You have come home. You have knocked on many doors in vain -- now let this door be the last....

Raufa: Prem Raufa. Prem means love, Raufa is a sufi name for God. It means: one who has compassion, the compassionate. Your full name will mean: love, compassion.

Compassion is the fragrance of love. Love is like the flower and compassion is like the fragrance. There are flowers with no fragrance at all; they are poor flowers. Unless a flower has fragrance it is not much of a flower, because it does not give anything to the world, it does not release its spirit into the world. It is lacking, something is missing. In a certain way it is very non-poetic, hard. It does not have the soft heart and the subtle vibe. It is more on the outside and there is nothing inside it. It has no interiority, it has no subjectivity. The fragrance simply shows the heart of the flower -- the hidden becomes manifest, and that is the ultimate.

The seed is one stage. One can die as a seed. The seed is sex and many people die as the seed. Love is like a flower: the seed has bloomed, has come to express its colour, its possibilities. But many people die as flowers, as love. Compassion is when the flower releases its fragrance; then the growth is complete. When sex reaches to compassion one has arrived.

Buddha has said that compassion is the criterion. Love is just in the middle between sex and compassion. Below it is the world of the animal, above it is the world of gods. Love is just in the middle -- a door, a threshold. Start with love but don't stop there. It is beautiful as a beginning but not as an end. The end should be compassion. Become Raufa, become compassionate.

A sannyasin, who has been learning dance in the west, says she is divided between returning to study and staying with Osho.

So you can continue here and you can start teaching here. And dance is not really a thing to be learned. It is not an art; rather, it is a meditation. To think in terms of art is to miss the whole point. You can learn it technically and you can become a technical dancer, but you will miss the reality of it. It will be just the body and the soul will be missing. The soul comes through being meditative. The dance is not the real thing, but a dancing soul! Then the body moves of its own accord. You can make the body move but the soul will not move. The centre never follows the circumference but the circumference always follows the centre.

Two years is enough to learn the know-how. Now it is time to go ahead on your own. So come back, dance, help people to dance, and develop your own style, develop your own ways, develop your own technique. One has to be innovative. People try to be imitative. Learning from somebody else is good in the beginning. A little bit of information is helpful, it prepares your body, but one should not be too much attached to it.

In zen they say that if you really want to become a painter, first go and learn how to paint and then throw your brush, your colours, your canvas, for years together, so that you can forget what you have learned. Then one day suddenly, start painting. First learn how to paint, forget how to paint, then one day, start painting. Then it will have the quality of innocence and yet deep down somewhere the quality of an expert artist too. It is a great synthesis.

One can just start painting and then the painting will be simply childish, as many modern paintings are -- juvenile, no art in them... more pathological than healthy. Or one can technically become a very very efficient artist; then everything is perfect but the soul is missing. One has to attain to a synthesis: one has to know the technique and one has to be capable of being free of the technique. Then something in you starts growing, something takes form -- something that is yours and can only be yours, something that has your signature on it.

That's why I suggested that you come as soon as possible.... Start exploring dance here. Dance, teach dancing, innovate, discover, rather than follow.

A sannyasin, leaving, says he is continually bored and nothing seems worth doing.

If one is really bored, one gets out of boredom. You are not completely bored yet!

You are still hoping that there may be some way out of it... and there is none if you ask the truth, there is no way out of it. Because you go on trying to find some way out and then it fails, you become more bored -- but only more, not totally bored. Then you start looking in some other direction. Again, for a few days you will feel a little hope, and then the failure. And it will go on and on. Every time you will have a dream that this seems to succeed. For a few days the honeymoon and then you are flat on your back again.

If you want to know the truth, there is no way out. That means: stop trying to get out of it. Start living in it -- accept it, embrace it. This is what life is: life is a boredom. Then suddenly you are out and you are not searching for any way out -- you are suddenly out. What to do? Life is such. This is Buddha's message; he calls it 'suchness'. Life is such.

I am also bored!

But I have accepted it! And since I accepted it I got out of it!

Accept it and just see -- it disappears. It is a creation of your mind: because you want to get out of it, you create it. First one expects something and it doesn't happen, then frustration. But the frustration is the secondary thing; the first and the primary is the seed, is expectation. If you really want to get out of frustration, just drop the expectation. Then how can you be frustrated? How can anybody force you to be frustrated ? It is impossible. But we go on working on the second thing and the first is the cause. We go on working on the symptom and the cause remains intact.

Stop looking for a way out. There is none. This is how life is. To get it is to become enlightened.

So when will you be coming back?...

Whenever it is possible, come. And I will make you more bored, more bored! Some day, when the cup is full, you will be out of it. It happens in a single instant.

Then the laughter never ceases; one goes on laughing because then one sees the whole ridiculousness of it. One was creating it and was trying to get rid of it! On one hand we create it, on the other hand we destroy it, so the process can never be complete. You come back! You are coming closer and closer to the point where you will accept it. Good!

A sannyasin says she doesn't know if she is coming or going... she has been travelling between here, Goa and Bombay. She is not working in the ashram or involved in groups.

Nobody knows if they are coming or going; it is so difficult.

Go! It is some karma you have to fulfill!

Get involved in something otherwise you will feel like going. That's what you need: some involvement is needed. Start doing some work, but get involved. Otherwise the mind will say 'Go here, go there,' and it is useless -- just wasting time, mm? And don't be clever with me. Otherwise you will miss -- then don't ask why. Many people go on doing that and then the problem is not solved, because when I give you groups I have certain ideas about why a certain group will be helpful to you. I know from where to start and in what sequence they have to be done.

When you choose you simply choose because people are saying that Leela is great. Leela is great, but the people who are saying it have not chosen it the way you have. They have followed my instructions, they have followed them step by step. I had given them six, seven groups, then I had given them Leela, and they say it is beautiful, great. You choose it out of greed. You will not gain much out of it, because one has to come to a certain build-up.

Everything should be done in the right order, and the order differs with each individual; otherwise I could fix it that first everybody has to do this, then this, then that. But with every individual it is different, the needs are different.

So whenever you feel like doing some groups, do a few more, mm? I will give you some.

A sannyasin, arriving, says she is happy -- she likes being here.

That's good. You will become more and more happy. It is always good to start with happiness, because whatsoever you have goes on growing.

Always remember a very great statement of Jesus: 'Those who have, more will be given to them, and those who don't have, even that which they have will be taken away from them.' Riches attract more riches, so a miserable person attracts all kinds of misery; then it becomes a vicious circle. Always start with happiness, joy, blissfulness, and the whole world starts pouring more bliss, more happiness, more bliss, more joy into you. But the first step has to be taken by you, the initiation is always from your side. Once the process starts, the existence collaborates. Sing a song and the whole existence sings with you. Yes, the old proverb is right: Laugh and the world laughs with you; weep and you weep alone.

I am happy. You are starting with a beautiful phenomenon inside your heart -- this is the right beginning. and from the right beginning the end is never far away. the basic question is never of the end but of the right beginning.

Bhagwan gives a 'come close energy darshan' to someone arriving.

Beautiful things are happening inside. Many flowers are on the way. The spring is close by -- be ready and open for it. Remain vulnerable, and whatsoever happens, allow it. Don't be afraid of the unknown, because all that is going to happen will be unknown to you. You are on the threshold of a very unknown space. You will not be able to figure out what is what; you will have to go into the darkness of it. But that darkness, once you enter into it, becomes luminous. It is dark only if you don't enter it. It remains dark because you are out of it. Once you trust it and go into it, great luminosity arises out of it. And when the night turns into day and death turns into life, one has seen that which is worth seeing. One has seen the meeting of the paradoxes.