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• Say Yes To life And Laugh Along

• Unburden Yourself With Laughter

• Your Best Medicine

• Get Rid Of Ego And Attain Bliss

• Only Love

• Love, Meditate And Be Free

• Gallery Of The Enlightened

• The Body Is A Temple For The Soul
  

HINDUSTAN TIMES
FRIDAY,  JANUARY  2, 2004

Say Yes To Life And Laugh Along
MEDITATION| Swami Chaitanya Keerti

To be a really a religious person is something positive, and means saying yes to life. Along with a yes, if we add laughter, then life takes on a totally new dimension. 
Life follows two basic laws. One is the law of gravitation and the other is that of levitation. We can call it grace -the transcendental dimension of meditation. Gravitation keeps us in bondage while the law of levitation gives us freedom. This dimension is known to the mystics and the scientists of the inner world and they live a life of grace. 
Osho talks about Zarathustra, who is known as the Laughing Prophet. His most famous statement condemns seriousness as sin and appreciates laughter as prayer. He says: "What has been the greatest sin here on earth? Was it not the saying, "Woe to those who laugh!'" 
For centuries, religious people have remained god-fearing and that has made them very serious. God has been understood by them as somebody above in the heaven who is going to punish us and throw us into hell if we enjoy the simple pleasures of life. This approach has created limitless misery in human life. 
People have become incapable of enjoying life. They have become life-negative. Zarasthustra and Osho do not agree with this approach and teach us to be life-affirmative. They say: Live more, love more, and laugh more. Talking about Zarasthustra, Osho says: "Laughter brings your energy back to you. Every fibre of your being becomes alive, and every cell of your being starts dancing. Zarathustra is right when he says that the greatest sin against man done on the earth is that he has been prohibited from laughing. The implications are deep, because when you are prohibited from laughing certainly you are prohibited from being joyous, you are prohibited from singing a song of celebration, you are prohibited from dancing just out of sheer blissfulness. 
"By prohibiting laughter, all that is beautiful in life, all that makes life livable and lovable, all that gives meaning to life is destroyed. It is the ugliest strategy used against man. Seriousness is a sin. And remember, seriousness does not mean sincerity - sincerity is altogether a different phenomenon. A serious man cannot laugh, cannot dance, cannot play. He is always controlling himself; he has been brought up in such a way that he has become a jailer to himself. The sincere man can laugh, dance and rejoice sincerely. Sincerity has nothing to do with seriousness. Seriousness is simply sickness of the soul, and only sick souls can be converted into slaves.

TIMES OF INDIA / SPEAKING TREE
SATURDAY, JANUARY 03, 2004 12:00:17 AM 

Unburden Yourself With Laughter                                                       Back to top
Swami Chaitanya Keerti

Gautama Buddha made a profound statement: "Be a light unto yourself". To this, Osho adds another: "Be a joke unto yourself". Osho would say: "I have to tell jokes because you are all religious people, you tend to be serious. I have to tickle you sometimes so that you forget your religiousness, your philosophies, theories, systems, and you fall down to earth". 
Osho has seen that in spontaneous laughter noise of the mind stops for a few precious moments, allowing us to experience mindlessness or meditation, however fleetingly. 
The seriousness of 'religious' people, however, is heavy on the human heart. It creates guilt in people: when you laugh, you feel you are doing something wrong. Laughter is good in a movie hall, but not in a church or temple. 
Osho said: "I declare laughter to be the highest religious quality. And if we can decide that every year, for one hour, at a certain date, at a certain time, the whole world will laugh (together), it will help to dispel darkness, violence and stupidities - because laughter is a unique human characteristic... It can relax you, it can make you feel light, it can make your world a beautiful experience. It can change everything in your life. Laughter can make life worth living, something to be grateful for." 
"German thinker Count Key serling wrote that health is unreligious. But an ill person is desire less not because he has become desire-less but because he is weak. A healthy person will laugh, he would like to enjoy, be merry - he cannot be sad." 
"But 'religious' persons tell you to go on a fast, suppress your body, torture yourself. Laughter comes out of health. It's an overflowing energy. That's why children can laugh and their laughter is total. Their whole body is involved in it when they laugh; you can see their toes laughing." 
Laughter, according to Osho, is multi-dimensional. When you laugh, your body, mind and your being laugh in unison. Distinctions, divisions and the schizophre-nic personality disappears. That's why Osho introduced laughter to religion. Seriousness is of the ego whereas laughter is egoless-ness. 
Religion cannot be anything other than a celebration of life. The serious person is handicapped: He creates barriers. He cannot dance, sing or celebrate. He becomes desert-like. And if you are a desert, you can go on thinking and pretending that you are religious but you are not. 
You may be sectarian, but not religious. You believe in something, but you don't know anything. A man burdened by theories becomes serious. A man who is unburdened starts laughing. 
The whole play of existence is so beautiful that laughter can be the only response to it. Only laughter can be the real prayer of gratitude. Osho talks about a great Zen master Hotei who was known in Japan as the 'Laughing Buddha'. 
Osho said: "Hotei is tremendously significant... more people should be like Hotei; more temples should be full of laughter, dancing and singing. If seriousness is lost, nothing is lost -in fact, one becomes more healthy and whole. But if laughter is lost, everything is lost. Suddenly you lose the festivity of your being; you become colourless, monotonous, in a way, dead. Then your energy is not streaming any more". 
But to understand Hotei you will have to be in that festive dimension. If you are too much burdened with theories, concepts, notions, ideologies, theologies, philosophies, you will not be able to realise the significance of Hotei. 
Osho warned that taking man's laughter away from him is taking his very life away; it is a form of spiritual castration. 
Swami Chaitanya Keerti 
( January 1 was celebrated as World Laughter Day )

