In March 1976, many new buildings are completed, which are the centre of the present commune. Osho names them after enlightened mystics: the residential Francis, Jesus, Eckhart Houses, and Krishna house with administrative offices, the front ‘Gateless Gate’ with octagonal Reception and Bookstall, Chuang Tzu Auditorium, Radha Meditation Hall, Chaitanya therapy chambers, Krishna garden and fountain. By October Vrindavan and Mariam canteens are set up. By March 1977 Buddha Hall has a roof, and ashram departments include: publishing, audio-tapes, press office, crafts, music, silk screen, boutique, carpentry and musical instruments; and by August 1977: bakery, jewellery, pottery, weaving, and medical. For the first time, a small fee is charged to attend discourse.

You ask: You spoke of the silence one finds in the Himalayas–that it is of the Himalayas, borrowed, and will leave when one returns to the market-place. Is this true of the silence I am finding in your presence? Is it borrowed? Will it disappear when I leave from here?

This place is a market-place. Can you find any other place which is more like the market? I could have made the ashram somewhere in the Himalayas. I love the Himalayas. For me it is a great sacrifice not to be in the Himalayas. But for a certain purpose I have not made my ashram in the Himalayas.

I want to remain part of the market-place. And this ashram is run almost as part of the market-place. That’s why Indians are very annoyed–they cannot understand. They have known ashrams for centuries, but this ashram is beyond their comprehension. They cannot think that you have to pay to listen to a religious discourse. They have always listened free of charge–not only free of charge, but after the discourse the ashram distributes prasad too. Many go to listen to the discourses not because of the discourse but for the prasad.

Here you have to pay. What am I doing? I want it to be absolutely a part of the market-place because I want my sannyasins not to move into the monasteries. They have to remain in the world. Their meditation should grow in the world, their meditation should not become escapist. So whatsoever peace you are finding here, you will be able to retain anywhere you go. There will be no problem, not at all. I have been managing things in such a way that all that can disturb you anywhere else is present here. So you need not be afraid….

My whole effort here is to create a miniature world where money is absolutely accepted, where women and men live together in joy, in celebration, without fear, where all that goes on in the world also continues and, alongside, the meditation grows. It becomes stronger and stronger because all the challenges are there.

You can go anywhere you like. Nobody can take your peace away. Your silence is yours! It is not because of me. You have earned it, you have gained it. sos104

Religion to me is not ritual. If you are looking for any ritual, no ritual exists here. To me religion is an insight, insight into the beauty of existence, insight into the tremendous mystery that surrounds us, insight into your own being and into the beings of others. It has nothing to do with any dogma, any belief, any creed, any cult–it is not a cult at all–it is just a totally different phenomenon.

We are trying to live a meditative life, working in the ordinary way but working it with a different quality.

People are working in the kitchen, cleaning the toilets, or in the carpentry shop or in the boutique or in the bakery or in the garden–just the ordinary kind of activities, but with a different quality: with a joy, with silence, with love, with bliss, with a dance in their heart, with celebration.

To me, that is true religion: to be able to celebrate life is religion. In that very celebration you come close to God. If one is able to celebrate, God is not far away; if one is not able to celebrate life, then God does not exist for him. God appears only in deep celebration, when you are so full of joy that all misery has left you, all darkness has left you. When you are so full that there is no emptiness in you, that you have started feeling the significance of the ordinary, day-to-day existence, when moment to moment you live totally, intensely, passionately, then God is available.

God is not a person but just an experience, an experience of overwhelming mystery, unfathomable mystery. It is not philosophy in the ordinary sense, it is not religion in the ordinary sense either. It is philosophy in the truest sense of the word–philosophy means love for wisdom; then it is philosophy. Religion, the word, very word, means to be in tune. It comes from religere: to be in deep harmony with the whole, to be married with the whole, to be related with the whole, to forget your ego and your separation. Then it is religion. ggate209

Man needs a balance, and that balance is possible only if you learn the art of being active and yet remaining inactive inside. And that’s what we are trying to do here, and in the bigger commune you will have more facilities to be active and inactive together.

People who come to the ashram are a little puzzled. Many have written to me, “Everybody is working but nobody seems to be tense.” In the office so many people are working, in the workshops, in the press office…so many people are working. Nearabout three hundred people are constantly working, and with no holiday–the Sunday never comes. But nobody is tense.

Work is beautiful if it can be done without any tension, if it can be done playfully, if it can be done without any hurry and yet without relapsing into laziness. It is a very subtle and delicate art. Then you are neither Eastern nor Western–that’s what I call the new man. He will not be Eastern, he will not be Western, or he will be both together. It has never happened before: my sannyasin has to prove it. Lao Tzu talked about it and a few people have tried it, but I am making an effort to create such a big space that millions of people can try it. It is such a blessing to know how to act without acting that everybody should have a little taste of it.

When you are working, remember it; if you have gone for a walk, remember it–there is no need to be in a hurry. A walk has to be enjoyed. Go slow. There is no goal! Enjoy the trees surrounding the way, and the birds and the sun and the sky and the clouds, and the people that are passing and the smell of the earth–enjoy everything! Be alert.

A lazy person becomes unalert. The very speedy person is so much in speed that he cannot be watchful of what is happening around him; he is rushing with such force that he cannot see anywhere else, he is focussed, obsessed with some goal. And the lazy person is so lazy, so unalert, so unconscious, that he cannot see. Both are blind.

You have to find a synthesis. Be alert as the active person is, and be relaxed as the lazy person is. And once both these two are there together, you are balanced, and your life will have a new flavour, a new joy, a new ecstasy, which knows no bounds. fish14