Osho Rajneesh Book "Hallelujah!"

Hallelujah!

To become a Song is to become a Saint

8 August 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Anand means bliss, astika means one who trusts, one who believes, one who trusts in bliss; and

that’s my definition of a religious man. I don’t say to trust in god, because that is very far-fetched.

God is very abstract – it is only a word; you don’t have any experience of it. To believe in it will be

dishonest. You cannot honestly believe in god. It will be deceiving yourself – a kind of self-deception,

creating an illusion around yourself. And if you start with illusion you cannot end with truth. If you

begin in dishonesty, you will end in dishonesty. The first step has to be very true, authentic; only

then can the last step be in ultimate truth. Otherwise it is not possible. That’s why so many people

believe in god – millions of people believe in god – but only once in a while does somebody come to

know him. Why this disparity? When so many people believe, many more should attain. Because

belief is dishonest, to begin with it is to go astray.

So I don’t say ’Believe in god’; I simply say ’Believe in bliss.’ And that’s a natural phenomenon –

not part of any theology, neither Christian nor Hindu nor Mohammedan. One need not be taught to

believe in it; one is born with that trust. It is intrinsic, it is built-in. All life is a search for bliss. Even

the most unconscious life is a search for bliss. Trees are searching for it, rocks are searching for it,

animals are searching for it. The whole existence moves around the centre of bliss. It is so natural

that one need not enforce any belief; it is already there.

One has to help it to grow. One has only to remove the hindrances in its path so it can start flowing.

One has to be deliberately in it. One is in it naturally; you have to be in it consciously, because if

you remain unconscious in some search it will take millions of years. Then it is very haphazard,

then arriving is almost accidental. One can hope for the best but one should be ready for the

worst. Unless the search becomes conscious there seems to be no possibility of arriving. The more

conscious it is, the straighter you go.

CHAPTER 8. TO BECOME A SONG IS TO BECOME A SAINT

Jesus says ’My way is narrow and straight.’ The way of truth is always straight, but one has to be

straight to begin with. So I say forget all about god, trust in your natural desire and longing for bliss.

Follow it, create as many opportunities for it as possible. Help it in every way and don’t hinder it in

any way, and slowly slowly the search for bliss one day makes you aware that you are searching for

god in the name of bliss.

But that happens.... The very search takes on such intensity that it transforms itself, and instead of

bliss one day suddenly you are searching for truth, because one day you realize the fact that only

with truth is there a possibility of bliss. Bliss is a shadow of god. If you start searching for bliss,

sooner or later you will come to see that bliss is just a shadow of something else. Who is that? What

is that of which bliss is a shadow? And god starts looming large before you.

Once you are in his shadow you are very close to him.

Veet means beyond, daso means in the service of – in the service of the beyond. The beyond

surrounds us, but there are many people who never look at it. They remain confined to their routine

lives. Their lives are lived at the minimum; they never become aware of the mysteries that abound.

Life is not a simple mystery, not a single mystery, but mysteries upon mysteries, and each mystery

leads into more and more mysteries. But there are many people who are not aware of it at all. The

sun never rises for them; it is never full moon. Whether stars exist in the night or not is immaterial

to them. Whether birds call or not, they are deaf. They see and yet they don’t see. Flowers

bloom, rainbows come and go, clouds gather and disperse, but they remain completely oblivious

of it all. Their life remains in a prison of very small things: their jealousies, their possessiveness,

their quarrels, their families, their children, their jobs, money and bank balances. To live in such

confinement is to live the life of a materialist.

A materialist is a prisoner. Even though he goes to the church, even though he goes to the temple

– that is just a formality. He never becomes aware of the mystery of Christ. He goes to the church

every Sunday, but how can he become aware of the mystery of Christ if he is not aware of the

mystery of the trees in his garden? How can the cross have any mystery if the real, alive wood has

no mystery for him?

How can he look into the mystery of Buddha if he cannot see it in the stars, in the rivers, in the

mountains? – because the eyes of the Buddha are like the lakes. Unless you are aware of the

beauty of the lakes you will not be aware of the beauty of the Buddha’s eyes. And the heart of the

Buddha is like the open sky. Unless you have seen the sky, felt it, lived it, you will not be able to

enter into the heart of the Buddha. You can go and worship, but your worship is formal, your religion

is Sunday religion; it does not make you spiritual.

Spirituality has nothing to do with the churches and the temples and the mosques, nothing to do

with reading the Bible and the Geeta. Spirituality has something to do with the mysterious in life,

with the beyond, with the unknown and the unknowable.

You can gather answers from the Bible and the Koran, but you miss the point. Spirituality has nothing

to do with answers, because all answers are false. Life is an ultimate question. You cannot find any

answer that can solve the mystery of it. All your answers fall short. All your great systems are just

poor efforts of the human mind to console itself. It does not even touch the mystery of life.

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