THE PIONEER/VIVACITY
TUESDAY, JANUARY 6, 2004

Your Best Medicine                                                                          Back to top
Swami Chaitanya Keerti

Start the new year on a note of cheerful laughter, suggests Osho. It keeps the ego at bay and invites the cosmos to join in

My approach towards life is that of laughter. And laughter contains love, joy and gratitude. Laughter contains tremendous thankfulness towards God. When you are really in deep belly laughter, your ego disappears.

It happens rarely in any other activity, but in laughter it is bound to happen. If the laughter is total, ego cannot exist; nothing kills ego like laughter.

That's why egotists are serious. Ego can exist only in seriousness; ego lives, feeds on seriousness. And serious people are dangerous.

We have to destroy all kinds of seriousness in the world. Temples should be full of laughter, song, dance and celebration. That's how trees, stars, rivers and oceans are. The whole existence, except man, is in a non-serious state; only man seems to be serious.

No child is born serious, remember, but we destroy a child's innocence. His qualities of wonder and awe. We destroy his laughter and everything beautiful and valuable.

Instead we give him a load to carry - of knowledge, of theology, of philosophy. The more he becomes educated, the more he loses his sense of humor. He starts living through his knowledge. And because he starts to know so much that awe and sense of wonder are lost. The laughter I am teaching is something that will destroy you completely. It is a crucifixion.

But only after destruction is there creation. Only from chaos are stars born. Only after crucifixion is there resurrection.

No, you will not be able to survive this laughter. If you really allow it, you will be drowned by it. You will disappear and only laughter will remain.

If you laugh then laughter is not total. When there is only laughter and you are not, then it is total. And only then have you heard God's joke.

Yes this whole cosmos is a joke. Hindus call it Leela. It is a joke, it is a play. And the day you understand, you start laughing. That laughter never stops. It spreads all over the cosmos.

Laughter is prayer.

If you can laugh you have learnt to pray. Don't be serious. Serious people can never be religious. Only a person who can laugh, not only at others but at himself, can be religious.

A person who can laugh absolutely, who sees the ridiculousness and game of life, becomes enlightened in that laughter.

I teach you life, love. I teach you how to sing and dance. To transform life into a carnival of delight.

Even if you cry and weep, your tears should have the quality of laughter in them. They should come dancing and singing; they should not be tears of sadness and misery.

(This article was compiled by Swami Chaitanya Keerti, editor, Osho World Magazine. JANUARY 1 was World Laughter Day)

HINDUSTAN TIMES
FRIDAY, JANUARY 9, 2004

Get Rid Of Ego And Attain Bliss                                                           Back to top
MEDITATIONS | Swami Chaitanya Keerti

