists trained
in the ashram lead meditations and group structures, which is
very successful. This is followed by similar events in other capitals
in the world.
My effort is not only to create the buddhafield here but to
create small oases all over the world. I would not like to confine
this tremendous possibility to this small commune only. This commune
will be the source, but it will have branches all over the world.
It will be the root, but it is going to become a big tree. It
is going to reach every country, it is going to reach every potential
person. We will create small oases; we have started creating small
communes, centers, all over the world.
Almost two hundred small families are functioning all over the
world, but this is only the beginning. Thousands of communes are
bound to happen once this commune has become really and totally
established. It is going to create such an impetus, it is going
to create such a longing all over the world, that we will have
many many communes all over the world. And wherever my sannyasins
are together, I am there. Wherever they will sit in meditation,
my presence will be felt.
So first we have to create the root, and then the branches.
The whole world cannot come here, but we can send our messengers,
our apostles; we can send our branches far and wide. We can cover
the whole earth. We are going to cover the whole earth! dh0606
The time has come when thousands of communes can erupt, explode
all over the world. And that's what I am intending to do by creating
so many sannyasins and then sending them back to their countries
so that thousands of communes start functioning.
I would like to create a chain of communes all around the world,
so this commune does not remain only one oasis in the vast desert
but becomes interlinked with many communes. That type of interlinking
has never been done before; that will be new. Communes have always
existed, but many communes functioning all around the world was
not possible before; it is possible only today. Science has made
it possible. The world is now so small, it is almost like a village,
a global village. Man has come so close that now this possibility
exists.
I have got two hundred thousand sannyasins working all around
the world, two hundred communes slowly growing. Soon there will
be thousands of communes all around the world, and this will be
the first chain of communes surrounding the whole globe! And the
possibility of their success is becoming more and more than it
was ever before, for the simple reason that science has come to
such a growth that unless religion also reaches to the same point,
humanity is doomed. Everything has become lopsided. It was never
so before, in fact just the opposite was the case.
Buddha's commune was far more advanced than the technology and
the science of Buddha's day. Mahavira's commune was far more advanced,
far ahead than the society, than the inner growth of man; there
was a big gap. Now the gap is there, but it is a totally different
gap. The society, science, technology, have gone far ahead than
man's inner growth. Now the society and the science and the technology
have prepared the ground; we can use this opportunity. We can
help man come to the same growth, and that will he a balancing
thing. All those communes in the past created an imbalance; they
were out of tune. They were far ahead of their time, hence they
were doomed to fail.
But this time we can hope we may succeed, for the simple reason
that we are not going against or too ahead of time. Time is ready
and ripe and we are in tune with it. Only we are in tune with
it; the whole society is falling behind—the modern technology,
the modern science. All your so-called churches, religions are
far behind modern science.
What I am doing here is a very balancing phenomenon. Now religion
can exist on a far higher level than it has ever existed, because
science has provided the right background. And moreover, science
has created a tremendous fear in the world that science can destroy
the whole humanity. And now the only hope is that religion can
save it. And when it is a question of survival, millions of people
are bound to become interested in meditation because only meditation
can save them; nothing else can save. If man remains the same
and science goes on developing, then the very developing science
will become a mountainous burden on man.
It is a well-known fact that somewhere in the past, one hundred
thousand years back, there were huge animals, far bigger than
elephants, ten times bigger than elephants. What happened to those
huge animals? They suddenly disappeared from the earth; only their
skeletons are discovered. What calamity happened? No calamity
from the outside, but they became too huge. The burden of their
bodies became so much that they could not carry it; they became
incapable from inside. Their inner being remained very small and
their outer body became too big; it lost balance.
The same is happening today with man: his inner soul is too
small and his outer technology, his science, has become too huge.
It can bring a Third World War, a total war, because it is a question
of life and death; it has never been such a question before. There
is a hope that religion can explode, and millions of authentic
seekers are searching for it.
We can create a chain around the world of such communes, and
the whole world can be transformed into a Buddhafield. Then only
there is a possibility of a communism arising out of love and
arising from the highest sources, from the Everests—not
a dictatorship of the proletariat, but a trust, a surrender to
a Buddha. And out of that trust and surrender a totally new kind
of communism can be given birth.
In that sense I am for communism—but communists will be
very much against me because if my type of communism succeeds
then their type of communism is bound to fail. ithat15
And if you cannot feel your own truth how can you share it with
others? And that is the basic purpose of our coming into the world—to
bring something of god from the beyond and share it.
It has to be rediscovered. We have to destroy all the barriers
that have grown around it. And that's the whole process of sannyas:
sannyas means a total process of deconditioning. Whosoever someone
is—Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, German, Japanese—it
does not matter; we have to decondition him. The Christian will
have to be deconditioned as well as the Hindu, as well as the
Mohammedan. We will have to destroy all that has grown around
your natural self. And once all the barriers are removed a great
joy arises. Suddenly one recollects who one is and what one's
purpose is here.
In that very moment life becomes significant because you have
come to your own truth—and that is god's message. Then you
can share it with others, then you can also help others.
My effort here is to create as many sannyasins as possible so
they can be spread all over the world and they can start triggering
many many people into self-discovery. I am not creating a church
or a creed, I am simply emphasizing a process. If one passes through
that process one will come to one's own natural self. That is
our truth, and that's also god's truth, because truths cannot
be separate; our truth and god's truth are the same.
Truth is one, but first it has to be discovered within oneself,
only then can we see it in others too. And if you can discover
it within yourself you can help others because the process is
the same. thunk28
You ask: Do you have a message for sannyasins and friends gathering
at the Cafe Royal, London, for the "March Event"?
