Whenever some important visionary wants to bring out any change or transformation of India, he leads the country men with the slogan — Bharat mata ki jai, or Vandematram. People often wonder: Does such an entity as Bharatmata exist? Because we have never seen her!

There is no such entity anywhere in India in physical form. It exists in the collective psyche of the country’s men and women. That.s why the invoking works — and works wonders. That’s the inner secret of the eternal India — the imperishable India. India remains united under the influence of mysterious feminine power and it is in turmoil whenever it goes astray.

Osho contemplates : “Whether it is the birth of matter or whether it is the birth of consciousness; whether the earth is born or heaven, everything is born through the mystery that lies hidden in the depths of Existence. Therefore I have said that those who have looked upon God as mother – as Durga or Amba – their understanding is much deeper than those who look upon Him as Father. If God exists anywhere, He is feminine, for man does not have the ability and the patience to give birth to such a vast Universe. That which gives birth to the myriads of stars and moons must have a womb, without which it is impossible.

He adds: Have you ever seen the image of Kali? She is the mother, She is terrible! In one hand she holds a human skull! She is the mother – Her eyes are filled with the ocean of tenderness. Down below – She stands on the chest of someone! Someone lies crushed under Her feet! Why? Because that which creates, destroys also. Destruction is the other part of creation. Those were wonderful people who conceived this image. They were people with great imagination who could visualise great possibilities.
The words of the Chinese mystic Lao Tzu are conclusive:
The Tao is called the Great Mother
empty yet inexhaustible,
it gives birth to infinite worlds.

There’s an ancient story, from the time of Confucius and Lao Tzu. Both were contemporaries. Confucius was younger than Lao Tzu but more popular as a philosopher. His thoughts influenced China in a very big way then and to this day his philosophy of life continues to dominate Chinese mentality. Lao Tzu was a mystic, like an Upanishdic sage of India, who had a transcendental wisdom of self-realisation. He had nothing to do with any philosophy, social morality or code of conduct. He was a simple man with profound understanding of life. But he could not influence people as much as Confucius could. He never bothered.

The recent issue of the New York Times, in one of its articles, tells us that meditation is exploding in popularity. There are classes to learn meditation in all its forms: mindfulness-based stress reduction, transcendental meditation, Zen and more. There are meditation events with power-networking opportunities built in. Drop by the Port Authority Trans-Hudson (commonly called PATH) in New York, and you can mingle with people in tech, film, fashion and the arts. Pay a visit to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and you get to do an early morning guided meditation with global leaders. As the editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post Arianna Huffington said, CEOs are increasingly coming out of the closet as meditators.

Another newspaper reported that researchers mapping the brain activity of tango dancers suggest that tango has the capacity to transport a person to the same mental state as people who meditate. One experiment, presented by the US National Library of Medicine, established that Argentine tango could be as effective as mindful meditation in reducing symptoms of stress, anxiety and depression.

The notion about the effect of meditation that it reduces stress, anxiety and depression has become prevalent all over the world. And it is a fact. It does. But in ancient time, this was not the original purpose of meditation. When the ancient sages were practising meditation, they were not thinking of freedom from stress or anxiety. They were meditating to attain self-realisation or illumination. It was self-enquiry or self-actualisation. Now the meditation is being sold on a very large scale to the corporate world by most of the modern gurus with temptations, with certain packages of decision-making, increasing the productivity of the workers in the factories, etc. The power of meditation is being exploited for the mundane achievements.

The people are being misled on a very large scale. For example, Patanjali yoga has been reduced to mere physical asanas for better health and nothing further or deeper and the same is being done to meditation. All kinds of new methods are being invented and promoted as the short-cut to happiness and ultimately the enlightenment by those who want to turn into a big business, comparable to yoga. These teachers are mostly flourishing in the West as well as in the Eastern countries such as India and Japan, the sacred home to Vipassana and Zen. The mystic saint Kabir had warned about such teachers: “Andha andham thelia dono koop padant (The blind led the blind and both have fallen into the well)”.

Describing this situation, Osho says: “The ordinary man is living a very abnormal life, because his values are upside down. Money is more important than meditation; logic is more important than love; mind is more important than heart; power over others is more important than power over one’s own being. Mundane things are more important than finding some treasures which death cannot destroy.”