G.K. Chesterton, one of the most profound thinkers of the world, has said, "The angels fly because they take themselves lightly." 
Taking oneself lightly or taking everything lightly is really a religious quality which is rarely found even in the so-called religious people. Religious people, who are supposed to be humble and soft, often consider themselves special and holier than others. They develop a certain ego. Ordinary people who run after money, power and prestige have an ordinary ego, which is visible. Religious people have a pious ego. 
A person full of ego — ordinary or pious — becomes too much self-conscious and serious. Such a person cannot understand life as leela, the inter-play of existence, the creativity of God. For that one needs the lightness of ego-lessness. For that one needs to experience an inner light in one's being. This realization happens with the disappearance or evaporation of ego and one experiences oneness with the universe.
Osho says: That has been the ultimate goal of the mystics - to disappear into the universal, not to be separate; to melt and merge into the universal. Separation brings anxiety, death and misery. We are miserable because we feel separate from God or the universe. Bliss arises whenever you feel one with the universe; when you are in harmony with the universe bliss arises. There is great joy, rejoicing; you disappear, you die in a way, but you are reborn. You are reborn as the ocean, you die as the dewdrop. 
Buddha says: Existence is one. There are no boundaries. No-body is separate from anybody else. We live in one ocean of consciousness. We are one consciousness — deluded by the boundaries of the body, deluded by the boundaries of the mind. 
And because of the body and the mind, and because of the identification with the body and mind, we think we are separate, we think we are selves. This is how we create the ego. 
Osho elaborates: When I say drop the ego I mean drop all demarcation lines. You are not separate from life, you are part of it. Like a wave, you are part of the ocean. You are not separate at all. Neither as a saint are you separate, nor as a sinner are you separate. You are not separate at all. You are one with life. You are neither dependent on life, nor are you independent of life — you are interdependent. When you understand that we are all interdependent, linked with each other. Life is one; we are just manifestations of it... then you start becoming blissful.

VIVACITY/ THE PIONEER

Relationships
Only Love                                                                                    Back to top
Swami Chaitanya Keerti

Once a disciple asked Osho: In the East, it has been stressed one should stay with a person, one person, in a love relationship. In the West, now people float from one relationship to another. Which do you favour? Osho replied: "Love."

Let me explain: be true to love, and don't bother about number of partners. The question is if you are true to love.

If you live with a woman or man and don't love him, you live in sin. If you are married to somebody and don't love that person but make love to him or her, you are committing sin against love... and love is God. You are deciding against love for social convenience. It is as wrong as raping a woman you don't love. It is a crime because you don't love the woman and she does not love you. Same happens if you live with a woman and don't love her. Then it is rape - socially accepted, but rape nevertheless.

If you remain true to love, it is one of the most beautiful things to remain with one person, because intimacy grows. But 99 per cent are possibilities there is no love. You only live together.

But it is possible if you love someone and live your life with them, intimacy will grow and love will have deeper revelations. This is not possible if you change partners. It is as if you keep changing a tree from one place to another. It never grows roots. Intimacy is good, and to remain in one commitment is beautiful, but love is necessary. In the West, people are changing - too many relationships. Love is killed both ways. In the East it is killed because people are afraid to change; in the West it is killed because people are afraid of commitment. So before it becomes this, change.

I am in favour of love. Always remember: if it is a love relationship, good. While love lasts, remain as deeply committed as possible. Be absorbed by the relationship. Love will transform you. If there is no love, change.

But don't become an addict of change like buying a new car. Suddenly, you come across a new woman. It is not very different. A woman is a woman, the way a man is a man. In each woman all women are represented, and in each man all men are represented. The differences are superficial: the nose is a little longer or shorter; hair is blond or brunette. The question is of female and male energy. So if love is there, stick to it. Give it chance to grow. Or else, change.

A young wife in the confessional asked the priest about contraceptives. "You must not use them," said the priest. "They are against God's law. Take a glass of water." "Before, or after?" asked the wife. "Instead!" replied the priest. You ask whether to follow the Eastern way or the Western way. Neither; you follow the divine way. Remain true to love.

- Compiled by Swami Chaitanya, editor, OshoWorld magazine

HINDUSTAN TIMES
HT FAITH
FRIDAY, JANUARY 23, 2004

Love, Meditate And Be Free                                                                 Back to top
Swami Chaitanya Keerti

