Osho gives sannyas to Herke from Holland:
This will be your name… and remember that the change of the name is not an ordinary matter, because the name goes very deep into the unconscious; one becomes identified with the name. You were born without a name, then a name was given to you. That name has become very very deep-rooted. If somebody says something insulting about your name you will feel offended – although you know that you came without any name into the world. There is no necessary relationship between you and your name. You can change your name, because there is really no name – one is nameless.
Still, if somebody insults you and says something offending you will be in a rage. If a hundred persons are sleeping in this hall and in the night somebody comes and calls somebody by name, ninety-nine percent of the people won’t listen, but the one whose name it is will simply jump and say, ‘Who is calling me?’ So even in sleep you know and remember your name. The other ninety-nine people are fast asleep – nothing has happened – but the person whose name it is suddenly becomes awake; the name goes so deep into the unconscious.
So when we change a name it is of tremendous import. It means dropping the whole identity that you have lived with up to now… dropping the whole idea that you have thought about yourself up to now… dropping the whole definition and starting from abc, as if you are born again. And it is not ‘as if’ – it is really so… sannyas is a rebirth.
So from this moment start thinking of yourself in a totally fresh way. The old is gone, the new is born, and they are not even connected. The one who was ready to take sannyas is no more. He has done his last act – he has committed suicide. Now the one who is entering into sannyas is totally different. Let it be a clean break, a breakthrough, a rift with the past… unbridgeable. That will cleanse you tremendously and you will feel very much unburdened, young, innocent… again full of wonder as every child is. That’s the miracle!
If you understand the meaning of the change of the name, you allow the miracle to happen. Then you don’t know who you are – you will have to learn again. You will have to learn everything from abc.
So the whole conditioned mind that has been functioning up to now as you is put out of gear. The new, the unfamiliar, the unknown starts. So don’t try to carry the old. Mm? just forget about it – as if you have read about it in a novel or you had seen a movie or somebody else had told you a story. Of course the memory will be there, but don’t get identified with it anymore. By and by the memory will go far and far away, will recede and will disappear. That is the magic of changing the name.
And this will be your new name: Swami Anand Devanshu.
Anand means bliss, the ultimate state. There are three states of being. One is pain. Many people, ninety-nine percent, live in that state – call it hell. Then pleasure, happiness, joys – rarely does one percent of people live in that. Or, people who ordinarily live in the first stage of pain, sometimes have glimpses of it – those glimpses are rare. Everybody hopes for it, but nobody lives in it.
Everybody lives in hell and dreams of heaven. That dream helps you to live in hell. That dream makes it comfortable to live in hell. That dream becomes like a buffer, a shock-absorber, so that the pain is not too much. That dream functions as a tranquilliser. It helps you – you can tolerate the pain because you know that tomorrow there will be happiness. You can hope. Heaven is nothing but hope – and hell is reality.
Sometimes, very rarely, in a moment of beauty, love, friendship, one has a little taste of it, but that taste is very momentary – comes and goes and again the hell erupts and explodes and one is thrown in the hellfire.
These are the two ordinary states of the human mind – both go on changing; nothing is ultimate about them.
The third state is bliss. The first I call hell; the second I call heaven. In India we have a special name – which cannot be translated – for the third. We call it moksha, nirvana.
In the western religions there are only two things talked about – hell and heaven. That’s why I always say that Christianity, Judaism, Islam, are poor in a way. They miss the ultimate.
There is a state of your consciousness where pleasure disappears, pain disappears… where nothing – no excitement – exists… neither pain nor pleasure… just pure awareness and tremendous peace. That state we call bliss, anand – and that is the goal. That is your destiny, and unless you attain it, nothing is attained. You can attain the whole world and you can possess the whole world, and nothing is possessed. You will always remain in a limbo – never certain where you are – and you will remain unaware of your being.
So let it be a conscious effort. Pain has to be dropped – so has pleasure. If you hanker for pleasure, pain will never be dropped – they go together. They are two aspects of the same coin. If you hanker for pleasure you will remain in pain. Sometimes, rarely, you will have a glimpse of pleasure and again you will be thrown in pain.
Don’t hanker for pleasure because it creates only pain and nothing else. Don’t desire happiness because it creates only unhappiness and nothing else. Don’t desire success because it brings only failure and nothing else.
Once you have seen this game – that success brings failure and pleasure brings pain in its wake – you start on a totally different journey. Now you want to be just yourself – neither in pain nor in pleasure.
That’s what meditation is all about: an effort to drop pain and pleasure, the conflict and the duality, and to go deeper into oneself… just to be there without any desire for anything. In that moment of no-desire, the ultimate happens.
Devanshu means a part of god… and everybody is a part of god. The moment you start thinking of yourself as the whole, you miss the goal. That’s what the ego is – the part deceiving itself, thinking itself to be the whole. The ego is the part claiming, pretending, to be the whole… the drop claiming to be the ocean. The drop can be the ocean, but the drop has to drop into the ocean and has to drop all claiming.
If you go on claiming that you are the whole, there is nowhere to go. You are already the whole, so there is no way…. Remember that we are part – of course, part of god himself, because we belong to this whole existence – a very small part, but still part of the whole. And each single part is divine because the whole is divine. The part cannot be contrary to the whole. The part has to reflect the whole. The part has to carry the same qualities and the same attributes of the whole.
Once you remember that you are just a part, the ego disappears and you come to an agreement with the whole. Otherwise there is disagreement. The ego goes on fighting; it claims that it is the whole. The slave trying to claim that he is the king – then there is conflict.
When you have understood that you are part, and you are happy to be the part, suddenly the conflict disappears. There arises a great agreement between the part and the whole… a great harmony, accord and in that accord the part disappears in the whole and the whole disappears in the part. And then you are the whole.
When you don’t claim, you are the whole; when you claim, you miss. Devanshu means a part of god, a part of divinity….
Osho, The Buddha Disease, Ch 14
Comments are closed.