My message, Anand Poonam, for the March Event in London, where
thousands of sannyasins are gathering together for the first time
to celebrate a new opening: the British Buddhafield… This
is my message, tell them: Get rid of the past and the future,
and live herenow! It is suicidal to live anywhere else than herenow,
because each moment that is passing is precious, so precious that
you cannot get it back. Don't waste it!…
I say to you, there is no other God than life, hence the question
of choice does not arise at all. Live! Live totally, live passionately,
live intelligently, live lovingly. Become a flame so intense,
so total, that each moment starts having the flavor of eternity….
My sannyasins have to live as individuals. I am not giving you
any discipline, because every discipline creates perversion, every
discipline only fits to the person who evolves it. Just look at
all the disciplines that have been propounded down the ages…
My approach is of freedom. My sannyasins should live a life-affirmative
philosophy, accepting, respecting whatsoever one is, not creating
shoulds and should-nots. They are ugly, they are monstrous!…
Anand Poonam, tell my British Buddhafield sannyasins…
Be natural, be simple, be ordinary! There is a danger… because
once you become a sannyasin you can start having an old, holier-than-thou
outlook. My sannyasins are not to be holier-than-thou. Remember,
I don't make any distinction between the sacred and the profane.
To me the ordinary life is the only life. Yes, there is a way
to live it with beauty or ugliness, with insight or blindness,
with awareness or unawareness. One can live this same ordinary
life in such an exquisite, extraordinary way that it becomes sacred,
but there is no other life than this. You have to learn the art
of transforming this very ordinary life into something beautiful.
So don't become theologians, don't become missionaries. I hate
missionaries! My sannyasins are not to be missionaries. Be contagious,
but not missionaries! Infect people, but don't be missionaries!…
Be simple, be natural, be spontaneous. I teach ecstasy—and
ecstasy in the ordinary life. The life has not to be in any way
renounced but transformed. Renunciation is escapism, it is cowardliness.
And you have worshipped cowards as saints up to now. You have
worshipped people who were not courageous enough to accept all
the challenges of life. And there are millions of challenges—every
moment there is a challenge. The coward escapes. The coward has
to be condemned, not respected.
My sannyasins have to live in the world, totally in the world,
responding to every challenge, because the more you respond to
the challenges of life the more intelligent you become. Intelligence
is like a sword: the more you use it the more it remains sharp.
If you don't use it, it starts getting rusty, it loses its sharpness—it
becomes absolutely useless.
Hence your saints look dull, dead. But we have been conditioned
to respect these dead corpses. We have been told for thousands
of years that these are the real people. They are not real at
all! They are very plastic, very phony. A coward can never be
a real person. Reality needs all the challenges of life, all the
dangers of life, all the insecurities of life. Only then integrity
arises, authenticity arises, responsibility arises.
Be in the world but don't be of it. Live in the world, but don't
allow the world to live in you. That's my message.
There is a Zen saying:
The wild geese do not intend
to cast their reflections.
The water has no mind
to receive their image.
The wild geese has no desire to cast its reflections in the water,
and the water has no desire or no mind to receive its image—although
it happens! When the wild geese flies, the water reflects it.
The reflection is there, the image is there, but the water has
no mind to reflect and the wild geese do not hanker to be reflected
either.
This should be the way of my sannyasins. Be in the world, live
in the world, live totally, without ambitions, without desires—because
all desires distract you from living, all ambitions sacrifice
your present. Don't be greedy, because greed takes you into the
future; don't be possessive, because possessiveness keeps you
clinging to the past. A man who wants to live in the present has
to be free of greed, of possessiveness, of ambitions, of desires.
And that's what I call the whole art of meditation. Be aware,
be alert, so all these thieves have no possibility to enter and
contaminate you. Be meditative, but be in the world. And this
is my experience: that the world helps immensely—it helps
immensely to make you meditative. It gives you all the opportunities
to be distracted, but if you don't get distracted then each success
becomes a tremendous joy. You remain centered, you become the
center of the cyclone. The cyclone goes on roaring around you,
but your center remains unaffected.
Be a lotus flower. In the East the lotus flower symbolizes the
essence of sannyas. The lotus flower grows in the mud, dirty mud.
It does not escape, it remains there. It floats in the lake in
water, but there is a beauty, a tremendous phenomenon: it is in
the water, but the water never touches it. It is so velvety that
in the morning if you go… and you will find dewdrops gathered
on the petals of the lotus, on the leaves of the lotus, and they
shine like pearls in the early morning sun. But they are not touching.
The lotus leaf or the lotus petal remains dry, it does not become
wet. The dewdrops rest there, but they remain separate.
That's the way of a true sannyasin: being in the world but remaining
untouched, unaffected by it.
Anand Poonam, when meditation—and this is what I call
meditation: being in the world and remaining untouched—happens,
love comes as a byproduct.
These are the pillars of my sannyasins: first, life-affirmation,
unconditional life-affirmation—these are the four pillars
of my temple—second, meditation; third, love; and fourth…
cannot be expressed in words. It can only be called the fourth,
turiya. If you live life totally, meditatively, lovingly, you
come to experience something which is inexpressible. Lao Tzu calls
it Tao, Buddha calls it Dhamma, Jesus calls it Logos: different
names indicating towards the nameless experience. If you prefer
you can call it Cod. My own liking is to call it "godliness",
not "God", because God gives you the idea of a person
and godliness simply gives you the idea of a presence.
These are the four pillars of my temple, and each sannyasin
has to grow these four pillars because each sannyasin has to become
a temple of godliness. wildgs01
|