Once an actor came to see Osho in Mumbai. He was a new entrant into the film world. He asked for autograph with a message for him. Osho wrote in his book: “Act as if it is real life and live as if it is acting.”

Osho explained that the sanyasin is one who lives life like an actor. If someone wants to blossom in sanyas living in the thick of the world, he should cease to be a doer and become an actor, become a witness. He should live in the thick of life, play his role, and at the same time be a witness to it, but in no way should he be deeply involved in his role, be attached to it. He should cross the river in a way that his feet remain untouched by the water. It is, however, difficult to cross a river without letting the water touch your feet, but it is quite possible to live in the world without getting involved in it, without being tied to it.

He elaborates: In this connection it is necessary to understand what play acting is. The miracle is that the more your life becomes play acting, the more orderly, natural and carefree it becomes. If a woman, as a mother, learns a small truth, that although the child she is bringing up has been borne by her, yet he does not belong to her alone, that she has been no more than a passage for him to come into this world, that he really belongs to that unknown source from which he came, which will sustain him through his life and to which he will return in the end, then that mother will cease to be a doer; she will really become a play actor and a witness.

Life is a gift — an existential gift of God. But most people are unable to treat it as such, because priests, across religions, preach renunciation or rejection of life. Priests gave themselves the role of interpreting the teachings of avatars, messiahs and enlightened ones while forcing common people to follow them blindly or suffer the eternal hell-fire. They said God was compassionate, but they themselves did not show any compassion to common people. They did not preach reverence towards life.

Rather, they divided people in the name of religion and taught them to hate others who did not agree with their belief system or dogma. The priests have been promising paradise to those who would follow their interpretations. In this way, the people became idiotic and sheepish instead of being religious and intelligent. They became violent and estranged from life. This made life a living hell.

Given this situation, people were told to renounce life and become sanyasis. So, sanyas became synonymous with renunciation. But this was not how the sages conceived sanyas to be.

In 1970, in Manali, Osho once again introduced this original idea of sanyas which has been lost to the people. That day, Osho introduced his vision of neo-sanyas and initiated his first group of disciples as his sanyasis in a meditation camp. During this camp, Osho talked about Krishna: The Man and his Philosophy, and gave birth to a new sanyas of life-affirmation, joy, freedom and celebration. He brought the spirit of Krishna, his dance and playfulness into the 21st century. He wanted to give sanyas a fresh lease of life infusing it with new vigour, vitality, colour and creativity. “Sanyas has to be invested with a new meaning, a new concept. Sanyas has to live; it is the most profound, the most precious treasure that mankind has. But how to save it, preserve it, is the question. I would like to share with you my vision on this score,” declared Osho in the foothills of the Himalayas.

Previously, the flavour of sanyas had deteriorated into a denial of life. Osho rejected this misconception about sanyas and said that in order to survive, sanyas needed a new meaning and a new dimension of celebration and creativity. He said: “My sanyasis celebrate everything. Celebration is the foundation of my — not renunciation but rejoicing; rejoicing in all the beauties, all the joys, all that life offers, because this whole life is a gift of God… The old religions have taught you to renounce life. They are all life-negative; their whole approach is pessimistic. They are all against life and its joys. To me, life and God are synonymous. In fact, life is a far better word than God itself, because God is only a philosophical term, while life is real, existential. The word ‘God’ exists only in scriptures; it is a word, a mere word. Life is within you and without you — in the trees, in the clouds, in the stars. This whole existence is a dance of life. I teach love for life.”

This neo-sanyas is not one of formal renunciation. In fact, it is to rejoice in life, in love, in meditation, in the beauties of the world, in the ecstasy of existence — rejoice in everything! Transform the mundane into the sacred. Transform this shore into the other. Transform the earth into paradise.

He did not give any code of conduct, he did not impose anything on sanyas. He conferred total freedom to sanyasis. He concluded: “By initiating you into sanyas I am not giving you an ideology — I am just giving you courage to get free of all ideologies… I am not giving you a certain religion… I am simply giving you courage to be an individual… a unique individual.”