Osho is being read and heard like never before. There are about two thousand books based on his transcribed discourses in ninety languages, about one thousand hours of discourses on audio, and three thousand hours of videotapes. 
But if his whole message were to be put in one word, I would say without hesitation that it is ‘Meditation’. If you want to add another word, it would be ‘Love’. And if you still insist for more, I will add ‘Celebration’ and stop there. 
Meditation is the foundation of Osho's vision. Love follows. Love without meditation is nothing more than lust. Meditation purifies it and makes it free from jealousy, possessiveness, and the bondage of expectation that ordinarily come with the package of love. Freedom is a higher value than love: it is the very soul of love. When there is only meditation and no love, life becomes bland. 
Osho says: “In my philosophy of life, only two things are valuable: one is meditation, the other is love. And both are complementary. Meditation means the joy of being alone, and love means the joy of being together with somebody.” 
“These are the two wings of a true education. Meditation means independence, freedom — freedom from all, even from the beloved, because even the presence of the beloved encroaches on your space. It is good for the time being, it is good to overlap your space with somebody, it is good to meet and merge, but ultimately, and fundamentally, you are alone. And you have to learn how to be alone, and not only how to be alone, but joyously alone, ecstatically alone.” 
When you are in love, don’t forget meditation. Love is not going to solve anything. Love is only going to show you who you are, where you are. And it is good that love makes you alert — alert of the whole confusion and the chaos within you. Now is the time to meditate! If love and meditation go together, you will have both the wings, you will have a balance. 
A bird cannot fly with only one wing. A worldly man tries to fly only with one wing of love and falls flat on the ground. A sannyasi tries to fly with one wing of meditation and he cannot go very high, he falls back. A man of understanding, a balanced man, who can use both the wings can reach the Himalayan peaks of consciousness. And that point is the real celebration. We may call it bliss, Anandam! 
In short, this is Osho's legacy for all of us, for today and for the future. This is what he has been saying in thousands of ways while talking of all the ancient enlightened masters and mystics — Ashtavakra, Buddha, Jesus, Krishna, Gorakh, Kabir, Meera, Nanak, Patanjali, Lao Tsu, Heraclitus, Pythagorus, George Gurdjieff, Hasid, Sufi, Tantra and Zen Masters, Zarathusthra… the list is simply endless. 
Many people think that Osho is against the mystics. Some body once asked him: “Are you against all other gurus?” Osho replied: “Then who has been speaking on Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu and Lieh Tzu, Bahaudin, Rabiya, Sanai, Bodhidharma, Rinzai, Bokuju, Milarepa, Marpa, Tilopa, Saraha, Kabir, Nanak, Meera, Jesus, Moses, Buddha, Mahavira? Who has been speaking about all these gurus, if I am against all gurus? But certainly I am against a few gurus — not because they are gurus, but because they are not gurus: they are pretenders. And I have not only spoken about ancient masters, I have spoken on Ramakrishna, Raman, Gurdjieff, Krishnamurti — I have spoken on contemporary masters too.” 
These masters are like flowers in God’s garden who have the same fragrance. Osho invites all of humanity to enter this garden and relish this fragrance. There’s no need to fight about which master is better than the other — it is really stupid — because the people who keep fighting remain outside the garden. There’s so much noise outside the garden — with the believers fighting and killing each other about the claims of superiority of their religion and belief-system. These people have certainly no experience of the fragrance of religiousness. Osho says: “I teach religiousness and not religion.”

DELHI TIMES/TOI
SATURDAY, JANUARY 24,  2004

Gallery Of The Enlightened                                                                  Back to top

The best way to soothe your senses is by indulging in meditation. After all, the process helps you traverse beyond the boundaries of the humane and touch the skies of the super humane. Osho Mahotsav celebrated Osho’s message of deathlessness at Osho World Galleria, recently.
Ranfeba Jha, also known as Ma Sangeet Divyam, a disciple and Padma Vibhushan awardee, Kishori Amonkar,dedicated a melodious musical evening to Osho, and enthralled the audience present at the Galleria with her lively notes. Ranfeba was initiated into Osho’s Neo Sannyas by Swami Chaitanya Keerti during a meditation camp in Siliguri last year. 
A two-day meditation camp was also held at Oshodham, conducted by Ma Dharm Jyoti. Osho says, ‘‘Existence is continuous, it is a continuum. There is not a single moment’s gap in it. No death is death, because every death opens a new door —it is a beginning.”

There is no end to life, there is always a new beginning, a resurrection. If you change your sadness to celebration, then you will also be capable of changing your death into resurrection. So learn the art while there is still time.’’ On the other hand, all those who gathered to actively participate in the function left the venue rather contented and peaceful.
As one of the guests rightly said, “This is the ideal place to be in. After all, it helps us unwind after a long day’s work and break way
from the materialism that engulfs the world. We hope that more such meditation programmes are held in different parts of the country so that it can help us become good individuals.”
As for the organisers, they hope to hold more such meditation camps in the near future. As one of the organizers rightly said, “We hope to spread the message of Osho across the world. We hope that we are successful in our venture by conducting such two-days camps across the country and if need be evenacross the world. After all, it is gathering with a purpose to help make the world a better place to live in.”

