Osho on Mantra Deeksha - Mantra Initiation

Question - Explain the Meaning, Preparation and process of Mantra Deeksha - Mantra Initiation and What are the Reasons why Individuals must keep the Mantra Secret?

Osho - First try to understand what initiation is, what is DEEKSHA. It is a deep communion, a deep transfer of energy from the master to the disciple. Energy always flows downwards. Every energy flows downwards, just like water flows downwards. The master – one who has attained, one who has known, one who has become – is the highest peak of energy possible, of purest energy... the Everest of energy.

This energy can flow downwards to anyone who is receptive, humble, surrendered. This surrendered attitude – the receptive attitude, a deep humbleness – will be needed to receive. Otherwise you yourself are a peak; you are not a valley. Then the energy cannot flow downwards to you. You are a different sort of peak, the peak of ego – not of energy, not of being, not of bliss, not of consciousness.

You are a density of ego, of ”I-ness.” You are a peak, and with this peak no initiation is possible. Ego is the barrier because ego closes you and you cannot surrender. To be a disciple, to be initiated, one has to surrender himself totally. And there is no partial surrender. Surrender means total. You cannot say, ”I partially surrender” – it makes no sense. Then you are still there with your ego. Ego has to be surrendered, and when you surrender the ego you become receptive, open. You become like a valley, and then the peak can flow downwards to you.

And I am not talking symbolically, it is so actually Have you ever been in love? Then you can feel that love actually flows between two bodies, it is an actual flow. Energy is being transmitted, transferred, received, given. But love is on the same level. You both can remain peaks of ego, and still love can be.

But with a master you are not on the same level. And if you try to be on the same level, initiation becomes impossible. Love is possible, but initiation becomes impossible. Initiation is possible only when you are on a lower level – just humble, surrendered, open to receive – when the disciple is feminine, just womb-like, passive, able to receive. The master is the male factor in initiation.

This secret of initiation is now completely lost because the more we are educated, the more civilized, the more cultured, then the more egoistic we become. And now, to surrender has become very, very impossible. It has always been difficult, but now it is impossible. Initiation is a transfer of inner energy, actual energy, and the master can enter in you and can transform you if you are ready and receptive. But then deep trust is needed – more trust than is needed in love – because you do not know what is going to happen.

You are completely in the dark. Only the master knows what is going to happen and what he is doing. He knows; you cannot know. And there are things that cannot be said about what is going to happen because with the human mind there are many problems. One problem is this: that if something is said before it happens, it will change the happening. It cannot be said.

So there are many things which the master cannot say to you. He can do them to you, but he cannot say them to you. That doing is initiation. He actually moves in you – in your body, in your mind. He cleanses you, changes you. The only thing required is your total trust, because without it there is no opening and he cannot enter you: your doors are closed. You are always defending yourself.

Life is a struggle – a struggle for survival, to survive. This struggle gives you a closing. You are closed, afraid; you are afraid to be vulnerable. Someone may enter, someone may do something within you. So you shrink yourself, you remain closed – just hiding behind, constantly defending. In initiation you have to lose this defense; this armor of defense has to be thrown away. You become vulnerable, and then the master can enter you.

For example, it is just like a deep love act. You can rape a woman, but you cannot rape a disciple. You can rape a woman because it is a bodily rape, and the body can be raped and entered without any consent. Without the will of the woman you can rape. It is a forced thing. The body is material; things can be forced on it.

Something just like this happens in initiation. The master enters your spirit, not your body. Unless you are ready and receiving, the entrance is not possible. A disciple cannot be raped because it is not a bodily question. It is a question of spirit, and you cannot force entry into a spirit. No violence is possible with it.

So when the disciple is ready and open, just like a loving woman, inviting and receptive, ready, in a deep let-go, only then can the master enter and work. And centuries of work can be done in moments. You may not be able to do in many lives certain things which can be done in a moment. But then you have to be vulnerable, totally trusting. You do not know what is going to happen and what he will do inside you.

A woman is afraid because the sexual act is a journey into the unknown for her. Unless she loves the man, unless she is ready to suffer, to carry the burden of a child, to carry the child for nine months and then make a life commitment to it, unless she is deeply in love, she will not allow the man to enter her body – because it is not simply her body, it is her whole life. When she is in deep love, then she is ready to suffer, to sacrifice. And to sacrifice and suffer in deep love is blissful.

