Nieves Hayat Matthews' Sannyas Account
Tuesday June 21st. 1977 (pm) in Chuang Tzu auditorium
An elderly and elegant woman is sitting in front of Osho. In
fact she doesn't feel elderly: she has lovely, vital energy, a sense
of alertness about her.
Osho is absorbed in writing her name down and she is being a tree -
a solid grounded tree, but lively, abandoned.
I don't know much about her except that her name is Hayat Matthews,
she is an Englishwoman living in Italy, and she has written several
letters to Osho over a period of time expressing a desire to see
him, each time anxiously seeking assurance that he will still be
here when she is able to manage a visit.
Now Osho is gazing at her, pen poised in hand. He calls her to him
and shows her her sannyas name.
Osho: This will be your new name... and a new birth. Let the past
be dropped as if it were part of a dream, as if it belonged to
somebody else, as if you had seen it in a movie that you were just a
witness to and not a participant in - just a watcher, a spectator,
standing aloof.
That is the best way to drop all the burden that the past naturally
creates. There is no need to fight with it. In fighting it you
remain attached to it; in fighting it you remain obsessed with it;
in fighting, it remains. At the most you can press it back into your
unconscious, but it will be there. It will move into the underground
of your being, will become part of your basement but will go on
affecting your life from there. So the best way is never to fight.
To fight means one is ready to get defeated; it is self-defeating.
The best way to win is not to fight. Just drop it! Just have the
awareness that you are a watcher... and that's how it is!
Whatsoever has happened to you in your life and whatsoever you have
done, deep down your inner being has been just a witness to it; it
has never been a doer. It is always transcendental. When you are
angry, it is standing far away and looking at your anger. When you
are cleaning the floor, it is standing far away and looking at you
cleaning the floor. You are young and it is looking, you become old
and it is looking; you are happy it is looking, you are unhappy it
is looking. It is always just there, standing by the side; it never
gets involved. It remains pure and untouched by all experience
whatsoever: neither good makes it good, nor bad makes it bad.
That purity, that innocence, is always there. It is ours to claim:
it has just to be recognised. So with the new name forget the old
and drop the past.
This will be your new name: ma Prabhu Praveeta
Prabhu means god and Praveeta means pregnant - pregnant with god.
And you are pregnant with god; that has been your search for many
lives. You have been groping in the dark but the search has been
there. And unless god is born in you, you will never feel contented,
you will never feel satisfied. Nothing less than god will help,
nothing less will do... and that can happen!
That is the easiest thing in the world to happen because it is our
innermost nature. We are made in the image of god, we carry the seed
inside: it just needs right soil, right nurturing, right nursing,
and it will sprout. That's what I mean by pregnant. Everybody is
pregnant with god but very few people are fortunate enough to give
birth.
You can become one of those fortunate ones. Just trust and courage -
almost the courage of a madman - is needed. The courage of a fool is
needed because it is such an impossible adventure that clever people
cannot go into it; their very cleverness prevents them. Calculating
people cannot have any god; their very calculation is against them.
Only people who are innocent childlike, in a way primitive, mad, can
take the jump - because they can trust that the impossible is also
possible.
The moment you believe that the impossible is possible it becomes
possible - because it is all our belief. As a man thinketh, so he
becomes. It is all our idea: if we think we are unhappy, we are
unhappy; if we think we are not unhappy, we are not unhappy. It is
just that we go on creating a certain vibe around ourselves by
thinking it continuously. If somebody lives in misery it is his own
fiction.
It is just like people who go to the movie to see a horrible film:
they know it is horrible but they want to see it. And they suffer in
the film; they go through all kinds of torture because they become
identified. Still they pay and go; they pay for it! They know it is
just a film, and it is horrible, but they want to see it.
It is exactly the same case in life: there are people who want to
remain in misery; that is their decision. There are people who don't
want to remain in misery; that is their decision. And you choose
your life; it is all your choice. The moment you want to change, you
can change it - just like that.
So let this sannyas be a radical change in your pattern of life.
From this moment think of god, from this moment look for god, from
this moment whatsoever you see, try to find god in it. It may be a
rock, but god is rock in a rock. It may be a tree, but god is tree
in a tree. It may be a child giggling, but god is child in a child,
god is giggling in giggling.
Go on looking for god. By and by you will see that this whole
universe is his temple and we are not to go somewhere else to find
him. He is here, he has always been here... just a recognition was
missing.
How long will you be here?
Prabhu Praveeta: I wanted to ask your advice on that. I can stay six weeks or eight weeks and then go back to do some work and come back later on for a longer time.
Osho: When can you come back?
Prabhu Praveeta: Well, I'd like you to tell me. I would need about six months, I think to finish the work, or is it better to try and stay longer now and forget about the work?
Osho: What kind of work is it?
Prabhu Praveeta: It's a book that I've been writing for some years. It's nearly finished and I'm interested in it, but if it's better to just forget about it and just stay longer here...
Osho: What are you writing about?
Prabhu Praveeta: It's a historical study of Francis Bacon. It's a historical study about what historians can do to the reputation of a man who was loved in his time and was hated and treated very badly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and still is, and how history plays with all this.
Osho: Mm... good! Bacon is one of the most important persons to think about. Good! - go and finish it.
(Osho - The Further Shore #19, a darshan diary)