HINDUSTAN TIMES
TUESDAY, JANUARY 27, 2004

The Body Is A Temple For The Soul                                                Back to top
MEDITATIONS| Swami Chaitanya Keerti

Soul is immortal. Or should one say that what is immortal is soul. Body is the embodiment of our soul. The soul can exist - and it does exist - without the body, but the body cannot exist without the soul. 
Soul is immortal. Body is important for the realisation that one is not just a body, rather one is the soul. This realisation also depends on being in the body. In fact, body is the temple for the soul. 
In a particular sect, people fast for a long time - so long as the soul does not leave the body. It is their conscious effort to make the soul free from the embodiment. And this makes the Muni respectable, because he starves his body so much that his soul finds it impossible to continue in the body. 
This is allowed by the philosophy of a particular sect though it is inconceivable to the believers of the other religions. The law of the country also does not allow any kind of suicide, but law does not interfere with this process of leaving the body by a Muni. In the ancient times the sages spent their last days in the coldest regions of Himalayas, fasting and practising a particular meditative anushthan which helped to shed their body and let their soul become one with the universe. 
Committing suicide out of frustration or depression is not the same. It does not make you feel elevated or liberated. The soul has to be reborn and seek the body again for the attainment of self-realisation. 
Spiritual journey is death and rebirth on a very different level. It is the death of our ego. In the Sacred Yes, Osho says: "Something will be born out of that death, something immensely superior. But that birth is possible only if death happens first. Initiation means death in the deep trust that resurrection will happen. Initiation means crucifixion in the faith that resurrection will follow. Hence the orange colour has been chosen for sannyas: it is the colour of fire. 
"The ego has to be burned to ashes. Sannyas is really what the symbol of the phoenix in the West represents. When the phoenix is burnt in the fire, nothing is left; then a totally new life arises. Each death is a beginning; the greater the death, the greater will be the beginning. If the death is total then total will be the beginning. We have to pay by dying; that courage is needed. To be a sannyasin is the greatest courage possible, because there is no greater adventure in life; all else is trivial and mundane."

In The Path to Love, Deepak Chopra says that by bringing spirituality back into our relationships, we can discover a world of depth and meaning. He says: "You were created to be completely loved and to be completely lovable for your whole life". 
The problems begin when we start taking love for granted and get possessive about life. We deny freedom and space to the people we love - our children, spouse, friend. Unknowingly, we start killing our love. And we create bondage for ourselves, too, when we curb the freedom of the person we love. 

Osho says: "Freedom is a higher value than love". Love stifles and gets stifled when it encroaches upon the space of another. Love blossoms in the space of freedom, in breeziness. Once we realise the nature of true love, we no longer 'fall' in love - we actually 'rise' in love. 

At this point love becomes unconditional. We give our love and feel grateful to all those who receive it, because this way we unburden ourselves. 

Osho says when the clouds are full of rain water, they have to shower. It is their need. Similarly, when we become full of love it is our need to give our love to one and all. Then we are not concerned whether or not we receive love in return. We simply enjoy giving. 
Conditional love is attachment; it is bondage, so it is also an illusion. We say we want to be free but are we brave enough to be alone? We fear loneliness. We fear being unoccupied. We started out looking for love, but maybe we were really looking for attachment. Our need may have been attachment all along. Love was the way to attain it, the bait. 

Unconditional love will not become attachment. But the moment you say to your partner, "Love only me", you begin to possess her. And in possessing, you're making your lover into an object to be used. 

Immanuel Kant said that to treat another person as a means is an immoral act. In other words, if you see your lover as being there for your gratification, or to fulfil your sexual desires, or to provide something else for you... you're reducing your partner to an object. 

You are in bondage - so inevitably, you'll eventually desire freedom. You will be bored by what you have and yearn for what you don't have. Or you could try to be free even while 'possessing' your partner, causing a struggle. 

Osho says, "I want to be a free person, and yet I want you to be possessed by me; you want to retain your freedom and still possess me - this is the struggle... We must remain indivi- duals and we must move as independent, free consciousness. We can come together, we can merge into each other, but no one possesses. Then there is no bondage and then there is no attachment". 

Love becomes a blessing, a real celebration when love breathes fresh air free from possessiveness and jealousy. There should be no judgment, no blame, no expectations and no attempts to control. 

The soul can grow only in freedom - and unconditional love provides freedom. Osho says: My message is beyond biology and theo-logy... Love is nothing but sharing of your consciousness with as many people as possible; not only with people, but with animals, trees, birds, clouds, stars.