Osho on Celebration

YOU ARE AT THE PEAK OF CONSCIOUSNESS, YOU CAN CELEBRATE, YOU ARE CELEBRATING. BUT HOW CAN THE ORDINARY PERSON SHARE WITH YOU IN CELEBRATION?

Nobody is ordinary. Who told you that you are ordinary.? From where have you got the notion that you are ordinary? Everybody is extraordinary! This is how it should be. God never created ordinary persons. How can God create ordinary persons? Everybody is special, extraordinary. But remember not to feed your ego with it. It is not on your part that you are extraordinary, it is on the part of God. You come out of the total, you remain rooted in the total, you dissolve back into the total — and the total is extraordinary, incomparable. You are also incomparable, but all the religions, the so-called religions, have tried to make you feel ordinary. This is a trick to provoke your ego. Try to understand this: the moment somebody says that you are ordinary, he creates a desire in you to become extraordinary, because you start feeling inferior.

Just the other day a man was here and he asked me, ‘What is the purpose of life? Unless there is a special purpose for me, how can I live? If there is a special purpose, then life is significant. If there is no special purpose, then life is meaningless.’ He was asking, ‘For what special purpose has God created me? What have I been sent into the world to do?’ This is the ego asking. He feels ordinary; nothing special, ‘Then how can one live?’ You have to be peaks of egos, only then does life seem significant. Life is significant, and there is no purpose in it! It is a purposeless significance, like a song, or a dance — like a flower; for no purpose at all it is flowering, for nobody special it is flowering. Even if nobody passes by the road, the flower will flower, the fragrance will be spread into the winds. Even if nobody ever comes to smell it, it is irrelevant. The very flowering is the significance, not any purpose.

But you have been taught that you are ordinary. ‘Become great poets, become great painters, become great leaders of men, great politicians, become great saints.’ As you are, all the religions condemn you, ‘You are nothing, a worm on the earth. Become something! Prove that you are something before God’ — as if to prove your mettle. But I tell you that this is absolutely absurd. These religions have been talking irreligion. There is no need for you to prove anything. The very phenomenon that God has produced you is enough; you are accepted. God has mothered you, it is enough. What more can you prove? You need not be great painters, you need not be great leaders, you need not be great saints. There is no need to be great, because you are already great. This is my emphasis: you are already that which you ought to be. You may not have realized it, that I know. You may not have encountered your own reality, that I know. You may not have looked within yourself and seen the emperor within, that I know. You may be thinking that you are a beggar and trying to be an emperor. But as I see you, you are already the emperor.

There is no need to postpone celebration. Immediately, right this moment you can celebrate. Nothing else is needed. To celebrate, life is needed and life you have. To celebrate, being is needed and being you have. To celebrate, trees and birds and stars are needed, and they are there. What else do you need? If you are crowned and caged in a golden pa1ace, then will you celebrate? In fact, then it will become more impossible. Have you ever seen an emperor laughing and dancing and singing in the street? No, he is caged, imprisoned: manners, etiquette….Somewhere, Bertrand Russell has written that when for the first time he visited a primitive community of aboriginals living deep in some hills, he felt jealous, very, very jealous. He felt that the way they danced… it was as if everybody were an emperor. They had no crowns, but they had made crowns with leaves and with flowers. Every woman was a queen. They didn’t have kohinoors, but whatsoever they had was too much, was enough. They danced the whole night and then they fell asleep, there on the dancing-ground. By the morning they were again back to work. They worked the whole day, and again by the evening they were ready to celebrate, to dance. Russell says, ‘That day, I felt really jealous. I cannot do this.’

Something has gone wrong. Something frustrates within you; you cannot dance, you cannot sing, something withholds. You live a crippled life. It has never been meant for you to be crippled, but you live a crippled life, you live a paralyzed life. And you go on thinking that being ordinary, how can you celebrate? There is nothing special in you. But who told you that to celebrate something special is needed? In fact, the more you are after the special, the more and more it will become difficult for you to dance. Be ordinary. Nothing is wrong with ordinariness, because in your very ordinariness you are extraordinary. Don’t bother about the conditions to decide when you will celebrate. If you bother about fulfilling certain conditions, do you think that then you will celebrate? You will never celebrate, you will die a beggar. Why not right now? What are you lacking? This is my observation: if you can start right now, suddenly the energy is flowing. And the more you dance, the more it is flowing, the more capable you become. The ego needs conditions to be fulfilled, not life. Birds can sing and dance, ordinary birds. Have you ever seen any extraordinary birds singing and dancing? Do they ask that they first have to be a Ravi Shankar or a Yehudi Menuhin? Do they ask that first they have to be great singers and go to colleges of music to learn, and then they will sing? They simply dance and simply sing; no training is needed.

Man is born with the capacity to celebrate. When even birds can celebrate, why not you? But you create unnecessary barriers, you create a hurdle race. There are no barriers. You put them there and then you say, ‘Unless we cross them and jump them, how can we dance?’ You stand against yourself, you stand divided against yourself, you are an enemy to yourself. All the preachers in the world go on saying that you are ordinary, so how can you dare to celebrate? You have to wait. First be a Buddha, first be a Jesus, a Mohammed, and then you can. But just the opposite is the case: if you can dance, you are already the Buddha; if you can celebrate, you are already the Mohammed; if you can be blissful, you are Jesus. The contrary is not true; the contrary is a false logic. It says: first be a Buddha, then you can celebrate. But how will you be a Buddha without celebrating? I say to you, ‘Celebrate, forget all Buddhas!’ In your very celebration you will find that you have yourself become a Buddha…

Remember this, that the teachings of the awakened ones, all the awakened ones and all of their teachings, can be summarized into a simple sentence, and that sentence is: you are already that which you can be. You may take many lives to realize it; that is for you to determine. But if you are alert, not even a single moment is to be lost. ‘Thou art that,’ tatvamasi shwetketu, you are already that, there is no need to become. Becoming, the very effort to become something, is illusory. You are, you are not to become…Be natural, loose, and just feel things. And don’t wait — start! Even if you feel that you don’t know the right steps, start dancing. I am not saying that dancing is going to be your art. For art, training may be needed. I am simply saying that dancing is just an attitude. Even not knowing the right steps, you can dance. And if you can dance, who bothers about the right steps! — dancing in itself is enough. It is an overflowing of your energy. If it becomes an art by itself, it’s okay; if it doesn’t become, it’s okay. In itself it is enough, more than enough. Nothing else is needed…

Be alert. And if you want to be alert, celebration will be very, very helpful. When I say celebrate what do I mean? I mean that whatsoever you do, don’t do it as a duty, do it from your love; don’t do it as a burden, do it as a celebration. You can eat as if it is a duty: long-faced, dull, dead, insensitive. You can throw food inside yourself without ever tasting, without ever feeling for it. It is life; you live through it. Don’t be so insensitive to it. Indians have said, ‘anam brahman,’ food is Brahman. This is celebration: you are eating brahman, you are eating God through food, because only God exists. When you are taking a shower, it is God showering because only God exists. When you go for a morning walk, it is God on a morning walk. And the breeze is also God, and the trees are also God — everything is so Divine. How can you be a long-face, dead and dull, moving in life as if you are carrying a burden? When I say celebrate, I mean become more and more sensitive to everything. In life, dance should not be apart. The whole life should become a dance; it should be a dance. You can go for a walk and dance.

Allow life to enter into you, become more open and vulnerable, feel more, sense more. Small things filled with such wonders are lying all around. Watch a small child. Leave him in the garden and just watch. That should be your way also; so wonderful, wonder-filled: running to catch this butterfly, running to catch that flower, playing with mud, rolling in the sand. From everywhere the Divine is touching the child. If you can live in wonder you will be capable of celebration. Don’t live in knowledge, live in wonder. You don’t know anything. Life is surprising; everywhere, it is a continuous surprise. Live it as a surprise, an unpredictable phenomenon: every moment is new. Just try, give it a try!

Source:

Listen to complete discourse at mentioned below link.

Discourse Series: Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 4 Chapter #2

Chapter title: You are already that….

22 April 1975 am in Buddha Hall

References:

Osho has spoken on ‘celebration, wonder, sensitivity, dance, being’ in His discourses. Some of these can be referred to in the following books/discourses:

1. Ah This!
2. And the Flowers Showered
3. The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha
4. Guida Spirituale
5. The Osho Upanishad
6. The Sword and The Lotus
7. Beyond Enlightenment
8. From the False to the Truth
9. I Celebrate Myself: God Is No Where, Life Is Now Here
10. Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1