But the problem with the disciple is deeper. It is not a question only of a physical birth, of a new child, it is HIS rebirth. He himself is going to be reborn. He will die in a certain sense and he will be born in a certain different sense. And this is possible if the master enters him, but the master cannot force it. No force is possible, the disciple can only invite it.

And that is the problem – a very great problem in spiritual discipleship, because the disciple goes on defending himself or herself, goes on creating more and more armor around him. He behaves with his master in the same way he would behave with anyone in the world; the same defense mechanisms go on working. And then time is wasted unnecessarily, energy is wasted, and the moment is delayed which can happen right now. But this is natural, and sometimes even with great masters disciples have missed the chance.

Ananda, one of the great disciples of Buddha and the nearest, couldn’t attain liberation while Buddha was alive. Buddha was with Ananda for forty years, and Ananda couldn’t attain. But many who came after Ananda attained, and then it became a problem. And Ananda was one of the nearest – the closest. He was sleeping in the same room with Buddha, he was moving with Buddha for forty years continuously.

He was like a shadow to Buddha; as much as he knew about Buddha even Buddha might not have known. But he couldn’t attain; he remained the same. And a very ordinary thing was the only barrier: he was an elder cousin-brother of Buddha. This created the ego.

Buddha died... a great council met to write down whatsoever Buddha had said. It had to be written then. Soon those who lived with Buddha would be no more, so everything had to be recorded. But the council would not allow Ananda, and only he knew the greater experiences, the statements of Buddha, his life, his biography. This was all known to Ananda; no one knew so much.

But the council decided that Ananda could not be allowed because he was still unenlightened. He could not record Buddha’s sayings because an ignorant man cannot be believed. He would not deceive, but with an ignorant man nothing is reliable. He may think that something happened, and he may relate it authentically as far as he knows, but he is a man who is not yet awakened.

Whatsoever he has seen and heard in sleep could not be believed, so only those would record who had become awakened – they decided. Ananda was weeping just outside the door. The door was closed, and he remained just by the door for twenty-four hours, weeping, crying and screaming. But they would not allow him. For these twenty-four hours he was weeping, weeping, and then suddenly he became aware what had been the barrier – why he hadn’t been able to attain while Buddha was alive, what had been the barrier.

Then he went back into his memories. A forty-year-long life with Buddha! He remembered the first day when he came to him for initiation. But he had one condition, and that was why he missed the whole initiation. He could not be initiated because be made a condition.

He came to Buddha and he said, ”I have come to be a disciple of yours. Once I become your disciple, you will be the master and I will have to follow whatsoever you say, I will have to obey. But right now I am your elder brother, and I can order you and you will have to obey. You are not the master, I am not the disciple. Once I am initiated, you will be the master and I will be the disciple.

Then I will not be able to say anything, so before I become a disciple these are my three conditions. Say yes to these three conditions; then initiate me.”

The conditions were not very big, but a condition is a condition and then your surrender is not total. They were very small conditions, very loving conditions. He said, ”One, I will always be with you. You cannot tell me to move anywhere else. While I am alive I will be your shadow; you cannot order me away. Give me the promise – because later on I will be just a disciple, and if you order me away I will have to follow. This will be a promise given to an elder brother – that I will be with you.

You cannot tell me to move anywhere else. I will just be your shadow; I will sleep in the room where you sleep. ”Secondly, whenever I will say, ‘Meet this man,’ you will have to meet him. Whatsoever your reason for not meeting, you will have to agree. If I want that someone should be given your DARSHAN – spiritual presence – you will have to give it.

”And thirdly, if I say that someone has to be initiated, you cannot refuse. Grant me these three conditions. Promise me and then initiate me. I will not ask anything again because then I shall be just a disciple.”

When he remembered this, while he was weeping, crying before the door of the council, after he went back into his memories, he suddenly became aware that the initiation was not there because he had not been receptive. Buddha had agreed. He said, ”Okay!” and he followed the three conditions his whole life. But Ananda missed, the nearest one missed.

And the moment he realized this he became enlightened. That which couldn’t happen with Buddha happened when he was no more: he surrendered. If there is surrender, even an absent master can help you. If there is no surrender, even an alive master who is present cannot help you. So in initiation, in any initiation, surrender is needed.

Mantra initiation means that when you have surrendered, the master will enter you – your body, your mind, your spirit. He will move in you to find a sound for you, so that whenever you chant that sound you will be a different man in a different dimension.

A mantra cannot be given unless you have surrendered totally, because mantra giving means the master has entered you and felt the deep harmony, the inner music of your being. And then he gives a symbolic sound which is in harmony with your inner music. The moment you chant that sound you enter the world of your inner music, the inner harmony is entered. That sound is just a key, and a key cannot be given unless the lock is known. So I cannot give you a key unless I know your lock, because a key is meaningful only when it can unlock. Any key will not do, and everyone is a particular lock – you need a particular key. That is why mantras are to be kept secret.

If you give your mantra to someone he may experiment with it, but that key will not suit that lock. And sometimes, when you force a wrong key into a lock you can destroy the lock, you can disturb the lock. You can so much disturb it that even when a right key is found it may not work. That is why mantras are to be kept absolutely secret. They are not told to anyone; that is a promise you make.

The master gives you a key, it is a key only for you. You cannot go on distributing it – for many that would be harmful. You will be allowed to give keys only when your lock is totally opened. But then you will not give THIS key to anyone. Then you will have become capable of entering into the other. Then you will be able to feel the lock and devise a key for it.

The key is always devised by the master. If there is a heap of keys, one who doesn’t know may think all keys are the same. There may be only very small differences, minute differ ences, and even the same word can be used differently. For example, Aum. This has three sounds – ”A-U-M.” If emphasis is given on the ”U”, the mid-sound, it is one key. If emphasis is given on the ”A”, it is a different key. If the emphasis is given on the ”M”, it is still a different key; it will open different locks.

That is why there is so much emphasis on the exact use of the mantra as it is given by the master. So the master gives the mantra in your ear; he chants it exactly as it should be used. He chants it in your ear, and you have to become so alert that your whole consciousness comes to the ear. He chants it, and then it enters into you. You have to remember it now – the exact use of it.

That is why individuals must keep their mantras secret; they should not be made public. They are dangerous, and if you are initiated you know it. If a master has really given you a key, you know it. You treasure it like anything; you cannot go on distributing it. It can be harmful for others and it can be harmful for you also – for many reasons.

Firstly, you are breaking a promise, and the moment the promise is broken your contact with the master is broken. You will not be in contact with him again. If the promise is kept, there is a constant contact. Secondly, if you give the mantra to anyone and talk about it, it comes to the surface of the mind. The deeper roots are broken, it becomes a gossip. Thirdly, if you can keep anything secret, the more you keep it secret, the deeper it goes. It is bound to go deeper.

It is said of Marpa that when he was given the secret mantra by his master, the promise was there that the mantra would be kept absolutely secret. ”You are not to talk about it,” he was told. Then Marpa’s master appeared in his dream and he said, ”What is your mantra?” Even in the dream Marpa kept his promise, he refused to tell it. And it is said that because of the fear that someday in a dream the master may come or send someone, and he may be so asleep that he would break the secret and the promise would be broken, he stopped sleeping altogether. He would not sleep!

He had not been sleeping for seven or eight days, and his master asked Marpa, ”Why are you not sleeping? I see you do not go to sleep at all, so what is the matter?” Marpa said, ”You are playing tricks with me. You came in a dream and you were asking for the mantra. I cannot tell even you.

Once the promise is there, it will not come out of my mouth even in a dream. But then I became fearful. In sleep, who knows! Someday I may forget.”

If you are so aware of keeping the promise that even in a dream you remember it, then it is going deep. It is going deep, it is entering inner realms. And the deeper it moves, the more it will be a key to you – because the lock is at the deepest layer. Try with anything. If you can keep it a secret, it will move deep. If you cannot keep it a secret, it will move out.

Why do you want to say something to someone? Why do you chatter? Really, anything that you chatter about you are relieved of. Once you tell it you are relieved of it; it has moved out. The whole psychoanalysis is nothing but this. The psychoanalyst is just listening and the patient goes on talking. It helps the patient – because the more he talks about his problems, inner conflicts and associated ideas, the more he is relieved of them. The reverse happens when you can keep a secret. At no moment are you allowed to talk about it. It will enter deep, deep, and one day it will hit the exact lock.

Source: from Osho Book "Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1"

^Top Back to Psychic World