BELOVED OSHO,

IS IT TRUE THAT TO REALLY BREAK THROUGH, TO BECOME TOTALLY PRESENT, TO BECOME A WHITE CLOUD, WE HAVE TO LIVE THROUGH ALL OUR DREAMS, ALL OUR FANTASIES?

AND HOW CAN THAT REALITY BE AS REAL IN RESPONSE TO ‘HARE KRISHNA, HARE RAM’ IN POONA AS IT WOULD BE IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN IN THE HEART OF NATURE?

The question is not whether one has to live through all the dreams and fantasies or not. You are living in them. You are already in them. And it is not a question of choice — you cannot choose.

Can you choose? Can you drop your dreams? Can you drop your fantasies? If you try to drop your dreams you will have to substitute them with other dreams. If you try to change your fantasies they will change into another type of fantasy — but they will remain dreams and fantasies. So what is to be done? Accept them. Why be against them? This tree has red flowers, that tree has yellow flowers. So it’s okay. You have certain dreams — yellow dreams. Somebody else has other dreams — blue dreams, red dreams. So it’s okay. Why fight with dreams, why try to change them? When you try to change them, you believe them too much. You don’t think they are dreams, you think they are real and that changing them will be significant. If dreams are dreams, why not accept them?

The moment you accept them, they disappear. This is the secret. The moment you accept them they disappear — because the dreaming mind exists through rejection. The very phenomenon of a dreaming mind is rejection. You have been rejecting many things — that’s why they pop up in your dreams. You are moving on a street. You look at a beautiful woman or man. Desire arises. Suddenly you drop it: This is wrong! You reject it. Tradition, culture, society, morality: This is not good! You can look at a beautiful flower, nothing is bad in it. But when you look at a beautiful face something immediately goes wrong — you reject it. Now this face will become a dream. The rejected becomes the dream. Now this face will haunt you. Now in the night this face will come around you. Now this body will be hovering. The desire that you have rejected will become a dream. Desires that you have repressed will become dreams and fantasies.

So how to create a dream? The secret is: reject. The more you reject, the more dreams will be there. Those who go to the hills, those who reject life, they are filled with too many dreams. Their dreams become so real, hallucinatory, that they cannot make any distinction as to whether this is a dream or a reality. Don’t reject, otherwise you will create more dreams. Accept. Whatsoever happens to you, accept it as part of your being. Don’t condemn it. The moment you become more accepting, dreams will dissolve. A person who accepts his life totally becomes dreamless, because the very base has been cut.

That is one thing. Secondly, the whole is nature — the whole I say. Not only the trees, not only the clouds — the whole. Whatsoever has happened has happened because of nature. There is nothing unnatural — cannot be. Otherwise, how could it have happened?

EVERYTHING is natural. So don’t create a division: this is natural and this is unnatural. Whatsoever is, is natural. But the mind lives on distinctions, divisions. Don’t allow divisions; accept whatsoever is, and accept without any analysis.

Whether you are in the market or in the hills you are in the same nature. Somewhere nature has become hills and trees, and somewhere it has become shops in the market. Once you know the secret of accepting, even the market becomes beautiful. The market has a beauty — the life there, the activity, the beautiful madness that goes around. It has its own beauty! And hills would not be so beautiful if there were no markets, remember.

The hills are so beautiful and so silent because the market exists. The market gives silence to the hills. So everywhere — whether you are in the market, doing “Hare Krishna, Hare Ram,” or sitting under a tree silently — take it as one expanse, don’t divide it. And when you are dancing, doing “Hare Krishna, Hare Ram,” enjoy it! It is the way you are flowering, this very moment.

“Hare Krishna, Hare Ram” can become a flowering in you; it has become a flowering for many. When Mahaprabhu Chaitanya was dancing in the villages of Bengal and doing his kirtan, “Hare Krishna, Hare Ram,” it was a flowering. It was one of the most beautiful things that has ever happened. Not only is Buddha sitting under a bodhi tree beautiful, a Chaitanya Mahaprabhu dancing in the streets with “Hare Krishna, Hare Ram” is also beautiful — the same, just the other extreme. You can sit under a tree and can forget yourself so completely that you have disappeared. You can dance in a street and be absorbed in your kirtan, in your singing, in your dancing, so totally that you have disappeared. The secret is total absorption wherever it happens.

It happens to different people in different ways. We cannot conceive of Buddha dancing; he was not that type, not a dancing type. You may be a dancing type, so don’t force yourself under a bodhi tree or you will be in trouble. Just forcing yourself, stilling yourself, will be violent. Then your face will not become like a Buddha. It will be tortured, it will be a self-torture. You may be like Chaitanya, you may be like Meera.

Find out the way your cloud moves, where it drifts, and allow it full freedom to move and drift. Wherever it goes, it will reach to the divine. Just don’t fight, flow. Don’t push the river, flow with it. A dance is beautiful, but you must be totally in it — that’s the point. Don’t reject anything, rejection is irreligious. Accept totally, acceptance is prayer.

Source:

This is an excerpt from the transcript of a public discourse by Osho in Buddha Hall, Shree Rajneesh Ashram, Pune.

Discourse Series:

My Way: The Way of the White Clouds

Chapter #1
Chapter title: The Way of the White Clouds
10 May 1974 am in Buddha Hall

References:

Osho has spoken on Mystics like Dadu, Farid, Gurdjieff, J. Krishnamurti, Kabir, Nanak, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Meher Baba, Patanjali, Swami Ram Teerth, Rumi, Sahajo, Sai Baba, Saraha, Socrates, Tilopa, Zarathustra and many more in His discourses. Some of these can be referred to in the following books/discourses: