DEVOTION FREES.

Osho - Just two words: DEVOTION FREES. It is simply one word really, because FREES is the consequence of devotion. What is meant by devotion? In VIGYANA BHAIRAVA TANTRA, there are two types of techniques. One is for those who are intellectually oriented, scientifically oriented, and another is for those who are heart oriented, emotion oriented, poetically oriented. And there are only two types of minds: the scientific mind and the poetic mind - and these are poles apart. They meet nowhere, and they cannot meet. Sometimes they run parallel, but still, there is no meeting.

Sometimes it happens in a single individual that he is a poet and a scientist. Rarely, but sometimes it happens that he is both a poet and a scientist. Then he has a split personality. He is really two persons, not one. When he is a poet, he forgets the scientist completely; otherwise the scientist will be disturbing. And when he is a scientist, he has to forget the poet completely and move into another world with another arrangement of concepts - ideas, logic, reason, mathematics.

When he moves to the world of poetry, the mathematics is no more there -- music is there. Concepts are no more there: words are there - but liquid, not solid. One word flows into another, and one word can mean many things or it may not mean anything. The grammar is lost; only the rhythm remains. It is a different world.

Thinking and feeling - these are the two types, basic types. The first technique I taught was for a scientific mind.

The second technique,

DEVOTION FREES, is for a feeling type.

Remember to find out your type. And no type is higher or lower. Do not think that the intellectual type is higher or the feeling type is higher - no! They are simply types. No one is higher or lower. So just think factually what is your type.

This second technique is for the feeling type. Why? Because devotion is toward something else and devotion is a blind thing. In devotion the other becomes more important than you. It is a trust. The intellectual cannot trust anybody; he can only criticize. He cannot trust. He can doubt, but he cannot trust And if sometimes some intellectual comes to trust, it is never authentic. First he tries to convince himself about his trust; it is never authentic. He finds proofs, arguments, and when he is satisfied that the arguments help, the proofs help, then he trusts. But he has missed the point, because trust is not argumentative and trust is not based on proofs. If proofs are there, then there is no need of trust.

You do not believe in the sun, you do not believe in the sky -- you know. How can you believe in the sun rising? If someone asks what is your belief about the sun rising, you do not have to say, "I believe in it. I am a great believer." You say, "The sun is rising and I know it." No question of belief or disbelief. Is there someone who disbelieves in the sun? There is no one. Trust means a jump into the unknown without any proofs.

It is difficult - difficult for the intellectual type, because the whole thing becomes absurd, foolish. First proofs must be there. If you say, "There is a God. Surrender yourself to God," first God has to be proven. But then God becomes a theorem - of course proven, but useless. God must remain unproven; otherwise he is of no use, because then trust is meaningless. If you believe in a proven God, then your God is just a theorem of geometry. No one believes in the theorems of Euclid -- there is no need, they can be proven. That which can be proven cannot be made a basis of trust.

One of the most mysterious Christian saints, Tertullian, said, "I believe in God because he is absurd." That is right. That is the attitude of the feeling type. He says, "Because he cannot be proven, that is why I believe in him." This statement is illogical, irrational, because a logical statement must be like this: "These are the proofs of God; therefore I believe in him." And he says, "Because there are no proofs, and no argument can prove that God is, therefore I believe in him." And he is right in a way, because trust means a jump into the unknown without any reasons. Only a feeling type can do that.

Forget devotion, first understand love; then you will be able to understand devotion. You fall in love. Why do we say "falling in love"? Nothing falls - just your head. What falls in love but your head? You fall down from the head. That is why we say "falling in love" - because the language is created by intellectual types. For them love is a lunacy, love is madness. ; one has fallen in love. It means, now you can expect anything from him... now he is mad, now no reasoning will help, you cannot reason with him. Can you reason with someone who is in love? People try. People try, but nothing can be proven.

You have fallen in love with someone. Everyone says, "That person is not worthwhile," or "You are entering a dangerous terrain," or "You are proving yourself foolish; you can find a better partner." But nothing will help, no reasoning will help. You are in love -- now reason is useless. Love has its own reasoning. We say "falling in love." It means now your behavior will be irrational.

Look at two lovers, at their behavior, their communication. It becomes irrational. They start using baby talk. Why? Even a great scientist, when he falls in love, will use baby language. Why not use a highly developed, technological language? Why use this baby talk? Because highly technological language is of no use.

One of my friends married a girl. The girl was Czechoslovakian. She did know a little English, however, and this man knew a little Czechoslovakian; they got married. He was a highly educated man, a professor in a university, and the girl was also a professor. But the man said to me -- I was staying with him -- "It is very difficult because I know only technological Czech, technological terminology, and she also only knows technological English, so we cannot have baby talk. So it is strange. Our love is just that somewhere on the surface we feel; it cannot move deep. The language becomes the barrier. I can talk as a professor -- as far as my subject is concerned I can talk about it -- , and she can talk about her subject. But love has been neither of our's subject."

So why do you fall into baby talk? Because that was your first love experience, with your mother. Those words that you uttered first were love words. They were not head-oriented, they came from the heart; they belonged to feeling. They had a different quality.

So even when you have a very developed language, when you love you again fall back -- you fall back into baby talk. Those words are different. They do not belong to this category of the mind; they belong to the heart. They may not be so expressive, so meaningful. Still, they are more expressive and more meaningful -- but their meaning is of a different dimension altogether. Only if you are very deeply in love will you fall silent. Then you cannot talk with your beloved, or you can talk just by the way, but really, there is no talk.

If the love goes deep, words become useless; you remain silent. If you cannot remain silent with your beloved, know well there is no love - because it is very difficult to live in silence with someone you are not in love with. With a stranger you immediately start talking. When you are riding in a train or in a bus you immediately start talking, because to sit by the side of a stranger silently is very difficult, awkward. There is no other bridge, so unless you create a language bridge there is no bridge.

No inner bridge is possible with that stranger. You are closed in yourself and he is closed in himself, and two enclosures are just side by side. There is every fear of colliding and of danger, so you create a bridge. You start talking about the weather or about anything, any nonsense that gives a feeling that you are bridged and you are communicating. Two lovers will fall silent, and when two lovers start talking again you can know well that the love has disappeared; they have become strangers.

So go and look... Wives and husbands, whenever they are alone, they will talk about anything. And they both know, they both are aware that there is no need to talk, but it is so difficult to remain silent. So anything, any trivia will do, but talk so that you can have the feeling that communication is there. But two lovers will fall silent. Language will disappear because language belongs to reason. First it will become a baby talk, and then this will disappear. Then they will be silently in communication. What is their communication? It is irrational. They feel attuned to a different dimension of existence, and they feel happy in that attunement. And if you ask them to prove what is their happiness, they cannot prove it.

No lover has been able to prove up to now why he is happy in love. Why? Because love implies much suffering. Still, lovers are happy. Love has a deep suffering, because when you become one with someone it is always difficult. Two minds become one... it is not only two bodies becoming one. That is the difference between sex and love. If only two bodies become one, it is not very difficult and there is no suffering. It is one of the easiest things; any animal can do it. It is easy. But when two people are in love it is very difficult, because two minds have to dissolve, two minds have to be absent. Only then is the space created, and love can flower.

No one reasons about love; no one can prove that love gives happiness. No one can even prove that love exists. And there are scientists, behaviorists, followers of Watson and Skinner, who say love is just an illusion. There is no love; you are just in an illusion. You feel that you are in love, but there is no love, you are just dreaming. And no one can prove they are wrong. They say that love is just a hallucination, a psychedelic experience. Nothing real, just body chemistry influencing you, just hormones, chemicals, influencing your behavior and giving a false well-being to you. No one can prove them wrong.

But the miracle is this, that even a Watson will fall in love. Even a Watson will fall in love, knowing well that this is just a chemical affair. And even a Watson will be happy. But love cannot be proven, it is so inner and subjective. What happens in love? The other becomes important - more important than you. You become the periphery and he becomes the center.

Logic always remains self-centered, mind always remains ego-centered: I am the center and everything just encircles around me -- for me, but I am the center. This is how reason works. If you move with reason too much, you will come to the conclusion to which Berkeley came. He said, "Only I exist, everything else is just an idea in the mind. How can I prove that you are there, sitting there just before me? How can I prove reasonably, rationally, that you are really there? You may be just a dream. I may be just dreaming and talking; you may not be there at all. How can I prove to myself that really you are there? I can, of course, touch you, but I can touch you even in a dream. And even in a dream I feel it when I touch someone. I can hit you and you will scream, but even in a dream, if I hit someone the dream figure screams. So how can I make a distinction that my audience here, just now, is not a dream but a reality? It may be just a fiction."

Go to a madhouse, and you will find people sitting alone talking. To whom are they talking? I may be talking to no one. How can I prove rationally that you are really here? So if reason goes to the extreme, to the very logical extreme, then only I remain and everything else becomes a dream. This is how reason works.

Quite the contrary is the path of the heart. I become the mystery and you -- thou, the other, the beloved -- become the real. If you move to the very extreme, then it becomes devotion. If your love comes to such an extreme point that you forget completely that you are, you have no notion of yourself and only the other remains, that is devotion.

Love can become devotion. Love is the first step; only then can devotion flower. But for us even love is a faraway reality, sex is the only real thing. Love has two possibilities: either it falls into sex and becomes a bodily thing, or it rises into devotion and becomes a thing of the spirit. Love is just in between. Just below it is the abyss of sex, and beyond it is the open sky - the infinite sky of devotion.

If your love grows deeper, the other becomes more and more significant - so significant that you begin to call the other your god. That is why Meera goes on calling Krishna, God. No one can see Krishna, and Meera cannot prove that Krishna is there, but she is not interested in proving it at all. She has made that point, Krishna, her love object. And remember, whether you make a real person your love object or whether it is just your imagination, it makes no difference, because the whole transformation comes through devotion, not through the beloved - remember this. Krishna may not be there at all; it is irrelevant. For the lover, it is irrelevant.

For Radha, Krishna was there in reality. For Meera, Krishna was not there in reality. That is why Meera is a greater devotee than Radha. And even Radha would become jealous of Meera, because for Radha the real person was there. It is not so difficult to feel Krishna's reality when he is present. But when Krishna is no more there, Meera alone is living in a room and talking to Krishna, and living for him who is nowhere. For her, he is everything and all. She cannot prove it; it is irrational. But she took a jump and she became transformed. Devotion freed her.

I want to emphasize the fact that it is not a question of whether Krishna is there or not. It is not! This feeling that Krishna is there, this total feeling of love, this total surrender, this losing oneself into one who may be or may not be, this LOSING itself is the transformation. Suddenly one is purified - totally purified - because when the ego is not there you cannot be impure in any way. Because ego is the seed of all impurity.

The feeling of ego is the root of all madness. For the feeling world, for the world of the devotee, ego is the disease. Ego dissolves, and it dissolves in only one way; there is no other way. There is only one way: the other becomes so important, so significant, that by and by you fade out and disappear. One day you are no more; just a consciousness of the other remains.

And when you are no more, the other is also not the other, because he is the other only when you are there. When the "I" disappears, the "thou" also disappears. In love you take the first step -- the other becomes important. You remain, but for certain moments there may be a peak when you are not. Those are rare peaks of love, but ordinarily you remain and the lover is there. When the lover becomes more important than you, you can die for him or her. If you can die for someone, there is love. The other has become the meaning of your life.

Only if you can die for someone can you live for someone. If you cannot die for someone, you cannot live for someone. Life acquires a meaning only through death. In love, the other has become important, but you are still there. In some higher peaks of communication you may disappear, but you will come back; this will be only for moments. So lovers have glimpses of devotion.

That is why in India the beloved used to call her lover her god. Only in peaks does the other become divine, and the other becomes divine only when you are not. This can grow. And if you make it a SADHANA -- a spiritual practice -- if you make it an inner search, if you are not just enjoying love but transforming yourself through love, then it becomes devotion.

In devotion you surrender yourself completely. And this surrender can be to a god who may not be in the sky or who may be, or to a master who may not be awakened or who may be, or to a beloved who may not be worthwhile or who may be -- that is irrelevant. If you can allow yourself to dissolve for the other, you will be transformed.

Devotion frees. That is why we have glimpses of freedom only in love. When you are in love, you have a subtle freedom. This is paradoxical because everyone else will see that you have become a slave. If you are in love with someone, those around you will think that you both have become slaves to each other. But you will have glimpses of freedom.

Love is freedom. Why? Because ego is the bondage; there is no other bondage. You may be in a prison and you cannot escape. If your beloved comes into the prison, the prison disappears that very moment. The walls are there still, but they do not imprison you. Now you can forget them completely. You can dissolve into each other and you can become for each other a sky in which to fly. The prison has disappeared; it is no more there. And you may be under the open sky without love, totally free, untethered, but you are in a prison because you have nowhere to fly. This sky will not do.

Birds fly in that sky, but you cannot. You need a different sky - the sky of consciousness. Only the other can give you that sky, the first taste of it. When the other opens for you and you move into the other, you can fly.

Love is freedom, but not total. If love becomes devotion, then it becomes total freedom. It means surrendering yourself completely. So those who are of the feeling type, this sutra is for them:

DEVOTION FREES.

Take Ramakrishna... If you look at Ramakrishna you will think that he is just a slave to the goddess Kali, to Mother Kali. He cannot do anything without her permission; he is just like a slave. But no one was more free than him. When he was appointed for the first time as priest in Dakshineshwar, at the temple, he started behaving strangely. The committee, the trustees gathered, and they said, "Throw this man out. He is behaving undevotionally." This happened because first he would smell a flower and then the flower would be put at the feet of the goddess. That is against the ritual. A smelled flower cannot be offered to the divine -- it has become impure.

First he would taste the food which was made for the offering, and then he would offer it. And he was the priest so the trustees asked him, "What are you doing? This cannot be allowed." He said, "Then I will leave this post. I will move out of the temple, but I cannot offer food to my Mother without tasting it. My mother used to taste... whenever she would prepare something, she would taste it first and then only would she give it to me. And I cannot offer a flower without smelling it first. So I can go out, and you cannot stop me, you cannot prevent me. I will go on offering it anywhere, because my Mother is everywhere; she is not confined in your temple. So wherever I will be, I will be doing the same thing."

It happened that someone, some Mohammedan, told him, "If your Mother is everywhere, then why not come to the mosque?" He said, "Okay, I am coming." He remained there for six months. He forgot Dakshineshwar completely; he was in a mosque. Then his friend said, "Now you can go back." He said, "She is everywhere." So one may think that Ramakrishna is a slave, but his devotion is such that now the beloved is everywhere.

If you are nowhere, the beloved will be everywhere. If you are somewhere, then the beloved will be nowhere.